When I first saw Marsha Norman's technically accomplished and vigorously acted "Getting Out" …, I left the theater irritated with myself for having, in the end, become irritated by the play. Surely my discontent was unreasonable in the face of all that was admirable here. The author had elected to show us two facets of a girl's personality … by letting [two actresses] share the same stage space, with their paths crossing often enough, and intimately enough, for one to pause to light the other's cigarette. The younger, thrashing willfully about in baseball cap and sneakers, roamed the stage fitfully, now hugging the bedclothes of her childhood home in Kentucky, now tilting a chair and rocking in sassy rhythm as she gave a psychiatrist short shrift, now setting fire to the cell in which she'd landed after the fatal shooting of a gas station attendant.

The older, insisting that she...