Touching Lightly on Love and Death

Some years ago, a young playwright appeared on the Chicago theater with a talent for well-written plays and offbeat humor. Reviews in the Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Tribune described Kathleen Thompson's work with words like "clever, sweet, intelligent entertainment" and "absorbing, humorous and effectively introspective" with a "subtle but strong feminist undercurrent." The three short plays in this book deal with love and death and how the former affects our deepest feeling about the latter. The casts include a young couple in Chicago considering a peculiarly long-term relationship, a trio of friends in an Oklahoma cafe using humor and shopping to provide comfort in the face of death, and a private detective struggling with her cop brother and a widow suspicious about her husband's death. These plays are thought-provoking and often hilarious reading.