Language is the star of this play - from the natural-sounding regional dialect, to the humor, to the magical way the dialogue seems to expand the world and the stakes with every line. This play will have you leaning in, desperate to lap up every syllable. Still, it's truly character-driven, with two diametrically opposed leads whose patterns teach us so much about who they are and who they might be. Though it's set in a single location, the "gulf" between these women makes the story feel epic. This playwright trusts the audience; while there are no easy resolutions, it resonates.

The Gulf is a fresh and timely play, ambitious in its setting and characters, whose realism underscores its humanity.

The play begins slow, tense and drawn. About a third of the way through, it picks up pace and hooks you (pun intended), but it never releases. There's no tight resolution. You don't know what's going to happen to the two women in this play. And in reading, as I would imagine by seeing, you pry open the characters just enough to enter their world, then the lid closes and you're left, afloat with memory, no clear direction, and similarly wounded.

The Gulf is an elegant, stripped-down, powerful play. I loved the poetics of the title and setting--"the gulf" as physical and emotional landscape. The characters are engaging, funny, heartbreaking and believable. There's a Southern rhythm and poetry, and undertone of elegy, that infuses the play, and it builds to a tremendous intensity. It also puts poor, gay women on stage in full complex individuality, rather than as identity tokens. Beautiful work that should be seen all over the country (and the world).