I knew the play was fierce, with a kind of gritty, intentionally flat use of language that is mercilessly naturalistic with none of the embellishments of American naturalism – say the self-conscious cadences and cut-offs of Mamet, the lyricism of Tennesse Williams, the tragic earnestness of Arthur Miller. Then, just when I’ve decided the language is brutally spare, the play breaks into soliloquy. I look closer, and find the punctuation is…punctilious! The words are set as precisely as music, the punctuation an unerring clue to the pace and state of the speaker. I circle the “and’s” in my text. I circle the “very’s”. I count the number of lines until there’s finally a period and the stakes become clearer to me. I knew the play was funny when I heard us read it. Irreverent. Wicked. Packed with laughs of recognition and horror. And I’ve come to understand that the humour is both immanent in the situations, and deftly crafted in the lines themselves. I knew the play was the opposite of sentimental. Today I realized that it’s also terribly sad. I’ve gotten choked up at unexpected moments. Evan is the tallest and muscly-est person in the cast and he’s wearing high heels, and a gown with a corset (we’ve all made the inevitable jokes and continue to mine the endless possibilities for ridicule which will only deepen and get richer as we begin our backstage life together after opening) – he plays a woman whose ability to appear convincingly helpless is her bread and butter. When he/she stands on stage, alone, waiting, and watching, it’s heartbreaking.