| I just saw the play this afternoon, and I thought it was pretty brilliant. Perhaps some of the dialogue could be trimmed, just a bit, but I admire the scope of Jacobs-Jenkins’ ambition in this play. It’s about the choices we make, from high school forward, how they shape our lives, and the interplay between our past and our present. It’s about the political “moment” that for Jacobs-Jenkins stretches from Columbine and 9/11 to Covid and January 6. And, most profoundly, it’s about mortality. A lot to cover in a little over two hours, but it works on personal, political and existential levels, I think. Jacobs-Jenkins writes well, and It was a pleasure to spend time with such articulate characters; I look forward to reading the play when it’s published. I have a minor reservation about the motivation of the person who emerges as the main character, and I didn’t quite understand why the character baits and pushes the others so hard, but perhaps that will be clearer to me on a second viewing or a reading. Where many modern plays seem to me small, narrow and tightly focused, I appreciated how broad and expansive this seemed to me. |
