PATIENT A, PLAN-B THEATRE COMPANY, Rose Wagner Center, through Sept. 25 (355-2787). Running time: one hour, 20 minutes (no intermission).
In the early '90s, when playwright Lee Blessing met Kimberly Bergalis, Bergalis was already close to death. She was already famous, as well. She had been the first person to get AIDS from a dentist.
But Blessing couldn't bear to tell Bergalis' story quite that simply. He decided to put himself in the play. He wanted to let Kimberly's character talk back to the playwright — in between telling pieces of her own story.
These exchanges let the audience laugh. Without them, the play would be bleak, even pompous.
Blessing threw in a third character, too. This character, Matt, represents other viewpoints. Sometimes he's a parent. Often he's a gay man. Matt is also allowed to smart off to the playwright.
In short, Blessing's "Patient A" is an unusual and thought-provoking script. This month, as Plan-B Theatre Company brings "Patient A" to Utah for the first time, audiences will learn that director Jerry Rapier has put yet another twist on the story — by casting the role of Lee Blessing as a woman.
Those who have seen the play before may be intrigued by watching Anita Booher speak lines that were written for a man. For the rest of us, the role seems natural enough for a woman.
What is most intriguing is the performance of Colleen Lewis in the role of Kim. Lewis is grand.
In the first place, she looks right. Frail and young. But she is also gifted at expressing the complexity of her character's situation.
When she is giving Lee a hard time, there is something heartbreaking about her pluckiness. At other times we can feel Kim's anger or her fear or her resignation.
Logan Miller, as Matthew, and Booher, as Lee, can be touching as well. (Though it took us longer to warm to them, in part because Booher mispoke a few times on Friday night.) Their sweetest scene is when he, the anonymous gay man — who could be a dentist or a student or any person really, any human who died unloved — asks the playwright to describe his funeral.
The lighting by Pilar I. and the set by Randy Rassmussen are stark. Nothing distracts from the drama, not even an intermission.
Sensitivity rating: The agents with the Center for Disease Control had a hard time believing Kim was a virgin. The discussion of her sex life is graphic.
E-mail: susan@desnews.com