Customer Reviews

What I Meant Was: New Plays and Selected One-Acts

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Craig Lucas' amazing THE DYING GAUL is the centerpiece of his latest collection of full-length and one-act plays, WHAT I MEANT WAS. Lucas' provocative drama responds to the perils of cyberlife, one of contemporary drama's most recently popular subjects (as in Kopit's Y2K and Marber's CLOSER). However, Lucas delves deeply, chronicling the pain of a screenwriter who has recently lost his lover to AIDS. He has sold his script to a heartless producer, and enters an affair with him, even though the producer is both married and simultaneously attempting to rid his manuscript of any trace of its gay subject matter. As an outlet to his suffering, he surfs the loveless yet safe confines of the Internet. However, the series of events which ensue are both blazingly theatrical and a sobering statement on the capacities of the human spirit in the age of technology. Presented here with a number of other recent Lucas plays, the playwright exhibits a longing and passion which could not be seen in his earlier work PRELUDE TO A KISS. Readers cannot miss Lucas' introduction to the plays, which identifies the new found anger inherent in his "new" theatrical voice.