I’ve had trouble putting down thoughts of this play, because they have not formed.

If I shine a light on the structure of the play I’d say it is a straightforward and unsurprising conventional play of the middle of last decade: sensible characters in a situation pursuing their goals and finding victory or defeat as one would expect. There is a small hiccup, though not at all uncommon to the era, of a character who only shows in interstitial monologues and has no bearing on the plot, but let’s set her aside for a moment.

If I look to the content of the play I’d say from one perspective it is still very standard: modern love and career, tinted by the sudden specter of death. There’s betrayal, there’s sexuality, there’s an attempt at being competent in this world. It is perhaps notable that playing in a distinctly, and unapologetically feminine space: our characters work at a fashion magazine and talk about beauty products, clothes, etc. at the frequency and depth you’d expect these professionals to. It’s not girly, at least I don’t read it as such, it’s just the reality of the world, and it’s a world we don’t enter very often.

Without any disrespect to Carolyn McGraw the play’s language isn’t groundbreaking or particularly evocative. Yesterday I talked about Suitcase, which had a distinct musicality, I’ve read plays where the language is heightened to great affect or has its own dialect, or any number of engrossing devices, but this play, as well written as it is, sounds like everything else.

On the surface this would seem to point to a perfectly normal play: a thing which you’d pick if it met the needs of your actors, or if the themes particularly spoke to you (which is not true of me,) and that it is otherwise a satisfactory experience and nothing more. The meatloaf of plays.

And in a way that is what I feel, but something inside me chafes at labeling it as such. Something asks me to consider it deeper or to give it another look. I don’t know what that is, and I don’t think I’ll have the ability to indulge it, but perhaps I’ll stumble upon a more profound thing to say later.