This was enjoyable but I might have liked it better if The Zoom Scene was its own self-contained play or short film. It progressively loses steam after that.
This play will age like milk, but until it does every regional will have a great time doing it.
ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "This was enjoyable but I might have liked it better if The Zoom Scene was its own self-contained play or short film. It progressively loses steam after that.
This play will age like milk, but until it does every regional will have a great time doing it."
Why would this age like milk? The opposite, it was written pre-pandemic and has gotten more prescient/powerful as a result since.
I've been thinking about why this play didn't quite land with me and I think it's that just because it deals with topical issues, that doesn't mean it's necessarily powerful or saying something interesting (at least not interesting to me). We already know that there are a lot of anti-vaxxers. And I'm sure a lot of them correlate a bad experience with the vaccine when it's not necessarily the cause (as Jessica Hecht's character does). But beyond that it feels like the play just stages a (very amusing at times) discourse between different sides of the vaccine argument without any new perspectives, and then ends up just patting itself on the back for "doing what's right".
Perhaps it would've been more interesting if Hecht's character were less insufferable from the get-go. She's kind of pinned as the antagonist from basically the first time she opens her mouth so of course she's the anti-vaxxer, and while I have sympathy for some of her experiences, the play never gives her anywhere to go. I've mentioned before that Meiko was the most interesting character to me because she actually has an arc, but she's still fairly underwritten for the majority of the show and we never actually see that arc play out. I think there's more nuanced kinds of discourse around vaccines that could have been included, so sorry to say that I just didn't find this very fresh or insightful and perhaps that's why it feels as though it may not age well (as I can see some of these conversations feeling newer pre-pandemic), though it's still wildly entertaining at parts.
I saw this play Saturday night, and I enjoyed it greatly. I didn't read all the reviews, the negative one I skimmed, and it basically was complaining that the play is already outdated because RFK Jr. could become HHS secretary, we need a more forceful play to fight the anti-vaxx movement that could become stronger as a result of the next administration. I think this play speaks to profound themes concerning our current society greater than just vaccine disagreements.