Last night, I was a witness to a rare event. Last night, I saw quality theatre.

“The Fourth Wall”, a new re-write of a play by A.R. Gurney, is in previews at Primary Stages in Manhattan. This is a remarkable piece of theatre. This is what theatre is supposed to be all about. Watching this play, you find yourself wishing you were involved in the production—and not in that Steve Stark, Councilman/Pharmacist (Waiting for Guffman) way either. I mean, it makes you BELIEVE in theatre again. It makes you want to write plays. You want to be an actor, a writer, or, failing that, at least a regular theatergoer. Most importantly though, the play makes you laugh. It makes you laugh, to keep from crying over the underlying messages that are so skillfully expressed.

Since I’m pretty sure all of my three readers live far from New York City, I can’t implore you to go to this play, but I just wanted to spit out these thoughts about my experience last night because it was just so damn refreshing to see theatre used as an instrument of dissent again.

A traditional review, where the plot is discussed and star names are dropped, I leave to the other more skilled practicioners. Suffice to say, there is a plot (in fact the very topic of plot is a humorous feature in this play), and there are stars. And they all do a superb job of acting.

But the real star of this show is A.R. Gurney, for applying theatre as a tool to achieve a lot more than entertainment. Indeed, perhaps the true star of this show is theatre itself. And that, folks, is something to be excited about.