The Treatment

The Treatment is Eve Ensler's new play about this traumatized military guy going through therapy. So I'm not gonna lie, I'm not a huge fan of Eve Ensler, and this kind of backed those thoughts up. I'm not going to say it was a bad play, but I was definitely underwhelmed.

The dialogue was so awkward and forced, I thought. It was presented fine. I think Dylan McDermott and Portia did a fine job (the latter grew on me; I wasn't too keen on her in the beginning). It's a very loud and forceful play, and it intends to convey a strong message. I think how I'd best describe it is that it's very emotional, but I didn't find it very moving. There was a lot of yelling, and screaming, and crying, and I thought the actors did a fine job with it. I just thought the characters were not developed enough to feel it and the dialogue was just not all that impressive. The dialogue was even kind of sedating. It was just not actiony or moving or convincing. Ultimately, I thought the message she was trying to get through could have been just as effectively conveyed if we only saw the last ten minutes of the play. For those interested, Dylan McDermott is in tighty-whities for a significant amount of time.

So if you want to see a lot of crying and yelling and screaming and hear some overextended commentary on our war situations, check it out. It's not awful, but I'm not going to tell you to run to the theater now.