Touch

Description
Toni Press-Coffman's drama about a scientist struggling to cope with his wife's murder receives a typically seductive staging from New Leaf Theatre, the trustworthy North Side theater collective that uses a simple, patented three-ingredient house recipe of actors, lights and sound. Unfortunately, Touch's first act is top-heavy with the kind of “Life is like the Milky Way, and here's how…” speeches that have plagued American playwriting in the last decade and which distract from the story of a widower whose pain leads him into a sympathetic relationship with a prostitute. At least Dan Granata handles these humorless passages with dignity and restraint.—CP