I would have enjoyed seeing Wallace Shawn act out his main character thought Nichols was unforgettable. The vexing detail about this play of course is that one has to listen to get it; a bother I know. It is not, it seems to me,about literature or pompousness or affectation. It is just about character and circumstance, like all great stories, particularly potent in an environment where political fundamentalists get closer to power. It is like any Hollywood story; develop characters, setting and intro duce the plot. When events start to unfold in this story it is unbelievably chilling and you can realize, with a start, that some place in the world this kind of terror is happening to people very much like us, right now. While Texan's are rewriting their history text books to accommodate a brand of right wing thought experiment, people with contempt for free thought scheme for power - Tom Delay wanted to do away with much you enjoy in this country and he got close; we should pay better attention to our own literature.
Review of The Designated Mourner
