"Distracted"
by Lisa Loomer
Directed by Liz Diamond
Presented by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

I saw this show last week, and I'm a little late in writing the review, but, that's the rub. I thought I'd include a little synopsis of the show, but the fine folks at the Oregon Shakes website do it better. Here's the link: Distracted

I thought the acting was superb. I'll say that first out of the gate. OSF has always impressed me with their acting abilities. The actress who played the mother was fascinating, funny, and most important, felt real. Big kudos for her.

The stage was great too. In the round, which I am a big fan of , with a complex lighting grid above dominated by large plasma screens which were used to great effect. The setting was simple, and allowed for exceedingly fluid changes. All the furniture pieces were on wheels, which meant everything moved on and off really fast, and the stagehands seemed to hardly break a sweat. As a former stagehand, I take that into consideration.

The weakest part of the play, for me at least, was the play. I thought every character besides the main (the mother) was a lamentable caricature. Sometimes to an egregious degree. I really appreciated the notion of the play, how to deal with a child in this increasingly distractable world, with a plethora of stimuli attacking us constantly. BUT, I thought the material was presented in an unapologetically biased manner. I wanted a better balance of information presented, not just the liberal anti-drug agenda. Being a child of a medical family, I'd like to think I know a thing or two about what the medical issues raised by the play. That being said, I was immensely distracted from the play by the goofy characters presented, especially the one character that kept breaking through the wall of the show, once was good, but three, four, it just became predictable and lost any power over the audience. There were also a few plot holes, but describing them here might seem a bit pointless unless you've seen the play. That being said, I'll note one that bothered me immensely. At one point, an actor is playing a doctor, and the actor stops playing the doctor, and is, ostensibly, the Actor speaking directly to the mother. Then, the "Actor" exclaims he is not willing to play this quack any longer, and walks off the stage. BUT, the mother takes the plan/advice advocated by the Doctor as the happy method in which she will heal her son's ADHD sans drugs. Anyways...

Is it right to drug a child with ADHD? Is it right to allow a child to run around and disrupt the lives of others, the education of other children because the parent believes drugs are bad for children? Should mental illness be treated any differently than a chronic physical illness? They are all difficult questions, and, from one sense, I appreciate the courage to tackle a subject like this. I just wish it had been done a little better.

My major question for this post: Do playwrights have any obligation to provide unbiased information? OR is it the very nature of a play to present a biased world-view? (Though I would also accept the argument that the two are not mutually exclusive).

Play well kids.