Impassioned Embraces
by John Pielmeier

Dealing largely with the many aspects of love (from the sublime to the ridiculous) and with the trials and terrors that actors must face, the plays mingle hilarity and poignance as they explore the problems that romance--and the need for self-expression--can engender.

We encounter, for example, an actor struggling through a particularly devastating rehearsal; two teenagers gingerly dissecting a frog--and their sex lives; a bridegroom who finds that he really loves the bridesmaid rather than the bride; a woman (masquerading as a man) who tries to pick up a man (masquerading as a woman) in a bar; a couple chattering through a "splatter film" whose conversation is even wilder, and more intriguing, that the soundtrack of the movie; and assortment of sad/funny monologues about the various perils (and pleasures) of the acting profession; a wildly funny farce involving a man about to undergo a vasectomy, a shockingly inept doctor, an irate (and pregnant) nurse, and the doctor's madly jealous wife.