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Tesse and I saw Well on Friday night, which just opened. An interesting play, a very clever and funny play--but I'm not sure it ultimately works. It's about a woman who's putting on a 1-woman play (with additional cast!)--she comes out as herself, addressing the audience directly, with "her mother" (i.e., a woman playing her mother) onstage sleeping, who wakes up and starts to offer her commentary, suggestions, etc. The play is, as Lisa Kron (the 1-woman) says, "a multicharacter theatrical exploration of issues of health and illness both in an individual and in a community." This constant reiteration of the play's theme is played for laughs but it does point up a weakness (as I saw it)--I never understood why so much of the play dealt with the mother's efforts to integrate the neighborhood, unless it's to show what a strong woman she really was, and would've been if she hadn't been sick. Anyway--mostly what it's about is people who are chronically sick--Kron says nowadays they call it "chronic fatigue syndrome" or "multiple chemical sensitivity" (??) but back then they called it "allergies." I read in the Playbill, she says this play (which did very well Off-Broadway) resonates with everyone, people who are chronically sick and people who are irritated by the chronically sick. Well, the play kind of annoyed me, because I'm one of the latter. [Full disclaimer--I'm not a doctor, this is all my mostly uninformed opinion, just from the articles I've read, and the people I've dealt with.] I used to work for a medical consulting firm, and I read a lot of those articles about CFS and when people are super-sensitive to their environments. Some of it just seems highly unlikely to me, like the fact that it's mostly middle-aged women. Of course there may be many reasons for that--it's true women are much more attuned to their own bodies and psychosomatic* symptoms are NOT necessarily "fake" symptons--the connection between the body and the mind is really mysterious but compelling nonetheless. I guess what I'm talking about is not people who really are sick but people whose identity is derived from being sick, who lovingly detail their symptoms and allergies and what-all, and want everyone around them to cater to them. Example--those people who claim to be supersensitive to every chemical ever, so they ask that no-one around them wear any perfume or deodorant, or wash their hair in certain shampoos, or not use hairspray. That's just silly. Frankly, I don't want to live in a world where no one wears deodorant (I had a glimpse into that world when I visited Germany for a month and believe me, it was a smelly time!). If you're really *that* sensitive, it's on you to reorder your world, to take ownership of your situation and not ask everyone to dance attendance on you. As I said to Tesse, if none of used any cosmetics or deodorant or anything, we'd all look like the newscasters in Batman!
So anyway, some of the characters in this play were like that--no one actually insists that anyone not wear deodorant but they all seem very complacent about their "illnesses." That's who they are, they're sick. Lisa Kron says she used to be one of these people but never wanted to be--she asks "why did I get better?" She examines how much ownership a person can take of being sick--how much of it is them, how much of it is being legitimately sick. She ends up being a lot more sympathetic than I am, to her credit--I would've gone nuts in a household like that, where your mother's primary characteristic is being sick, and lumbering around the house every day, and sleeping in the living room. [Note--the actress who plays the mother is fantastic.] So the play, although basically very good (and funny) wasn't quite for me, because I spent a lot of time being annoyed at the mother and the patients in the clinic. I will say, the play was excessively talky--Kron addresses the audience a LOT which always loses me. I'd much prefer to see something happening than hear about it.
I should clarify--again, I'm not talking about people with verified, legitimate illnesses or allergies. I'm talking about people who want you to dance attendance on them because of their vague symptoms, like my friend in college who made a big fuss about always sitting in the front whenever we drove anywhere because she got carsick, and would make a big fuss about being allergic to cats even though no one had a cat on campus, and none of us had seen our cats for months, since they were at home and was generally *always* making a big fuss about symptoms and conspicuously avoiding people who had the flu or whatever. It's the WASP in me--if you're not throwing up or passing out or have a fever, you're not sick. A cold is not sick--a cold is an annoyance, and you shouldn't spread it, but it's not sick. Carsick is not sick--take some ginger or dramamine and suck it up. And the thing is--with some of these CFS or MCS people, you can't tell if they're legitimately sick, or like my friend. The very nature of these syndromes means they're vague and difficult to diagnose clinically--a lot of it has to do with patient-reported symptoms.
*Interesting fact--psychosomatic symptoms used to be referred to as "hysterical" (like an hysterical pregnancy). "Hysterical" comes from the same root word as "hysterectomy"--hystera means uterus, so psychosomatic symptoms, and screaming/overreacting are etymologically linked to womanliness. Just another example of linguistic sexism.
So anyway, some of the characters in this play were like that--no one actually insists that anyone not wear deodorant but they all seem very complacent about their "illnesses." That's who they are, they're sick. Lisa Kron says she used to be one of these people but never wanted to be--she asks "why did I get better?" She examines how much ownership a person can take of being sick--how much of it is them, how much of it is being legitimately sick. She ends up being a lot more sympathetic than I am, to her credit--I would've gone nuts in a household like that, where your mother's primary characteristic is being sick, and lumbering around the house every day, and sleeping in the living room. [Note--the actress who plays the mother is fantastic.] So the play, although basically very good (and funny) wasn't quite for me, because I spent a lot of time being annoyed at the mother and the patients in the clinic. I will say, the play was excessively talky--Kron addresses the audience a LOT which always loses me. I'd much prefer to see something happening than hear about it.
I should clarify--again, I'm not talking about people with verified, legitimate illnesses or allergies. I'm talking about people who want you to dance attendance on them because of their vague symptoms, like my friend in college who made a big fuss about always sitting in the front whenever we drove anywhere because she got carsick, and would make a big fuss about being allergic to cats even though no one had a cat on campus, and none of us had seen our cats for months, since they were at home and was generally *always* making a big fuss about symptoms and conspicuously avoiding people who had the flu or whatever. It's the WASP in me--if you're not throwing up or passing out or have a fever, you're not sick. A cold is not sick--a cold is an annoyance, and you shouldn't spread it, but it's not sick. Carsick is not sick--take some ginger or dramamine and suck it up. And the thing is--with some of these CFS or MCS people, you can't tell if they're legitimately sick, or like my friend. The very nature of these syndromes means they're vague and difficult to diagnose clinically--a lot of it has to do with patient-reported symptoms.
*Interesting fact--psychosomatic symptoms used to be referred to as "hysterical" (like an hysterical pregnancy). "Hysterical" comes from the same root word as "hysterectomy"--hystera means uterus, so psychosomatic symptoms, and screaming/overreacting are etymologically linked to womanliness. Just another example of linguistic sexism.
