"Chad Austin’s direction has all the dramatic verve of a funeral dirge and is significantly undermined by strange design choices."
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" 'Til Death offers a promising dramatic situation and a couple of stars but fritters away its many opportunities...It's all agony all the time, with Coplan swapping out crises like a three-card-monte dealer with a similar lack of payoff.”
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"The secrets revealed seem more contrived and clichéd and take away from the moving story of Mary’s battle with cancer. Nick behaves badly. Lucy has a drug habit and Jason questions his legitimacy in the family—all turn ‘Til Death into a soap opera, a beautifully acted soap opera, yes, but still a soap. Kaye and Cuccioli provide the emotional heft, particularly in a tender scene when, for a few minutes, the rest of the family isn’t around. Both are expert actors and find all the rich opportunities to give life to Coplan’s words."
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"The 75-minute play is short on length but long on being tiresome in its exploration of one family’s dealings with a matriarch who is dying of cancer."
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"I wish the play lived up to its goal of capturing the essence of grief – the will to live and the powerlessness of the living over the inevitable hand of fate. Alas, '‘Til Death' fails to deliver. For all the talk of death, it is the writing that remains lifeless."
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Til Death is, in a sense, a study of the vast spectrum of how people cope with the imminent death of a loved one and the knowledge that they will have to keep living. Despite being forewarned, these characters are unprepared. Coplan tackled the complex dynamics of going through one's own process surrounded by others, without being at the same point in that emotional journey at the same time. They cope individually because they do not know how to cope together, which is incredibly true to life.
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“With such choppy pacing, slipshod writing and distracting scenic design, ’Til Death can’t even coast on the Broadway talent leading the cast, as Kaye and Cuccioli have not been given vibrant, credible personalities to work with.”
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