←Recommendations of The Bed Trick

I watched the virtual performance of this from Patchwork Theatre. As a Shakespeare nerd, loved the twist on "Measure for Measure" and the bed trick trope. A clever and dark take on unrequited love and the social value of women's virginity. Biting humor with emotional depth.

This play doesn't mess around or hide from the ugliest bits of human nature. I love the parenthetical towards the end: 'A moment of understanding. Regret. Embarrassment. Longing.' Yes, absolutely. This is amazing writing.

What a spectacular exploration of love, sex, consent, boundaries, and the myriad forms of desire and yearning. It’s brutally forthright and in-your-face, hard hitting yet hysterical, a true rollercoaster of a short play that will stay with you long after you finish reading. Powerful messages, delightful dialogue, and great roles. Brilliant.

What a clever little play this is. The clues for the final reversal (perhaps just a realization?) are sprinkled throughout. "Everyone hurts each other. All the time." On its surface - THE BED TRICK appears to be an exploration of misogyny and power dynamics between sexes. At its heart - Jillian Blevins creates a masterpiece commentary on what we're willing to put up with when we find the object of our desire, and what happens when this desire is unrequited. Love hurts. Impressive work.

Great fun...until it isn't. I appreciated the five 'act' structure of this one act problem play, crisp, unflinching dialogue and perennially relevant subject matter.

Fascinating and powerful. Hypnotic in its rhythms, cleverly constructed, tightly written... this play deconstructs a familiar trope, rewrites and elevates it. It is a hauntingly beautiful work.

Funny. Scary. We all love Shakespeare, but we have to remember that he can hurt. The cannon can be cute but the cannon can be painful. Blevins' play would be great to put up alongside Measure for Measure, or in dialogue with Shakespeare. Many productions of his works re-cast his characters, make it newly relevant, set in a new world. But what do you do when the problem is baked into the subject of the play? This play is short, but it's a lot to think about.

A razor-sharp, delightfully clever, and poignant reflection on a classical trope. I had the pleasure of seeing a reading of The Bed Trick at the 2023 Valdez Theatre Conference, and was rapt with the unapologetic and confident power in Blevins' writing, which takes the audience from comedy to uneasy complicity in a tightly-coiled 30 minutes. A perfectly structured, perfectly executed play that can and should accompany nearly any Shakespeare.

THE BED TRICK lures you into a playfully comedic setup with the use of an old sexual trope. Or does it? What exactly are the stakes, and why do we find them so engaging? When the funny repartee is suddenly not so frivolous, we are quickly entwined - and perhaps complicit - in a heartbreakingly human story.

Unsparing & full throated, this play seamlessly makes ancient tropes new—and gives us a fresh lens with which to view them. We feel we KNOW these crystal clear characters, and in that way the Elizabethan shroud is lifted from The Bed Trick and we can see it for what it really is (and always was). Bravo to Blevins for courageously challenging her audience to question their complicity.