By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Oct. 3, 2015 – A New York theater critic reviewed the American premiere ofWaiting For Godot at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in 1956. Legend has it that his review started with something like, “I have no idea what I just saw, but it has worth.”
While playwright Erin Courtney is no Beckett, a similar vibe surrounds Thinking Cap Theatre’s stimulating production of her 2012 Obie-winning A Map of Virtue. I know it has something to do with chance, guilt, morality and the ineffectiveness of language; I know this because I looked it up on the Internet and, in retrospect, I can see how what I saw bears that out.
Suffice it to say that if you like your theater schematic, clear-cut and requiring little cogitation after the curtain falls, you will absolutely hate A Map of Virtue. But if you don’t mind being a bit at sea during and after a play, if you like wrestling with a production while it’s underway, if you enjoy trying to dope out what it meant on the ride home, if you like, well, thought-provoking theater, then Thinking Cap’s production may well intrigue you. You may not ever be able to get your brain completely around it, but Thinking Cap’s laudably ambitious effort has the power to perplex and unsettle you if you let it.
