Mercy Killers, the award winning one act play featuring Broadway and television actor Michael Milligan, is coming to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
The play will be performed by Milligan on Friday March 28 at 7 pm at the Ice House. Admission is free and open to the public. A moderated discussion with the actor will follow the performance.
The one-hour drama centers on the life of auto mechanic Joe who has just been hauled into the police station where he is being questioned about the death of his wife, Jane.
Joe loves Jane, apple pie, Rush Limbaugh, and the 4th of July.
Joe is blue-collar, made in the USA and proud, but when his uninsured wife is diagnosed with cancer, his patriotic feelings and passion for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are turned upside down.
In Mercy Killers, Joe struggles with the American experience of losing your health in the land of plenty.
In emotional statements to the police officer, Joe reveals his love for his wife, their affection for the wild places of West Virginia, the anguish of her illness, and their inability to afford treatment.
Joe’s beliefs in self-reliance and the American dream are shaken.
“Over 60% of all bankruptcies in the U.S. are the result of medical debt — and in a majority of these, the person actually had insurance” says Milligan. “I wrote ‘Mercy Killers’ to put a human face on those statistics.”
“Joe is a libertarian auto mechanic,” Milligan says. “He is confronted by the contradictions in his worldview by his experience. He believes in personal responsibility, has a strong creed of self reliance, but still finds himself in this situation through no fault of his own.”
Milligan says the play “appeals to people’s sense of morality and humanity.”
“It has been my experience that people of different political persuasions are affected and moved by the play. They draw their own conclusions.”
Milligan is touring the play around the United States and he’s even taken it overseas — last year to Scotland.
“There’s a marvellous and mysterious kind of alchemy at work in author and actor Michael Milligan’s mesmerising, harrowing indictment of US healthcare,” Sue Wilson of The Scotsman wrote. “Not only is it theatre distilled to its most basic essentials – one ordinary individual telling his story, as if to an invisible interrogator, his only props a table and chair – but it’s unambiguously specific in its objectives: to attack a system responsible for more than 60 per cent of US personal bankruptcies, within which most of those driven to this last resort had health insurance when their medical problems began.”