Balm In Gilead – Everyone Has A Story
by Karen Tortora-Lee on November 3, 2010
In vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured.
Jeremiah 46:11
To call T. Schreiber Studio’s Balm in Gilead a “play” is an understatement. Step into the Gloria Maddox Theater and find yourself stepping back in time – to a sensation, a memory, a peek into a world that few escaped and even fewer survived. The show is a visceral experience - astonishing in every detail and desperately authentic.
Playwright Lanford Wilson may have been writing of a world he knew well in the 60s, but Matt Brogan’s set takes that world and offers it up to the audience in such careful nuance that – rather than watch the play – your first instinct is to avert your eyes – hurry past – to not become ensnared in this sticky world of wickedness. Under Peter Jensen’s direction everything in this play reaches out at you and it’s impossible at first to feel comfortable in this microcosm of hookers, junkies, dealers, transvestites, street thugs, gamblers, drug users, derelicts and transients who are so plentiful that they brush past you as you quickly aim for your seat. Once you are able to look – you’re afraid to be caught staring.
