“A lot of what drives the latest wave of shock theater is a desire to be hip and current and cool, and to compete with the dominant media of our time: movies and television. Playwrights seize the tools of these essentially visual media – graphic imagery, turbo-powered plotting, and a heightened version of reality that can feel more involving than reality itself – and apply them to a medium that is quintessentially not visual but verbal. It’s a mistake on two levels.”