Photo by Jim Sabitus feat. Mei MacQuarrie and Matthew Beagan.

Presented by the Umbrella Stage Company 
Written by Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Michelle M. Aguillon
Featuring: Mei MacQuarrie, Matthew Beagan

Approximate run-time: 90 minutes, no intermission
October 11 – November 22, 2026
Umbrella Arts
40 Stow St.
Concord, MA 01742

Critique by Diana Lu

TL; DR: What. The. Fuck. Lauren Gunderson?

CONCORD, Mass. – I’m going to spoil the plot and ruin this play for you. But first, let’s give some shoutouts to the team.

Both actors in this chamber play were charming and believable as teenagers. Matthew Beagan (Anthony)’s earnestness combined with Mei MacQuarrie (Caroline)’s mordant delivery and comedic timing carried the show. My favorite scene was when they shared their dreams of visiting New York as John Coltrane played in the background (sound design by Chris Brousseau). Costumes (Kelly Baker) and scenic design (Justin Lahue) created a convincing aesthetic of two teens in a teenage girl’s bedroom in the early 2010s. Blocking (Michelle Aguillon) and intimacy direction (Anna Silva) were generally clean and smooth. I’m also impressed that Umbrella Arts hires EDI consultants (Ariel Welch for I and You) for all the productions I’ve seen so far.

And now for the spoilers, aka ruining your day.

Our story begins with Anthony (Beagan) barging into Caroline (MacQuarrie)’s bedroom unannounced as she’s in the very private, very embarrassing middle of off-key wailing “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus. Though they go to the same high school, Caroline has never met Anthony before. They have a parasocial relationship because everyone at school knows of Caroline as “the sick girl who might die soon.” And because he knows of her, Anthony thinks he can just waltz into her personal space and get her to finish his homework. It’s about a poem about life and death, which she should know lots about, so obvs…

She’s freaked out. She tells him to leave. She says she doesn’t want to be some rando’s poster child. He refuses to take no for an answer. And then she just lets him stay. And then she does his homework. AND THEN SHE KISSES HIM? What. In the actual. Fuck.

This play is famous for its twist ending. It’s revealed in the final few minutes that Anthony and Caroline were never in her bedroom. They’re inside Caroline’s mind as she’s unconscious on an operating table—-receiving Anthony’s donated liver after he suddenly died during a basketball game. The twist is supposed to be redemptive, celebrating human connection. It’s supposed to transform the relatively mundane bedroom meet-cute into something miraculous and profound. I think it actually just intensifies the aforementioned issues with consent and boundaries. Now, it’s not just Anthony invading Caroline’s physical space. His ghost is astral infringing upon her psyche?! I’m sorry, but in the words of 2014 Tumblr, THIS IS A MESS.

Just what level of entitlement is this? My guy. You checked the organ donor box on your license application. That’s you relinquishing control of your body after death. You don’t get to decide if “it’s going to work” with the recipient of your donation. You don’t get to make yourself known to your recipient unless she comes looking for that information, like an adoptee or the child of a sperm donor.

I want to ask Ms. Gunderson, girl what? I know you didn’t mean to do this on purpose. But how am I supposed to contemplate the tender fleeting profundity of life and love when the connection between your characters requires one to relinquish her autonomy? In the era the play was written, there was Steubenville and Chanel Miller/Brock Turner at Stanford. Today it’s Cornell and LSU. Is this the dynamic we want to keep normalizing? To perpetuate for the next generation of women, especially women of color?

Casting an Asian woman in the role of Caroline is especially problematic. No matter how sassy Caroline’s words, her actions are those of submission and docility. The entire time, she states boundaries but doesn’t enforce them. She relents and relents and relents. Casting a white man next to a woman of color also creates the uncomfortable dimension of white saviorism. No matter how genuinely Beagan plays him, the role is such that Anthony saves Caroline’s life, and his sacrifice becomes the basis for an implied lifelong emotional obligation that Caroline never actually consented to. 

Yet this also invites the opportunity for examining an interesting counterfactual: imagine if Caroline and Anthony were gender- and race-swapped. 

Antonia, the 4’11” Asian girl who’s the next Round Mound of Rebound enters the private space of Carl, the sick and cranky white boy.

Carl repeatedly tells Antonia to leave.

She persists.

She wins him over socially, sexually, on Walt Whitman.

He does all their homework and calls it falling in love.

Her death—her lost potential—is revealed to have been crucial for his second chance.

It’s heavily implied that white boy now owes Asian girl’s ghost his attention, affection, and emotional connection for the rest of his borrowed time on earth.

Did that bring up very different assumptions for you? Did it make you uncomfortable? 

Good.

Oh, and by the way, my shifting use of the pronoun “you” throughout this review is intentional. It mirrors the shifting meaning of “you” in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, which is the symbolic foundation of I and You. I know what I did.

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