Lee Blessing

What if Waiting For Godot was a straightforward play about nuclear arms treaty discussions between two negotiators? Very funny, existential, while keeping things grounded in the absurdity of real life and the conflicting wills of the nuclear weapon discussion as well as regular politics. It's the "sausage being made" part of of the Bismarck quote.

Three sisters in Independence, Iowa, come together to decide what to do about their mother in the wake of one sister's pregnancy. The mother is truly deranged, and it is easy to question the assertion of her doctor that she is able to take care of herself. Watching the family fall apart, and tear each other apart, you can understand why the oldest sister got far away from them, and why she only visits every four years. What you can't understand is why this is presented as something that show more needs to be repaired (but this is the usual tack in these plays - at least in this one, the author doesn't make the absent sister some sort of monster). show less

Hilarious in so many ways. I was told in college that the playwright created it as a metaphor for America's first war in Iraq in the 1990's, and though I suppose I can see some of those parallels, I really enjoyed this play all on its own. Lee Blessing's characters are so funny, and he gives voice to numerous things that I wish someone (Ophelia, especially) had been able to say during the actual Hamlet play.

Brilliant. I'm a cold war historian (not professionally) so the scope of the story was fascinating to me, but I also found many delights in the ideas and revelations about friendship, and work, psychology, and hope. A splendid audio performance by Alfred Molina and Steven Weber.