The Parrallelogram
Written by Bruce Norris
Directed by Michael Greif
Second Stage Theater
July 25, 2017
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

Now tonight I truly saw Groundhog Day but without all of the glitz.  It is also the only time that I have been to a show that during the intermission the first thing that the audience was doing was opening Google to see what a parallelogram was and how it had anything to do with the show.  Nothing wrong with doing a little geometry outreach.

I really did love this play.  It was so like seeing an episode on Twilight Zone and certainly had that rather dark, bleak ending.  The premise to the play is that a woman finds herself in her bedroom with an older woman (the amazing and ever so agile Anita Gillette).  This elder woman claims to be her – – but the her in the future – – her who has already gone through life.  This elder woman also has in her possession a remote control that can stop time, rewind time, and move forward in time.  At first this is a fun gimmick as she can take an encounter she has with her boyfriend and replay it over and over making different choices and seeing how it changes everything.

But then this time machine becomes more dark.  I mean, if you could know of your future down to the last detail and also KNOW that NOTHING you can do will ever change this future – would you want to know – really?! – because you would have to deal with the good and the bad.  I mean if you knew EVERYTHING would there really be a need for you to live it.

I loved the pseudo science of the play and it’s talk of time, quantum mechanics, fluid space, and all the other “science” talk, but the science fiction of it was abandoned too quick.  I wanted it to capture me at the end like a good sci-fi novel, but no.  The acting and dialogue, however was first rate.  I cared about the people and felt trapped at the final moments of the story – worried about the narrative that is ahead in my life.  As the adage goes – “don’t ask if you don’t want to know the answer.”