| I’d like to be charitable here. I like Will Arbery. He’s among the many talented and interesting young playwrights writing today whose work I’ll go out of my way to see. But EVANSTON SALT COSTS CLIMBING was really, really trying. It’s an early play of his and it shows; it’s immature. In it, he’s at a complete loss to communicate ideas or feelings through character. No one in the play is remotely believable as a person. Instead, there’s a pile up of smug, sociological grandstanding and theatrical conceits that are worn and ineffective detached as they are from any discernible sentiment other than the seeming wish to be clever. I’m glad Arbery moved on from this sort of jejune exhibitionism, but boy—the operative word—was this hard to sit through. |
