Play a Day: One Month Along

Franky Gonzalez

For Wednesday I read One Month Along by Franky Gonzalez and available at New Play Exchange.

Tales of jealousy, impotence and rage are a reality-check and always remind me how fortunate I am to have been engaged in an emotionally solid relationship for nearly twenty-five years.

I am not bragging. I am relieved. I fear for what my life would have been without it. Not good, how’s that?

Gonzalez’s play traces the creation and disillusion of a love triangle, but not in that order. The title, One Month Along is almost certainly a reference to Kaufman & Hart’s Merrily We Roll Along as each tells a story scene by scene in reverse chronological order.

As opined by Harold Prince while producing Sondheim’s musical adaptation of Merrily it is nearly impossible for an audience to take in a narrative in that way.

And yet, Gonzalez story is streamlined, with only three characters, the plot basic enough to follow that we can accept that each scene takes us back and back, peeling away the layers of deceit and unhappiness to get to the original sin of this doomed relationship— the idea that you can wish a romantic partnership into reality based on an idea.

You can’t. People make mistakes along the way upon which the failure of a relationship can be blamed. But it’s all the result of the initial, arrogant notion that wishing something into being can make it so.

Bonus points for referencing Troilus & Cressida.

Who should I read tomorrow?