←Recommendations of Drinking Shiraz With Strangers

I like this short dramatic play. What I like most is Emily McClain's empathy for both characters and their perspectives. Ellis and Solaire both make valid points about modern life, ambition, reaching beyond means, and office politics. McClain is clear-eyed and allows these characters to go back and forth, arguing but understanding one another. It's really nice character work in a play that I really like.

When you climb the corporate ladder, like it or not, you drag your significant other along for the ride. Emily McClain's incisive and thoughtful short play examines the cost of playing office politics, and the effect it can have on personal relationships. Is it worth becoming partner if it means you give up who you are? The stakes are high and the characters are both sympathetic as they search for the right bottle to solve their problems.
Bravo!

The amount of money one is willing to spend on wine is probably about as psychologically telling as one's favorite episode of "Black Mirror" (Fifteen Million Merits, ftw). McClain takes a sledgehammer to the old "I know my partner, right? I haven't wasted my life, have I?" scenario, giving us a delightful rumination on class, ambitions in relationships, and everything in between. Perfect for any short festival, whether it's geared for the holidays or not. Also...some wine labels are really pretty, and that's all I have to say about that.

Is it shuh-RAZZ or shuh-RAAAHHHZ???

That is the least of this couple’s problems as priorities go to war with pragmatism while shopping for host gift wine that might not make but could certainly break a career (and the bank!)!

McClain paints a delightfully accurate portrait of young marrieds struggling to get to the top of the bottom, debating if it’s worth it to do it this way. A spirited disagreement between fun characters who love each other enough to say rude things to each other in public! You know these people or you are these people!