Marsha Norman is not the ordinary beginning playwright. Most talented neophytes display either a passionate concern about their subjects or an imaginative flair for theater. Getting Out may not be quite the masterpiece that this … lead suggests, but it scores well on both content and form. It is a substantial work and a moving one….

[The] play sounds like a case study, which in one sense it is. In presentation, however, it is much more than that. In the dramatic present, we watch Arlene, docile and uncertain after years of doing what she was told to do, finding and turning to positive use some of the spirit which her earlier self (Arlie) used with such horrifying results. At the same time, often in the same acting space, we see Arlie, strutting, tough, unregenerate and, finally, broken. There are parallel scenes—Arlie's last long speech in solitary, Arlene's hysterical...