Fortunately theatrical fireworks explode when Diane, the successful short-story writer in The Moonshot Tape (the first part of Who We Become, a trilogy of rarely staged one-act plays by Lanford Wilson) returns to her hometown in Missouri to clean out her childhood home now that her mother has been moved to a nursing facility. A student journalist from Diane’s high school alma mater has come to interview her, and in so doing dredges up memories that Diane had heretofore kept private. As staged, the audience becomes that journalist, absorbing everything Diane has to say about writing, and nothing is out of bounds: “Do whatever it takes.”

Diane drinks freely and continuously during the interview, saying “You’ve caught me at a low ebb.” As glass after glass gets drained and refilled, Diane gets more detailed and direct with her responses. She’s not happy to be home, but she does want to set the record straight, and accurately, even if it reveals parts of herself that would be better off kept private. “Never underestimate the power and excitement of revenge,” she says, and more than once. Diane has been able to capitalize on the miseries of her childhood via her writing, but she carries no illusions that the writing has actually saved her in any way other than financial.

Wilson was a great American playwright who isn’t as well-known across the pond as he should be, but here he is done great, honorable service by Margaret Curry, who gives a phenomenal, transfixing performance as Diane. Curry perfectly straddles the line between simmering anger and the kind of cathartic euphoria that comes only when darkness meets the truth of light. So powerful is Diane’s monologue that the audience exhales at the end of her interview with relief even though it is now unwittingly implicated and involved.

© The Recs RDC - By: Randall David Cook