'Something in the Air' ... reeks of evil

"Something in the Air" by Richard Dresser, directed by Mara B. Sabinson opened last Friday, the first of two drama department-sponsored production for this summer. According to the director's notes, "finding this script was a delightful surprise." The delights of this real gem are no surprise at all, for it manages to delve into potent issues about the innate evil in the human nature, whilst sparing its biting critique of contemporary American social mores, excessive cynicism and philosophizing. Set in a large anonymous American city, the dark comedy even manages a non-judgmental lightness of tone and a happy ending despite its serious theme of covetousness, avarice and pure vice that leads eventually to murder. The issues that the play grapples with hit home because the characters' cold superficiality and their mechanical wit, which they unceasingly deploy to deflect moral culpability, finds articulation within the comedy and rings through real. Walker (Jeffrey Withers '02) attempts to murder Cram, an bed-ridden friend, for insurance money.