←Recommendations of Wheel of Fortune Reversed

A well conceived, vulnerable play about the great big game of life, well death. Simple, but well done!

The incredible thoughtfulness of this play is matched only by the simplicity of the premise: a man plays Death in a chess match. We've seen so many iterations of this story, but this humorous version feels earnest without being overly sentimental. Michael's conversation with Death ends in a comforting and honest place- what more can we hope for ourselves in our own inevitable conversation with him? As always, Sickles delivers so much emotional power in a 10 minute play. Highly recommend!

WHEEL OF FORTUNE REVERSED is poignant and touching, while being witty and charming, in perfect Scott Sickles style. Taking the iconic trope of a chess match with death, Scott twists it and turns it on its head. This play does that with a lot of the expectations in this play, and leaves readers and audiences with a new but comforting end.

BRAVO!

Sickles’ “fun meditation”—an apt descriptor for this powerful two-hander—begins with a clever twist on the “game of chess with Death” trope. The game appears at first as playful, philosophical banter, but, like the play itself, the heartfelt vulnerability beneath newly-dead Michael’s intellectual exterior gradually reveals itself. Without offering easy answers or cloying platitudes, WOTR’s moving ending left me feeling comforted and hopeful in the face of our unknowable end.

Written to be played by actors of any age, race, gender or ability, Sickles’ characters are at once universal and specific. A perfect 10-minute play.

Scott Sickles has created one of the most benign, accommodating, low-key personifications of death on this or any other plane of existence. What I love even more is the character of Michael: uncertain, wanting to know, afraid but accepting. There's a chemistry between these two that's lovely: heartbreaking, comic, compassionate.

It’s not everyday you read something and question whether it is a tragedy or not. There is certainly a tragedy at work, but ultimately there is a warmth in this piece that leaves you with a hopeful note within a funeral dirge. I am a bonafide Sickles fan, a sicklesfant if you will, and I can say that this play continues my streak of loving his work.

Imagine, if you will, that moment of purgatory imagined by Ingmar Bergman in "The Seventh Seal" with the iconic figure of Death, the chessboard, and all of the meditations of life and death... in the skillful imagination of Scott Sickles. Need I say more? Well, okay... it's terrific fun and deep insight all in ten minutes.