![]() ![]() So she is focusing her energy on preparing for an open house at the school that she runs with the assistance of her husband, Bradford (Ryan Winkles), and hyperactive teenage daughter, Pilly (Ella Dershowitz). To Joy, fear is an illusion, “a lie we tell ourselves.” Joy Eldridge (Stacy Fischer), a devout Christian Scientist who runs a private art school for children, is seemingly shrugging off the threat of influenza. ![]() Mac doesn’t push the parallels with the COVID-19 pandemic, but they hang in the air. At such a time, coughing could be - and is, in “Joy and Pandemic” - an act of aggression. ![]() ![]() Traces of “Grey Gardens” and “Sunday in the Park with George” can be detected in the structure of Mac’s play, whose exposition-heavy opening scenes put us in Philadelphia in 1918, where the influenza pandemic is beginning to gather force, a ravenous wolf at the door. As for those words: The dialogue, largely enclosed within, and delivered with, a certain formality, sometimes registers as eloquent and witty, at other times as stilted. The heart of “Joy and Pandemic” is located below the surface and behind the words. ![]()
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