←Recommendations of More of a Heart

Touching, sharp, and highly specific, this piece covers huge and heavy topics--terminal illness, family, caretaking, advocacy vs selfishness--without getting bogged down at all. It's a clever sleight of hand that we're introduced to the passionate, imperfect, and overbearing Mary-Ellen and make our own judgments of her before we slowly start to see the full effects that her behavior has had on her son Zachary, who becomes our equally complex and sympathetic hero. Indeed, all of the characters are well-developed and full of grey areas, and the piece builds to a wholly affecting, heartbreaking, but nuanced conclusion.

Zachary's fight for independence and his mother's inability to let go or care for herself are balanced in loving ways but refuse to shy from the ugliness that good intentions can yield.

There are no clear moral lines in this piece, for everything you'll demonize you'll soon discover a desperate truth in decisions you can't be sure you wouldn't make yourself.

This is not only a great play, it is a gift to a community that deserves stories told on it's own terms.

This Terms-of-Endearment-inspired tearjerker flips a major expectation. “Terms” succeeds because parents aren’t expected to outlive their children. One of many reasons “Heart” works is because parents of autistic children frequently do.

Osmundsen creates uncompromisingly realistic characters. Mary-Ellen embodies the “look at me” special needs mother, both indicting and celebrating her complex humanity, down to the chapter titles. Her autisic son Zachary is trapped between her devotion and living his own narrative. It’s a titanic struggle that shocks and ultimately elates.

The supporting characters are complex and true (you will adore Ben!), completing this heartfelt, quite heartfelt landscape. Bravo!