Patient A
Then last month Far West’s postcard for the “Chicago premiere” of Patient A arrived in the mail, emblazoned across the top with three words: “Innocence. Ignorance. AIDS.” After enduring the media’s misconceived eulogies for Oklahoma City’s “slaughtered innocents” (who were neither innocent nor guilty but simply unlucky), after seeing half a dozen HIV bills emerge from Springfield during the last legislative session offering a pound of punishment but not an ounce of prevention, and after years of witnessing our culture’s facile division of people with AIDS into “innocent” and “guilty” camps, my toenails faced irreparable deformation. The last thing I needed, I thought, was to sit through Patient A again, listening to Blessing oh-so-earnestly confess how difficult it is for him to really feel for a dying multitude: namely my friends and colleagues.
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Despite deeply committed, moving performances by Bethanny Alexander, Gene Cordon, and Brad Meyerhoff, Kolack is fighting a losing battle, trying to elevate the play above sanctimony and self-importance. Ultimately Blessing cops out, giving one woman who was overexposed in her lifetime the posthumous chance to steal the spotlight once again from those with broader, more informed perspectives.
