Constance Cummings, one of the great ac-

tresses of the English-speaking stage, who

played the leading role in the world premiere of

Wings at the Yale Repertory Theater in March

1978, commented in an interview: "It is not a

conventional play. It has its own conventions ..

It s a play of great imagination that takes flight

beyond the prosaic everyday world. It has a

poetic quality: yet none of it is written in poetry.

Richard Eder, in The New York Times, called

Wings "an intensely moving vision, one of un-

canny perception; a voyage of illumination ..."

Wings takes us into the strange, terrifying, shat-

tered world of a woman who, we realize as the

play unfolds and the pieces of the beautifully

constructed mosaic begin to fall into place, has

suffered a stroke. For the woman, time, place,

language, speech, and thought have lost their

meaning, and as we plunge into her confused

mind we are engaged with her in trying to come

to terms with terror and to re-create order and

rediscover reality. The hospital, the doctors, the

nurses, and the other patients emerge and come

into focus as the woman struggles to reinvent

her self and recover her past. We share with her

the desperate need to comprehend, to find

words, to make sense out of her splintered

world.

Wings is an emotionally powerful experience. It

is a magnificent adventure into the mind and a

revelation of the strength and mystery of the

human spirit.