I went to Well last night at ACT.

The SF Chron had the little man jumping up in his seat and clapping, and it was a big hit off-Broadway in New York and was name of the ten best plays of 2004 by the NY Times and other publications. It's also apparently heading for Broadway sometime soon.

It was a good play, funny as heck, but in the end I left vaguely feeling unsatisfied. I kept also looking at my watch, something I almost never do in a play performance. People clapped at the end and a few people stood up, but the audience response was less than what I've seen it for other plays.

Afterwards I kept thinking, you know the play should have worked and I should have walked out feeling like it was a good play. I laughed, I was entertained, but the ending left me flat. There was no big revelation at the end, no "AHA" moment, no lifting of veil to take a peek into the universality of human behaviour, no Aristotelian cathartic moment, just a gentle, gentle let down.

"Caroline or Change" had the same effect of me, only to a lesser degree. The character Caroline's last song was heartbreaking and really, really touching, and as she sang it I knew she was knocking for a few seconds on the door of some great universal truth, but then the truth wasn't sustained and the ending was flat.

Great art takes on a wild emotional ride, and at the end you feel complete, you feel full, and there is no flatness.

And it's not that these two plays weren't good, they were, they just weren't great and great art is such a mysterious thing.