Seattle actors are way too modest. Shows as good as Stop Kiss don’t happen every day, so if the audience goes nuts come back out and take another bow! Alyssa Kay and Adrienne Littleton and the rest of the Eclectic crew were just terrific.

I was happy to discover that – contrary to its blurb – this play isn’t really about the horrific act of homophobic cruelty (which mercifully happens offstage) that surfaces early on. It’s really about two women who keep tamping down their own friendship before it has a chance to blossom into something else. The bloodletting we witness is completely internal.

Early on there is a clever bit of auditory misdirection (which is way too good to give away) that instantly cues us to anticipate something trite and predictable. It comes just before a generic police station interview copied from a thousand cop show procedurals. I’m sure I wasn’t the only audience member who wondered which corner of the little Odd Duck theater would be transformed into a judge’s bench and witness box.

The structure of this play is too interesting to allow such an easy, linear path. Instead, it has a doubling path, with the action moving back and forth between two time frames (before and after the assault) so fluidly that we aren’t allowed to stick with our ordinary crime story expectations. In fact, the text absolutely insists that we altogether ignore the unseen assailant as a meaningful character. Diana Son, the playwright, puts us in the bizarre position of judging – with hair trigger reflexes – the clumsy words of two women who seem to be engaged in a slow motion metaphysical crime of their own devising, committed entirely in the empty space between them.

The give and take between the two central characters was finely nuanced and carefully layered throughout. I felt so completely drawn into their private thoughts that I sometimes wanted to step in to give them some helpful advice. Other times I wanted to say, “Excuse me, I should wait outside.” Only live theater can produce that extraordinary feeling.