4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Illusion and Reality, May 14, 2002
In Fool for Love , Sam Shepard analyzes the complicated relationship between May and Eddie who are involved in a love-hate, fascination-repulsion 15-year-long relation which is once more in the `on again' phase.
Set in a low-budget motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert, May and Eddie play out an unpredictable encounter. Traveling close to 2,500 miles to come back into her life, Eddie attempts to once again declare his faithfulness and commitment to the unconvinced May, who tells him: "You gotta give this up. You've been jerking me off like this for fifteen years. Fifteen years, I've been a yo-yo for you". May screams for Eddie to leave yet pleads for him to stay upon his repeated exits. Through their arguing, the chemistry and history the two have shared becomes apparent and it is obvious that the characters are deeply in love. "We've got a pact...we've made a pact", Eddie said to May. "You know we're connected, May. We will always be connected...that was decided a long time ago", he added.
A bottle of tequila blends the couple's arguing into the narration of a story that deepens on May and Eddie's past revealing how the two were already completely in love when the truth was learned about their true relationship. At this point of the play, Shepard had gotten illusion and reality finely combined that it takes a while to understand that the Old Man observing, and occasionally interacting with the characters, is just their distant father's ghost.
Shepard has done an amazing job in this play managing illusory conversations naturally flow within the real ones. May and Eddie seem to have both independent and joined conversations with the Old Man.
A fourth character, Martin comes into the story, as the shy, naive date of May to reminds us that the conversation between the protagonists is "real". As Eddie, now drunk, continues his story of how he came to know May, the old man yells for him to stop the story, but ends up discovering facts of his own past as well -- which confused me since his presence is not real but illusory only.
The fact that at the end of the play, the motel gets burned down by Eddie's mistress, -- as May refers to her -- May is forced to move away again, suggesting us that the vicious cycle in which the characters live, will be repeated once again following what Eddie once told May: "You'll never get rid of me. I'll track you down no matter where you go".
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
POWERFUL DRAMA BY AMERICAN LEGENDARY PLAYWRIGHT, November 27, 2009
This review is from: Fool for Love - Acting Edition (Paperback)
Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love"is the story of high school lovers who become involved in a tempestuous, passionate relationship. We find them some fifteen years later, with May having moved across the country and 'Eddie having followed her. A visitor comes to take May to the movies and is the catalyst for the revelation of the secret of Eddie & May's relationship. The "Old Man" remains in a small space apart from the basic playing area and exists only in May's & Eddie's memories.
Sam Shepard has been a leading American playwright for over 30 years. This is one of his few plays, if not the only one, in which a woman is the leading character. It is a powerful drama with several twists & turns in the plot lealding to a shocking revelation of their relationshisp.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fool For Love, January 7, 2000
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. We learn of Eddie, Mae, their father, and a "Man" (Martin) coming for a date blind to the status of the relationship of his date and her brother and their father. I am a Senior at Lindenwood University in St. Charles Missouri, double majoring in Theatre and Mass Communications. This April, I will be directing "Fool For Love" as my senior project. This play, as analyzed in a previous modern drama class and in my current working analysis, is highly identifiable with anyone who has ever been involved in a severely dysfunctional relationship that won't go away. Mr. Shepard creates four intricate and powerful characters sharing both realistic and ethereal existances.
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