Most people, when finding out after surgery that their anesthesiologist had given them Sodium Pentathol prior to their operations because the doctors wanted "to find out something about the patient," and that as a result, they spoke for twelve minutes straight to the surgeons and scrub nurses, possibly revealing embarrassing or incriminating secrets about themselves, would have sued the hell out of the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, and the hospital.

Deb Margolin, however, wrote a play.

O Yes I Will (I Will Remember the Spirit and Texture of This Conversation), currently being staged by Gas & Electric Arts by director Lisa Jo Epstein, is Margolin's largely one-woman show, giving five different versions of what those twelve unrecoverable minutes must have been like. Michelle Horman plays Margolin's unnamed alter ego beautifully, setting up the scene before bringing us with her as she explores the quintet of scenarios, each getting progressively less realistic.

Looking back on the play, I remember each of the stories in bits and pieces, unsure if the story about the baseball is in the same scene as the rant against George Bush, and whether she wanted the doctors to turn away so she could scratch her ass before or after she sang "New York, New York." Ordinarily, I'd say this lack of narrative flow detracts from the overall work, but it's incredibly effective in this piece: how better to understand the loss of twelve minutes' worth of words than to have them pour over you, five* times, rendering you unable to remember everything that was spoken? Even still, we have the advantage of being able to recover, ex post facto, some of what we saw and heard. Margolin, and Horman's version of her, aren't even that lucky.

Joining Horman onstage (albeit usually behind a curtain) is Joseph Ritsch, playing the elderly anesthesiologist and, as a disembodied voice, the surgeon. He doesn't have much to say, but his place in the landscape of the show is as vital as the fluorescent lights and hospital curtains hung by James Clotfelter and Dirk Durossette, the lighting and scenic designers, respectively. Without Ritsch (whose surgeon interjects twice into each of the five scenes) and the set and lights, we would be left with a confusing set of monologues – well-written, but ultimately with low stakes; with them, we have a full, polished piece of theatre. O Yes I Will is, in that way, both a testament to the power of solo performance and a concession to the vitality of theatrical conceit. It's funny, it's powerful, and at under eighty minutes in length, it's short enough for you to go grab dinner after.

Which makes it kind of perfect.

*In fairness, it's only four times, as the last scenario is (almost) completely nonverbal. But telling you any more than that would ruin the fantastic surprise that awaits you with Version Five. But the photo above is a hint.

Michelle Horman and Joseph Ritsch perform in Gas & Electric Arts' production of O Yes I Will (I Will Remember the Spirit and Texture of This Conversation, continuing onstage at The Playground at The Adrienne through March 16. Photo courtesy of Gas & Electric Arts.