The Other Way Around

40+ Stage Company presents its first online presentation with the live streaming broadcast of “The Other Way Around,” a play in one-act by local playwright Nathan Ross Freeman. Following the performance, audience members are invited to participate in a discussion of the play with the cast and Playwright Freeman.

Most marriages surviving to days within a couples’ 30^th wedding anniversary can be expected to endure, as the vows would have it, “Till death do us part.” Going through the motions day after day, however, is not for Simone and Edmund.

This spirited, creative, and inspiring couple have managed through three decades to keep their relationship fresh, fun, and yes, challenging. Edmund complains at one point, “. . . tiptoeing through the house not knowing whether to carry a bat or a rose.” For her part, Simone says of Edmund, “The dearest man God has made.”

Playwright Freeman has created two. mercurial, thoroughly believable characters. Edmund, a college professor, is also a graffiti artist; Simone, a poet who creates her own words when constrained by the limits of language. “. . .how absurd it is that a love like ours, the Shangri-La love such as ours that one of us has to bury the other,” Simone says at one point revealing the heart of this poignant, moving drama.

“The Other Way Around” is often funny, unabashedly honest story about two very memorable people and the lessons in love and live their lives hold for all of us.