Love and Marriage

When a playwright presents a piece about a cancer survivor, the audience expects to be treated to a revealing glimpse of staring-down-death emotions or grueling treatment routines. Cancer is, after all, fairly well-charted dramatic territory and an all-too-common disease. Most people have had firsthand or second-hand experience with the illness, or at least have a strong knowledge of it through the news or made-for-TV movies. There really isn't a need for someone to tell us about how chemotherapy saps your energy and makes you bald, or how beating cancer forever defines you, both positively and negatively. In Reconstruction, author Clifford Lee Johnson III at least presents us with a more intimate format for the same old discussion by focusing on the attempts of breast cancer survivor Ally and her husband, Ford, to sexually reconnect when her cancer goes into remission. Ally is nervous about sharing herself and her body, despite Ford's insistence that he finds her as arousing as ever. One can understand Ally's reticence