Sight Unseen and Other Plays

Margulies's plays explore individuals' needs to be part of a group, usually a family, a religion, or both. Sometimes these are bitingly funny, as in the parodical Loman Family Picnic, about a young man who escapes his unhappy family life by imagining a musical of Death of a Salesman. Sometimes the plays are surreal, as in the Twilight Zonish What's Wrong With This Picture? about a dead wife and mother who is resurrected by her family's intense need--and then must convince them to let her rest in peace. The best in this collection is the title play. An artist finds himself in a crisis of identity when a German TV interviewer starts probing him about the supposed "Jewish" elements in his work. This volume, which also includes Found a Peanut and The Model Apartment, covers the upward curve of Margulies's career from the journeyman stage through off-Broadway successes to his first Broadway play.