Review: UGLY LIES THE BONE at Florida Studio Theater

Set on the Space Coast of Florida, Jess returns home after her third voluntary tour of military service in Afghanistan. Facing her changed life, she opts to create her own world through virtual reality therapy, which helps her heal relationships and her own torn-apart life. In her newly created virtual reality she can escape the pain of the physical and mental wounds that she carries with her from the war.

Lindsay Ferrentino wrote Ugly Lies the Bone in 2015 based on real video game therapy called “Snow World” that is currently being used to treat burn survivors. The play went on to become a New York Times Critic Pick and played a sold-out extended run off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theater Company in the Underground.

Not to be missed is Florida Studio Theater’s rendition, shown in their Browne’s Lab Theater. This small setting allows the audience to be intimately close to the presentation. Exposing the subject matter of PTSD, chronic pain, and trauma is not light-hearted, but matters that greatly affect our military personnel. This show brings those topics to the forefront and makes the audience sensitive to the reality of living through these distressing emotions, and what is real for survivors of war and trauma. While some people do not come back from war at all, what is left of the people that do? And how are they to face life after they have gone through such drastic traumas? All Jess wants is for people to look at her and accept her as she is now, after that war, even as she is having a hard time with that herself.

Rachel Moulton renders the main character of Jess, who is in colossal physical as well as mental anguish. We could feel the tremors through her physical as well as her verbal modulation. Moulton embodies this character and her agony completely and  her crafting of this role is absolutely superb!

Ugly Lies the Bone, through February 9th and tickets are still available.