Interchange

A story that focuses on life, death, and choice, draws together the lives of five seemingly disparate characters: A hard-driving businessman struggling to raise his grandson. A paroled convict hoping to find redemption. A shy college professor trying to win the approval of his students. A middle-aged office manager pressured to hide her secrets. And a haunted young man hungry for revenge. As their stories unfold in plots both tragic and comic, these desperate souls find themselves intertwined in each other's battles and dreams. "It's a small world, and for the disparate and troubled characters in INTERCHANGE, Ken Jaworowski's engrossing new play ... their universe will be reduced to one degree of separation before the evening is done. In a series of 19 taut and well-constructed scenes, Mr Jaworowski plots the course of five seemingly unrelated lives that are gradually revealed to be closely interconnected and that will be irrevocably altered through circumstance and coincidence. In the poignant opening, a son tells his irascible father while on a fishing trip that his cancer is no longer in remission. The son, a single father of a seven-year-old, pleads with his dad to raise his grandson in kindness rather than anger. Other vignettes introduce a milquetoast economics professor who secretly pines for an English professor colleague; a former Wall Street trader just out of prison and desperate for a job; a middle-management executive under the thumb of her harridan of a boss; and a disturbed young man in a court-ordered counseling program bent on a private vendetta. As their stories unfold, each will face disillusion and disappointment as the thread that will ultimately bind them together becomes discernible. By the end, there will be heartache for some and hope for others. Along the way, each will learn that a little compassion can have resounding repercussions ..." -Willborn Hampton, The New York Times