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The show was also full of little errors. It's cheating to have your character simply tell the audience necessary information, like the date, as Bowen did in her final tantrum; I doubt Sexton would have called Rimbaud "Rimbawd"; and the meaning of the title is unprovocatively left up to the audience's imagination. But Bowen's fuguelike intervals of the poet's madness showed flashes of a powerful talent. Her best scene had Sexton mentally transformed into a frightened, frantic girl. She talked in a babyish voice to a dream image of her father, who was about to molest her. "He comes in drunk," she chanted, "huffing and puffing -- ANNE! -- He comes in drunk -- " The scene was scary and weird, charged with sexual panic, and Bowen came back to this manic state a few times during the show. Near the end she had Sexton literally climbing the walls -- sobbing, screaming, ravaged with guilt and remorse -- for no better reason than that she'd just turned 44. These scenes had a nice balance of passion and control: an eloquent sense, like Sexton's best poetry, of the natural shape of a feeling.
-- Michael Scott Moore
