Reviews for The Methuen Book of Contemporary Monologues for Women

The average rating for The Methuen Book of Contemporary Monologues for Women based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-04 00:00:00 Perion Mccrary I know Kenneth Lonergan through a couple of his movies, including Manchester By the Sea, which pretty much blew me away away, and I recently read This is Our Youth, which I liked very much for its dialogue and characterization in spite of the fact that the characters are teenaged rich kids going nowhere. It's kind of nevertheless exhilarating in its own way, calling to mind language/dialogue masters who explore contemporary train wreck lives: Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Sam Shepherd. I liked this one slightly less than Youth, but it also has great characters, though this time working class ones: Jeff, a kind of goofy, talks-too-much hotel security guard, white, working for a black guy named William whose brother may have committed a serious crime. Jeff also talks to new cop Michelle, whose partner she sort of likes (and has slept with) and who she discovers sees a prostitute in Jeff's hotel while she waits in the lobby (Jeff tells her). Michelle also hurt a guy a couple weeks ago on the job and she could be in trouble for it. And there's more layers of moral complications, too. You get the idea: The territory is moral dilemmas and how complicated this idea of doing the right thing really is. Michelle and Jeff kinda become friends but their commitment to "doing the right thing" in their separate situations could get them mired in deep waters. Along the way issues of sexism, sexual assault, loyalty, racial justice, police brutality, and other things get explored. Police brutality, racism, sexism, and sexual assault t2002 play, revived on Broadway 2018 (featuring Michael Cera and Chris Evans) and still relevant. As I said I like This is Our Youth better, but this has humor and drama and great dialogue in it.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-10 00:00:00 Gary Moore An extremely well written play that toes the line between comedy and drama expertly- tons of juicy scenes and meat for actors to dig into, and 4 great and complex characters. Although written 15 years ago the themes of this play and their presentation are extremely relevant. Police brutality, racism, sexism, and sexual assault that have been so prevalent in the media within the last year are all on display. Moral dilemma drives the action of the play but sometimes takes a backseat to the almost-too-awkward-to-be-charming mouth vomit of the protagonist Jeff and his possible budding romance with Dawn, the brave, scrappy, and determined rookie police officer. A very nice script that just misses going far enough to blow me away.