The play's the thing...

Just got back from our marathon play weekend in West Virginia. I have often said (in other venues) that the main thing one has to pack for the Contemporary American Theater Festival is a full complement of anti-depressants. Seldom does one spend an entire weekend with successively more depressing accounts of American dysfunctional families. Four plays, four mood-crushing exercises in futility. The chief reasons we go are the friends we go with, the dinners we share, the milkshakes at Betty's (OMG!)...and the feeling that we are getting a sneak peek at what's ahead in American theater.

Good news. Last year we came home not wishing to slit our wrists, but we figured that might be a one-year fluke. This year, the trend is confirmed. While not exactly cheery, this year's offerings provided a little more balanced view. Dysfunction is still the malady du jour, but the overall attitude is lighter. The endings are still not happy, but one doesn't exit the theater calculating the closest route to oblivion. Entertaining, thought-provoking, sobering, well-acted...these are the words for this year's crop of new plays as presented in Shepherdstown.

I'd like to think we're emerging from the dark night of Sam Shepard's soul that has seemed to dominate all new plays and playwrights. I'm not a Pollyanna exactly, and I'd hate to emerge from every theater performance humming the equivalent of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning"...but I do occasionally enjoy seeing a play where blood and wreckage and betrayal are not prominent plot features. There's room for sunshine in my theater pantheon. I don't expect Shepherdstown to fill that void necessarily, but they are making progress in that direction.

Meanwhile, there ARE the milkshakes at Betty's.