←Recommendations of The Temptation of Adam

Fun and thoughtful, this play touches on a great many emotions in a short period of time. Samantha Cocco sets up a plot that could easily expand into a one-act or full-length play. The play's needs and set are reasonable, so I hope theaters and festivals will give it consideration for production, and I think directors could take interesting chances with the presentation of a dynamic plot that literally begs the audience to ask themselves what they would do. Strong work.

A love story that wouldn’t occur except for the unique circumstances in which the characters find themselves. Samantha Cocco does a terrific job of slowly building the relationship between Adam and Marie, making us care about them and wanting to see them together. But things take a turn and Adam is faced with revealing the truth, and possibly losing Marie, or doing the unthinkable. This is one heck of a thriller with everything at stake. I would love to see this staged!

In a brief ten minutes, Cocco taps into the dangerous manner in which toxic male desperation, which couches itself in harmless sad-sackery, often erupts into catastrophic damage and violence. Ostensibly a locked room psycho drama, the piece plays as a metaphor for what horrors any individual man is capable of when they have convinced themselves of their own inferiority, coupled with an innate sense of privilege. It’s a deceptively lithe and simple piece which is in fact taut and nerve-jangling. Recommended!

The tragedy of main character Adam isn't that he is confined to an underground bunker during WW3, but that his life outside the bunker was so empty that he dreads the loneliness and abandonment he'll face if the war ends and his shelter mates are allowed to return to the surface. What could be a depressing slog of a story due to its subject matter is kept light and very entertaining in the capable hands of Samantha Cocco.