The Tricky Part

Last night I picked Deborah up and we saw The Tricky Part at the Intiman Theatre. I really enjoyed the show. If you've read the Intiman's page on the show, it says that it offers no balm and presents the issue as complex. They're right. Really, the play is about how Moran has carried an inner child that is still 12 years old for many years and in confronting his abuser a couple of years ago, he realized that he held no anger toward the man. He was angry at himself for letting himself be frozen at this point when the abuse started. Or something like that. The abuse isn't whitewashed. It's presented as something ugly, that pushed him to think of himself as that 12 year old and to return to his abuser to feel free. The play neither lifted me up, nor did it drag me down. It was more exposition than mood-altering. Although Moran does infuse humor and jokes (mostly of the shared Catholic experience variety) throughout the first 2/3 of the play. Also, I should mention that this is not an anti-Catholic play. I was somewhat afraid it would be another version of how Catholicism screwed up that I hear often from people, none of whom have been abused by the Catholic church, to my knowledge. So here's a guy who was abused, not by a priest, though it was by an erstwhile Catholic boys camp counselor, but the abuse happened unconnected to anything church related. Even then, many seem to find ways to blame Catholicism. Moran doesn't. He blames no one, except his abuser.