The PlayFinder™

THE STORY: As Richard Watts, Jr., comments “Mr. Saunders has two major problems of striking interest on his hands. What is the relationship to his fellow-men of the alienated Jimmy Mason, who cut himself off from the world and lived in solitude for half a century, but left a diary behind? And how is the playwright to bring into dramatic focus his examination of the story and implications of this secret creature who has determined to sever all connection with human society and remain in brooding loneliness? It is the second question that provides the author with his most effective ideas. His method is to open with a kind of pseudo-improvisation rather reminiscent of Six Characters in Search of an Author and perhaps Waiting for Godot. Three actors, while awaiting the arrival of the other two, chat brightly and humorously about all sorts of things, including bad jokes, the audience, and the matter of saying the same speeches night after night, and it is good fun. When the fifth actor, the one who is to play the hermit, has arrived, they are presumably ready for business. The man has removed his beard, but he puts it back on again, and it is when he later finds he is unable to take it off again that you know they already launched into the story."