Review by Robert Avila of The SF Bay Guardian, published October 5, 2001

Review by Robert Avila for SF Bay Guardian

The Shotgun Players present Susan Wiegand's one-act play, which unfolds as a series of conversations and musings among a Girl (Marin Van Young), a Boy (Brent Rosenbaum), a Woman (Mary Eaton Fairfield), and a Man (Aaron Lucich) as they discover (and rediscover) themselves and one another in a psychological landscape of desire and self-interest. Alternately propitiatory to and wary of one another, like the proverbial frog and scorpion whose story serves as the play's leitmotif, the characters appear and disappear through Michael Frassinelli's elegant set design, a row of roughhewn marble slabs that suggest the fissures between the characters. Director Katie Bales Frassinelli's respectful treatment may be too reserved, however. Wiegand has her characters speak and reason in ways that are alternately compelling and predictable. With strong performances from a cast that gets the most from the dialogue, it's ultimately the play itself that has the furthest to go in approaching self-realization.