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Rating: 
Summary: Longer, deeper, thicker... but are they better?
Review: Let me be up front with something: I was forced to read Jane Martin's works as a result of an inane Honors English research project, so don't expect a world-class dramaturg or ace playwright analyzer here. But a review's a review's a review, right?To start off, I enjoy Jane Martin's works immensely. It wasn't agonizing or boring at all to read them. I read through "Jane Martin: Collected Plays 1980-1995" at breakneck speed and enjoyed almost all the works, especially the monologues. Then I ordered 1996-2001 from ... for completeness before writing my research paper. I was not pleased. Martin has certainly expanded her horizons with this; she writes much more in-depth plays, longer plays, and fewer monologues (highly unfortunate). The plays are a little more tongue-in-cheek, a little more abstract, and... a little more painful to read through. These more modern Martin plays (ahhh, alliteration) are certainly good works by any standard, but compared to her older works, I am left a little high and dry. For all their newer, shinier wrappings, stages, and concepts, these plays seem to end up focused more on irrelevant satire or hackneyed public education messages than the razor wit and meaningful perplexity of "Vital Signs" or "Talking With..." Maybe I'm just out of it, but it seems to me like Martin has, with fame and notoriety that means any experiment will be called a success, expanded "her" work into directions that are designed to stimulate the funny bone or the heartstrings a lot more than her original target, the good old brain.
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