Customer Reviews

Moonchildren.

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Moonchildren, originally called Cancer, by Michael Weller is perhaps one of the most insightful plays about youth in the 1960's and perhaps youth in general. Set at the onset of the Vietnam war and from the point of view of a collection of college students who for various reasons never fully allow eachother into their worlds. All the males are facing the draft, death, and life after college. The females are facing a generation in which women will no longer be content just serving. It is a time of change and these people, all of which, are searching for a meaning in the chaos of change. Bob is coping with the abrubt loss of his mother, but refuses to allow anyone including his girlfriend to share his pain. Norman has no idea what he stands for and fights to find the definition of what is it means to immortalize yourself for justice. Kathy is looking for love in places where she finds only sex and shallow affection. Ruth is helpless to the plight of her friends and unsure of how to define herself as a "new woman". Mike and Cootie are emotionally absent from their mates and above the metiphorical freigh. Like court jesters, they cover true pain and comprehension in jokes and pranks. Shelly is just along for the ride, pained by life. These people are at once characters and real. Moving and unmoved. Desperate and outwardly calm. Weller has given the world a play of humor, which might just change the heart if allowed to. Actors will love it's dense passages and meaty subtext. This play though, is for an audience, and to not see it performed more often is a travisty only the theater can mend.