Fate's Imagination

The armchair psychologist in me was fairly irritated halfway through this new unruly play, which has some good moments of keen interpersonal observation but too many others where the characters' actions simply don't pass the believability sniff test. Playwright David Randall Cook has a good ear for dialogue and a solid dramatist's sense of how to put a kink in a story, but he piles on too many twists in this play at the expense of credibility, before finally overreaching for political statement. Cook is promising - he's especially good at rendering the hollow rhetorical speeches for the character of the female Presidential candidate (played deliciously by Donna Mitchell) - and the play is lively and moves at a clip, so it's never dull. The play doesn't lack imagination. Discipline, perhaps.