Now Then Again

"Few new plays require a basic understanding of quantum mechanics - the physics theories of matter and energy - for full appreciation. And when young playwrights are thinking of settings for their plays, they don't normally alight on such less-than-sexy locations as the Fermilab National Particle Accelerator Laboratory in west suburban Batavia. But if originality and intelligence are the most important qualities in attracting audiences to hear new work, Chicago scribe Penny Penniston deserves enormous success with her smart, funny and thoroughly captivating NOW THEN AGAIN ... Penniston has tried to use some of the issues found in and around quantum mechanics (which involves great complexities of chronology and relativity) and apply them to a triangular love relationship ... To describe how all this plays out would ruin the considerable pleasures of the show. Suffice to note that present and past prove to be relative concepts. Penniston's ideas are emotionally warm and intellectually stimulating." -Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune "One thing I particularly like is the spate of unusual new characters that science brings to the stage ... In PROOF and NOW THEN AGAIN, the main characters, all in their twenties, find the pursuit of difficult knowledge no less enlivening and nervous-making than things like their careers, their families, their social graces, their hormones and their heartaches. I can't recall seeing similar types on the stage before ... illuminating an obviously extant kind of life experience I'd never before considered but was delighted to discover." -Bruce Weber, The New York Times "The great thing about all this is that Penniston makes the physics so utterly transparent that you can ride on the love story and even feel like a minor genius, too. She makes physics fun ..." -Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times