A FUNNY THING HAPPENED On the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City                                          by Carol Kaufman Segal

          The stage is set in a double hospital room in this production of A Funny Thing Happened ….. The title is especially cumbersome, the play even more so.  There are two women lying in each bed, a curtain dividing their space for privacy.  

          The premise of the play regards a young woman, Karla (Halley Feiffer who also wrote the play), sitting with her mother (JoBeth Williams) who is dying of cancer. She is loud and crude and doesn’t appear to be grieving over her mother’s illness.  A young man, Don (Jason Butler Harner), arrives to visit his mother (Eileen T’Kaye) lying in the bed on the other side of the curtain.  She, too, is dying of cancer.  Both mothers are seemingly unconscious.

          Don asks Karla to tone it down, and from that point on, the play is a total disappointment.  The language is crude, the actions are crude, and the premise of the play is beyond belief. These two characters, once the bickering stops and they find something more than friendship, are totally offensive. It is difficult to believe that two people could be so crass and so unconcerned about their mothers lying comatose on the verge of death.

          This play touched a very sore point with me, as I suspect it might have done with others who have experienced family losses from cancer.  As the play ended, and the audience was walking out, it was the most quiet I have ever experienced in a theater.  I saw the play on opening night and hassled over how I could write a review, thus the lateness of my offering.               

          A Funny Thing Happened ….. plays Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 3 PM and 8 PM, and Sundays at 2 PM and 7 PM, closing Oct. 8, at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles. 

          A Funny Thing Happened …..is the first production of the 2017/2018 Season at the Geffen Playhouse.  The rest of the season looks especially promising and I am looking forward to the theater’s future presentations.