Smokefall by Noah Haidle

Who could resist reading a play whose character list includes “Footnote,” “Fetus 1,” AND “Fetus 2”? What a disappointment, then, to discover that “Footnote” is merely a cleverly named narrator who says “Footnote #...” before every line. If your story needs a narrator, then you shouldn't be writing plays. And this narration dominates the entire first scene. If the lines really were footnotes, then they shouldn't have been longer than the entire rest of the scene. No footnote should be longer than the body of work from which it is noted. The second scene is where the fetuses come in. I enjoy the absurdity of fetuses having existential angst as much as the next person, and enjoy the twistedness of a fetus so overcome by angst as to commit suicide pre-birth likely more than the next person (assuming the next person to have a less perverse sense of humor than I). However, the entire second scene was such a self-contained departure from the rest of the show, that it felt more like its own one-act play, of the variety done by high schools in competition. Of course, other people would no doubt deem the ending inappropriate for a school setting which is among the reasons I should never be allowed around children. The third scene is an attempt to unite and resolve the first two, but since the first two did not actually involve any real plot or character development there isn't much to resolve. All in all, the play is a non-cohesive mess.