A CONCEIVED NOTION
Such attention to detail is refreshing, and it keeps Dennis’s script alive and kicking despite its risky subject. A Conceived Notion deals with the concept of grace–a terribly heady theological idea difficult, perhaps impossible, to translate into theater. But Dennis manages a lot just through trying, and her script is supported by genuine theatrical talent and directed well by Warren Davis. The result is an entertaining, intellectually engaging argument. As theater, however, it falls short. The spiritual conflict of Dennis’s protagonist is too ethereal to fuel the play’s action, and by the second act A Conceived Notion has slipped from theater into a well-staged piece of theological discourse.
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Dennis has written some great one-liners, which she and Royce deliver with charming aplomb. She has a great sense of the irony and the humor of the waitress’s (and presumably her own) point of view. One of the best moments occurs when Alex wonders if she’s died and gone to hell–she accuses the waitress of being the devil’s handmaid, then decides that couldn’t be true: “You’d take the devil to some remote part of hell and bore him into turning over a new leaf!”
