This collection contains three full-length plays by Jeremy Dobrish: BLINK OF AN EYE, THE HANDLESS MAIDEN, and NOTIONS IN MOTION. Here is what the critics had to say:
on BLINK OF AN EYE:
"Time is in splinters, identity is bafflingly relative and death is a fatuous, late-night infomercial host who pops up on television with apologetic yuks, `a lifetime warranty' for his singular product.
Yes, life, familiarly enough, is a running metaphysical joke in BLINK OF AN EYE, Jeremy Dobrish's giddy detective story of a play...but more an occasion for giggles than despairing laughter. This goofy,
ingeniously structured tale of a gumshoe's Chandleresque hunt for a billionaire's missing brother suggests Pirandello on Prozac, recasting his usual mind games in the cheery terms of a Mad magazine parody.
...while BLINK traffics in illusions that are purely theatrical, it does so in a brisk, fragmented style that approximates the flashy editing techniques of film and television....
Refreshingly, in spite of its borrowings from different media, the play's particular charm has everything to do with the theater."
Ben Brantley, The New York Times
"The Knicks, guardian angels, fallen angels, Shakespeare, billionaires, private eyes, french fries, manic cabbies, psychos, prison wardens and pop culture. But wait, there's more....
...this satirical thriller is ethereal comic perfection. Written...with sly wit by Jeremy Dobrish."
Time Out
on THE HANDLESS MAIDEN:
"Jeremy Dobrish's delightful new comedy combines a Grimm's fairy tale with two contemporary stories, which being with a man planning his own wedding and a woman who is made a partner in her law firm before her husband is. Eight actors in dual roles segue easily from comedy to seriousness, from farce to realism and the piece brims with goofy charm. Three cheers for all involved..."
The New Yorker
"...crafty intermingling of folklore, musical comedy and soap opera.
...another lighter-than-air vehicle on which to float an evening of stylish daffiness. adobe productions resist categorization; THE HANDLESS MAIDEN can count among its inspirations the work of Stephen Sondheim, Rod Serling, Sid Caesar, Walt Disney and even Agnes Nixon."
Peter Marks, The New York Times
on NOTIONS IN MOTION:
"Technology, hemlines and what people eat for breakfast may all change over the years, but paralyzing self-consciousness, at least in this century, has never gone out of style. Pirandello...is drama's chief proponent of the sensibility, having written a long series of plays that doggedly ask questions about the nature of identity, reality and the very theatrical form in which these quandries are examined.
Mr Dobrish...has now adapted Pirandello's EACH IN HIS OWN WAY (1924) as a gleeful romp of an exercise in relativity, existential doubt and artistic illusions....
...Mr Dobrish, in resetting this self-imploding story of love and revenge Italian-style in the world of small-time New York mobsters locates an appealingly adolescent energy in Pirandello's reality-bending, perspective-warping drama games."
Ben Brantley, The New York Times
"...Dobrish's play is a lightweight, divinely madcap comedy that never takes itself too seriously, yet always seems to be striking at something a little deeper."
Sam Whitehead, Time Out
