"One of the loveliest things—in an absolute avalanche of lovely things—about Casey Llewellyn's wide-ranging piece is her title. In calling it O, Earth, Llewellyn quotes from the end of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, when Emily's overwhelmed spirit exclaims, “Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.” This is not so surprising; Llewellyn's postmodern pop-threnody takes Wilder's masterpiece as its matter and prime mover. But the playwright also reflects the fragment through a prism. Written in just that dropped-h way, Llewellyn's title also harkens to Jeremiah (“O, earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord”); say the phrase, you hear the echoes. Llewellyn hides an encompassing lamentation in the words that even Wilder, past master of heartbreak, didn't amplify.
Is that a lot to pin on a title? Not if you see the play itself, which is confident, lyrical, hilarious, unabashedly literate and unapologetically political. It also holds the Wilder text as gently as a robin's egg." --Helen Shaw
Wow! Thanks Helen Shaw for this amazing review! Read the whole thing here. And get your tickets before they're gone!