Trying

All good. Hope to play Biddle.

It's one of the finest plays I have ever seen. a two hander of enormous depth. it's filled with wit and poignancy, and is a marvelous invitation to bringing into your home, and having a play reading evening.

Excellent!

I saw a production of "Trying" by Joanna McClelland Glass at the Park Square Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Tuesday night, September 18, 2007. Featuring an old actor and a young woman who attempts to be the secretary for an old man who expects to die in a year at the age of 82, the high points of the play include some dementia induced by different points of view which are intellectual enough to include the observation, "Harvard was already old school when Yale was a young pup." The low point was a daily reflection on the old man's inability to stop the United States from interring the Japanese during World War II. The Secretary of War claimed some "military necessity" required that certain people be removed from the West Coast to prevent the repetition of events like Pearl Harbor, when Japanese bombers knew where their targets were on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. There were a few comments about the pathology of Nazis that faced judgment at Nuremburg. Was it Hess who tried to commit suicide? Hitler and Himmler probably did it right. Francis Biddle has a line in his address book through the names of people who are already dead, and the play probably starts at the point where all the "B"s are gone.

We first heard the play TRYING, by Joanna McClelland Glass in early 2011 as a reading in our beloved Bas Bleu Theatre in Fort Collins, Colorado. Then saw it as a play by the same actors, in the same theater, in February, 2012. A 25-year old, college-educated, assertive woman from the Canadian prairie applies for the job of secretary for an aging, cranky, long-retired American judge of international renown. The play succeeds beautifully in showing the gradual improvement of their work relationship, the lion share of which coming from the secretary. Until it gets there, we were entertained, amused, and eventually moved, by both actors. We likedthe play so much, we bought a copy from Amazon to sendto relatives.