Hmm... let's see what rhymes with grudging... budging... fudging... prejudging.

"Been there, done that" is as valid and as easy as any other justification for your truancy from every other Profile production this season. For all I know, editorial oversight may have also influenced you to skip the way-too-familiar "Fools" and the over-produced "Jake's Women"

Confession time: I wasn't excited about the playwright selected either, for pretty much the same reasons you articulate, but neither was I SOL: as the lucky SO of a designer, my ticket to 'Biloxi Blues' was comped. I am not burdened by the expectation of attending every show my SO works on, so the most I risked was the loss of a couple of hours of liesure time. If my SO was not involved with the show, and we were surveying the entertainment listings together, I'm confident that 'Biloxi Blues' would not have made the cut. But my SO was excited about this show, and that's the criteria I use to accept or decline the invitation.

I could have skipped it. I'm glad I didn't. I'm not mad that you skipped it, but rather, sad that you did. It was your loss. In a market where the critical question "How high is the bar set?" is accurately answered with "What bar?", you passed on a show that would have easily cleared the bar set in more sophisticated, better supported markets.

Here's what you missed: brilliant, spot-on casting, focused direction, energetic presence from every cast member, unselfish ensemble work, precision design, and clever staging of a play rife with devices dear to Mercury's contributors - vitriolic profanity, bodily function jokes, young men in tank tops and skivvies, hookers, sexuality (hetero- and homo-) - in an exploration of personal and social issues that matter to Mercury's readers: loneliness, individual expression in the face of enforced conformity, injustice... and prejudice.

I like Neil Simon. And I like Alison, too.