Reviews for The Best American Short Plays 2004-2005

The average rating for The Best American Short Plays 2004-2005 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-23 00:00:00 Jeff Klein These 16 short plays illuminate the current state of the dramatic arts. Lots of bold social activism, on topics ranging from racism and poverty to promiscuity and drunk driving. However, the plays that stood out for me intrigued me for other reasons. For example, the opaque lyricism of Levin's "What Really Happened, Starring Abraham Lincoln..." reminded me of a modern dance performance. In Tracz's "Death Comes to a Wedding," the jumprope rhymes chanted by schoolgirls were a show-stealing update to the classical chorus. And John Guare's delightful monologue about living in Greenwich Village in the 1970s, in an apartment formerly occupied by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, inspired me to hunt down both the DVD and script of his full-length masterpiece, "Six Degrees of Separation."

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-26 00:00:00 Kelly Kennedy This collection ran hot and cold for me. A few of the selections I read because I was entertained or felt that they were thought-provoking. But for the most part it felt like a few good pieces scattered among many ho-hum pieces. Lots of avant garde work. Some of it made me want to read it, others just made me wish they were over already. It's hard to give a star rating to a collection of plays written by many different playwrights. I suppose I give the three stars to the editor for choosing this collection. However, I found one particular footnote amusing in the "The Lovers and Others of Eugene O'Neill" play. Pretty interesting that I would find more humor in a footnote than in 300+ pages of dialogue.