A Play or a Reading

Last night I saw "Having Our Say", a play about the Delaney Sisters, two African-American women who lived over 100 years. The play is based on the book of the same name published in 1993. The sisters, who never married, were well educated and worked as professionals, one as a school teacher, the other a dentist. Continuing my spell of being disappointed in supposedly well-written plays, I was disappointed at the Hartford Stage production. The major problem was the difficulty I and my daughter had understanding the woman who played the older sister; I understood perhaps half of what she said. The other problem I had was that it was not really a play. Yes, there was an elaborate set. Yes, they moved around the stage. But, they may as well have simply read excerpts from the book.