"My generation can't change the world," says a character in Sarah Schulman's Manic Flight Reaction. "We can only change the channel." The playwright has crafted a dynamic, intelligent, witty, and often savagely funny satire on our contemporary culture and moral values.

Marge (Deirdre O'Connell) is a fiftyish university professor living in relative obscurity in Illinois; she is best known for having produced a volume about an equally obscure disciple of Freud's who put forth a theory called manic flight reaction. This method of avoiding one's problems is emotionally damaging, and Marge believes it's better to face life's difficulties head on -- but that philosophy is tested when a pair of[...]