I'm in the middle on this one. I think I found it interesting but not compelling, and I don't know that I'd recommend it to any of my friends but I also wasn't mad that I went to see it. I thought the characters were written well and each had their moment to shine as well as having a good mix of "problematic" statements and compassionate moments.
I've never been to grief counseling so I can't speak to how true it is, but I thought the most interesting part of the play was how these people for the most part can know each other so well in specific ways and not at all in others, and while they aren't friends, they also need each other in a way. And it's tough to make a judgment call since we don't know what a session looks like with Beth there, but I did find the power dynamics interesting with who "needs" to speak and the different reasons people come to the group.
I did find glimmers of larger themes on grief, though perhaps nothing new that hasn't been said already--the idea of something else that will happen to trigger another bout of grief; the comparison of grief between different people who've died; the idea that not talking about someone anymore will make them truly disappear; and even just coming to terms with people (especially mothers) as human beings who are doing the best that they can. But where the play felt short for me was it just didn't seem like it had a purpose. Why should people come to see it? For other plays that are just based on a series of conversations without real dramatic stakes like Heroes of the Fourth Turning or Case for the Existence of God, the play itself gave way to a larger picture of a specific kind of people and demonstrates a kind of perspective or dichotomy we haven't considered before. And even Stereophonic, which doesn't necessarily speak to a larger moral, is still in service to the creation of an album. But what this play seems to amount to is just that grief sucks? Or maybe that everyone grieves differently? I just don't quite know what it was about this set of characters that the playwright wanted to share with audiences.
Also I'm sure it's meant to be vague but I'm still not quite sure about the purpose of some of the almost supernatural set elements that happened. The ending specifically seems to say a certain message but I can't quite figure out what it is or even what it's leaning towards and some of the stuff with the lights just seemed unnecessary. The ending actually felt a bit like the ending of Here We Are to me, but without the same build up so it just felt unearned and kind of "...so that's it?" I was curious how they'd end the piece pretty much the whole time because I think if it had ended in a stronger way I would've been much more positive about it overall but in general it just felt like it was spinning its wheels with nowhere to go (though for the most part I did enjoy getting to know these characters).
