Body of Work

PATIENT A TACKLES AIDS CRISIS WITH COMPASSION
(excerpt)
September 12, 2005; Barbara Bannon, The Salt Lake Tribune

Plan-B Theatre Company is giving Blessing's provocative play [PATIENT A] its Utah premiere at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in a powerful and compassionate production.

PATIENT A unfolds as a dialogue among three characters. The first two are Kim and Lee, the playwright. Kim tells us her story, and Lee provides perspective by placing it within a larger context and giving us her own emotional reactions....The third character is supposed to supply choral support and portray auxiliary people in the vignettes dramatizing Kim's life, but he soon demands to be his own person. He becomes Matthew, a gay man dying from AIDS, and expands the boundaries of the play.

He also introduces one of the play's principal ironies. Although Kim's plight put a human face on the AIDS crisis and mobilized support to fight it, the sympathy she elicited created resentment among the many AIDS sufferers who had struggled for years to attract attention to the disease and been ignored because they were on the fringes of society. As Lee says, the larger disease in our world is the cowardice and viciousness with which we treat others.

PATIENT A is graced with clean, clear, uncluttered performances by actors Anita Booher, Colleen Lewis and Logan Miller. Jerry Rapier's focused direction helps them transition effectively between the analytical and emotional aspects of their characters. Booher's Lee switches effortlessly between commentator and caring supporter, Lewis is vulnerable and touching but never too maudlin as Kim, and Miller tempers Matthew's anger with an honesty that totally engages our sympathy.