My question -- how did other audience members understand details of Dr Wolff's relationship to the person named Charlie, whom we see her talking to when she is at home?
Toward the end of the play, we find out that Charlie is dead, having taken their [no gender assigned to Charlie] own life after an Alzheimers diagnosis. And that Charlie did this when Dr W was not around, which is a source of added grief to Dr W.
My question: I understood all this to have happened in the past, before the events of the play take place. And to have been included by way of somewhat explaining something about Dr W. (As to exactly what and how -- I won't go into that in this question.) Which meant that Dr W's conversations with Charlie were really internal interactions with her remembered, now-gone partner.
Someone else who saw it, however, didn't see it that way, and thought that the death of Charlie had happened after Dr W's whole crisis and loss of her professional position.