"THE GUYS": The Goodman Threater arranged for a week of free productions of "The Guys," Anne Nelson's 9/11 two person play about a firehouse captain and a writer fashioning eulogies. I was fortunate enough to snag tickets, and went to see it last night.

Was it a great play? No. The structure is repetitive, and there are moments when you can feel the stitchwork of the playwright. However, it effectively captured the raw wound that the attacks created. At one point a character is told, “We’ll be normal again. But it won’t be the same kind of normal. This will be the new normal.” A year later, we're at the new normal, but the play was written during a time when normal seemed too distant to contemplate. Sitting in the audience, I found myself flashing back to how I felt in the first few months after the attacks. As a tool to resurrect that swirl of anger, resentment, sadness, fear, dread, and confusion, the play works better than any TV retrospective.