Rachel Ricano reviews

Saving Stan was one of the best plays I’ve seen this year.

Stan, an arrogant lawyer, suffers an incapacitating stroke and can’t speak. In a way serving as a parable of the bond of friendship, he subliminally (without words) “asked” his best friend, Jack, (who can somehow hear Stan’s voice) to help him commit suicide. Patrice, Stan’s health care worker, begins to be suspicious of Jack’s intentions. That, and her plans to marry Stan might be thwarted by Stan’s plan to leave this earth.

Thanks to a similar subplot involving Jack’s wife, Jack’s initial apprehension, he agrees to free Stan from his pain.

Stars, Carlo Fiorletta,  Jordan Auslander, and Olivia Baseman were exemplary and engrossing. They embodied the play’s image it portrays of friendship. While a sad piece, Gary Morgenstein’s witty dialogue kept us entertained and – as needed – uplifted.

Euthanasia is not a topic for plays without being peppered with an even darker ingredient such as cancer or AIDS so it seems here that Morgenstein might even be breaking new ground here.