Rousuck's Review: ----Rapture, Blister, Burn---- at Md Ensemble Theatre

It's Thursday, and that means we welcome to the studio Midday's far-ranging theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, back from our western frontier and an evening at Frederick's Maryland Ensemble Theater, which is currently staging a new production of playwright Gina Gionfriddo's feminist comedy, Rapture, Blister, Burn -- a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.MET's program describes it as ----an intensely smart, immensely funny play that asks the question, 'What makes us happy in life?' After graduate school, Catherine and Gwen chose polar opposite paths. Catherine built a career as a rock star academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later each woman covets the other’s life, commencing a dangerous game of musical chairs.----Playwright Gionfriddo, in her program notes for Playwrights Horizons' 2012 world premiere of Rapture, Blister, Burn in New York, wrote, ----I don't want to say too much about what happens in this play, but age and generation loom large. My play, Becky Shaw, feels to me a play about years 30-35; it's still possible to launch a career or start a family, but you need to hurry up. Rapture, Blister, Burn feels like a play about years 40-45. Big, unfulfilled dreams are still possible, but they're statistically less likely. If you're going to take a big leap and remake yourself, you have to do it now.----The production at MET is directed by Suzanne Beale, and the cast includes Gen\u233\u Fouch\u233\u, Carol Randolph, Madeline Reinhold, Laura Stark, and Ron Ward.Rapture, Blister, Burn continues at Maryland Ensemble Theatre in Frederick through April 29.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.