The 5th of July by Lanford Wilson

I just listened to The 5th of July, Mr. Wilson's play on a book on tape. ( I have been doing a lot of this to curb the road rage in the car.) Sarah Hagan plays Shirley Talley and her voice is so full of youth, outrageous conviction, and the cries of being misunderstood and less than adored.
But honestly, it was difficult to listen to. I think most of the strain was from the actors' performances. But it's true that often plays are much better when heard aloud, rather than read from the page.
I can't wholly fault the actors though- something in the writing wasn't right. There was a lot of overlapped talking. And I can visualize it on the page of the script: two columns, side by side, with each characters rant or excited proclamations, sharing the same amount of stage time. And this technique can be very powerful or simply turn the audience off. It turned me off. It felt like the characters weren't listening to each other, but just wanted to be heard.
And something else about the performance irked me. The characters, in the way they were written, didn't give a shit about themselves or how their words came out. A lot of the time they used hurtful or miscalculated language, and often very spontaneous outbursts, with a lot of backtracking the divulged information. It kept happening. And perhaps these people were really like this. But I wished for some sort of transformation to occur; I wanted these people to gain awareness and consideration for each other.