Thank you for everything you do!

Gretchen Paules
Administrative Director
Let Go…Let Peace Come In Foundation
111 Presidential Blvd., Suite 212
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004

While I appreciate that this story focuses on the important and complicated issues of the play, I feel compelled to also mention the incredibly effective artistic merits of this production. The performances from the cast are nuanced, subtle, specific, honest and full of emotional depth and integrity. The set is evocative and supportive of the ideas in the play without ever slipping too far into metaphor. The lights and costumes are so intelligently and effectively integrated into the emotional journey of the piece, that you might not notice them until you are left wondering how you got quite so caught up in the story. The orchestration is at turns spare and lush, always supportive of the emotional turning point, confession, or exploration happening in each song. The direction is a brilliant mix of delicate emotional builds, and brave movement-based choices, all of which made me feel as an audience member that while it was going to be a bumpy emotional ride, I was in good hands with this artistic team.

Basically, this play is absolutely worth seeing if you are interested or invested in the subject matter as described above. It is equally worth seeing if you just want to experience an exceptional night at the theatre.

One thought: It will not not serve you as an audience member to go into this piece looking for "the voice of the playwright" or even, necessarily, the "message of the play." One of the strengths of the writing in the play is that each character is unflinchingly, unfailingly themselves – consistent in their own delusions, denials, self-doubt, and belief systems.

When Kate sings about her own "failings" as a mother for not stopping the abuse sooner, is the play saying she's a bad mother? Of course not. It's giving that character a space to express the (taboo) feelings that a mother might feel, but be afraid to express in that situation. When "Clowny" (whose name and costume clearly reinforce that we are not meant to identify with him)reads a manifesto absolving himself of wrong doing, is the play "apologizing" for pedophiles? Obviously not. It's shining a light on a hidden and all-too real underworld in which sick people delude themselves into believing they are not hurting anyone. The play is a portrait of a family and a situation, complete with the flaws, confusions, delusions, questions, and tangled up loyalties present in this far too common scenario.

Likewise, when those in the play who have suffered abuse explore the complex and troubling feelings they felt for their abusers, the play is on no way "blaming the victim" — it is instead pointing out that sexual abuse is not only a physical abuse, but an abuse of trust, of intimacy, and of innocence.

Though some reviewers have noted that the absence of a physical child on stage turns the child, his pain, and by extension all victims of abuse into an "abstraction" I would heartily argue that we see plenty of victims in this play. Mike and Jerry ARE that child, and all the various ways in which that pain can grow, harden, flourish, and consume. If the "present absence" of the child turns him into an abstraction for anyone, it not for us as an audience. It is for Jerry who has turned the child into a representation of intimacy, desire, and conquest that the child is an abstraction rather than a person.

Finally (yikes – this comment got much longer that I'd planned!)I think that while all the attention focused on the issue of a support network as a key component of treatment and decreased recidivism for abusers is worth discussing, I ultimately feel that this is not Jerry's play. This story is Mike's – the brother who must answer the entreaty posed by the title. And his final decision of whether or not he can "Love Jerry" is not so much about Jerry's healing, but about Mike's own.