"Timely? Yes? Drama, no!"

August 3, 2006 performance reviewed by Sandy Michel.

Two Roads is a political drama by Lee Blessing that was first produced in 1988. The plot consists of an American citizen, a professor, Michael Wells, who is taken hostage by Arab terrorists and his wife Lainie, who strips his home office of furniture 3,000 miles away so she can symbolically be with him and share his ordeal.

Timely? Yes? Drama, no!

This aspect of the Two Roads is at times moving and believable. Enter a third character, a State Department representative, as overplayed and not too sympathetically, by Geneva Carr and we have pure propaganda replete with a lecture on Moslem fanaticism, martyrdom, and a slide show. What has happened to conflict and resolution as the chief elements of drama?

This particular scene made me terribly uncomfortable. I felt I was watching Fox News. THe 4th character was an investigative reporter with his own agenda.

The imaginary conversations between Michael, as playted by Jay Stratton, and his wife Lainie, as played by Paula Burton, were sympathetically played and directed. There was almost the hint of a relationship developing between the reporter, Walker Harris, as played rather adequately by Matthew Floyd Miller and Lainie.

The audience was well informed and sensitive to all aspects of this drama. Noneof it was new. I have mixed feelings about the success of this play as a work of art.

The Miniature Theatre of Chester  |  miniaturetheatre.org
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The Miniature Theatre of Chester, an Actors’ Equity Association company, performs at the Chester Town Hall, on Middlefield Street off Route 20. For further information visit MTC’s website at: . MTC performances are supported, in part, by funds from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Local Cultural Councils of Amherst, Becket, Blandford, Chester, Chesterfield, Cummington, Huntington, Middlefield, Montgomery, Russell, and Worthington.