Saturday, June 20, 2015

Goodbye Charles

Play #125 - Goodbye Charles by Gabriel Davis

This is a weird little one-act about a woman named Jill whose husband Charles, after a year and a half of their distant marriage, has suddenly disappeared and demanded a divorce. The story is told by little memory vignettes that pop in and out of the conversation as Jill relates her woes to her friend Barb (who has problems of her own). There are expeditions to Mt. Everest, deceitful cheesemongers, support groups for commitment-phobics, awkward dates, leprechaun ex-husbands... and more freakin' typos than can reasonably be excused in a middle school essay. But still, the play itself is sort of fun, lends itself to some interesting staging conventions to keep the pace clipping along, and there are decent monologues for 20-somethings, which is always valuable. And, when you get down to brass tacks, the central idea that happiness can't be attained by trying to force people into our own idea of it, is pretty swell too.

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