Saw this over the weekend and was impressed with the skill of the production and Ms. Maxwell's splendid performance. It is still pretty early in previews, and I think she's got some work to do, especially in making it the stroke-inflected language just a bit clearer, so that it isn't so easily dismissed as being mere gibberish. But she's a brilliant actress, and she's in very good hands with Mr. Doyle.
My one question with the play had to do with exactly when this is supposed to be taking place, and of how old Emily Stillson is supposed to be. Mention is made that Emily Stillson had been a female flyer in her youth, indeed something of a daredevil/stunt flyer, and that would pretty well indicate that Emily had been a young woman in the 1920s or 1930s, which would seem to me to indicate that the events of the play are taking place in the 1960s or 70s at the very latest.
As for Emily's age, the play was originally performed by the great Constance Cummings, who was in her late sixties when she played the role, as opposed to the great Ms. Maxwell's being in her early-fifties.
I can't make up my mind if I'm being terribly nit-picky or not here. It is either important or not, as you wish. I'll have to think about it a bit more.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
