Excerpt from the Village Voice's Review of Marathon '98

by Charles McNulty

[snip of review of three other plays in the same series]

Shel Silverstein's "The Trio" is by far the most ambitious of the one-acts. Helena, an increasingly insecure violin soloist, meets her world-reknowned conductor and lover at a restaurant. As she receives feedback from him on her uneven performance, a trio of women play Beethoven in the background. Impressed, Helena finds out the musicians are not only former soloists but also ex-lovers of her conductor. Worse, she sees they've reserved a place for her in their group. Though written in a somewhat stilted fashion, Silverstein's play is a complicated parable about the lure of artistic perfection. Laurence Luckenbill and Janet Zarish invest the lovers' encounter with a Poe-like mystery that transforms the one-act from a clever idea into a suspensful truth.

(webmaster's note: unless I am mistaken--or unless something happens in the next few months--this was Silverstein's last play produced. I think of all the one-acters he's written, this is the one I would have loved to have seen, simply because the whole classical music background hits pretty close to home. And also, conductors have affairs with soloists so damn often...or marry them. Charles Dutoit and Martha Argyrich, for those who know the Montreal music scene....)

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