Customer Reviews

Balm in Gilead - Acting Edition

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This is a play that begins as a jumble and ends as a eulogy and round for the lost souls of urban streets. Here are two dozen characters, junkies, hustlers, prostitutes, pimps, dealers, in a swarm of common addiction and stricture, craving, wandering, over and over in a cycle of highs and hopes.

From the jumble of multiple conversations at once, comes the heart of the story, Darlene and Joe, who meet at the cafe where everything takes place, learn about each other, he an old hand in the neighborhood looking to riase himself, she a new girl in town, already down on her luck and looking for contact. Their story is the point of the play, along with the purposely repetative behavior and dialogue of those around them.

While reading this isn't that easy, because Wilson intertwines three and four dialogues together, there is a sense for the mayhem and chaos that surrounds all these people. In the end, through song and a chorus of understanding, the hope for a Balm in Gilead remains.

This also features several incredible monologues, from Dopey, Rake and Darlene, each expressing the harshness and wonder of urban life.

That possibility is to deliver dialogue that not only seems realistic, but candid and this is the first play I ever read that felt that way at times. Wilson achieves this with having so many characters just taking the way they do everyday. What's interesting is that each of the characters reads differently even though they all do the same thing, more or less. He achieves in intimacy with these characters and their scene while providing an understanding look into their lives. It's not uplifting, but still a spirtual journey into the lives of people who many think to be spiritually dead, when they're just hurting and hopeless.