Carl, a man in his early thirties. Themes Lonely Planet, despite its quips and comedy is ultimately a play about mourning and being forgotten: Jody struggles to cope with how much physical space Carl's mourning takes up and Carl struggles with how much space his mourning take up in his mind. He finds it impossible to do anything but mourn, when so many people he knows are dying, he has to pay attention. Jody's mourning is just as present but less visible, but over the course of the work we see that it is paralyzing him. He cannot leave his shop without being confronted by the death of his community and so he makes the only choice he feels he can: he doesn't leave. There are also multiple discussions in the work of what happens when society abandons the dead and refuses to see them. Performances Lonely Planet premiered at Northlight Theatre (with Russell Vandenbroucke as Artistic Director) in Evanston, Illionios in January 1993. Jody and Carl were played by William Brown and Phil Ridarelli, respectively. The play was also performed later that year in July by A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Washington, in February 1994 by The Barrow Group in New York City and the following year in June 1995 by Circle Repertory Company. Most recently it has been revived as an off-Broadway production by Keen Company, closing in November 2017. In this iteration of the work, Arnie Burton and Matt McGrath played Jody and Carl, respectively. Critical Reception The most recent revival of the play by New York City's Keen Company was positively reviewed by several newspapers. Reviewers praised Burton and McGrath's performances, saying they brought life and humour to the piece and carried the nuance and weight of the play well, results in an emotional touch that "sneaks up on you to devastating effect.""But Mr. Dietz has something besides humor in mind (even if there is plenty of it) and that something — the weight of grief, the paralyzing fear of illness — emerges over the course of the show, like a photograph coming into focus in a dark room.""Lonely Planet debuted in 1994, at the height of the AIDS crisis; its depiction of the plague years still hits hard. And it's hard to imagine a better cast than the stars of this revival, directed by Jonathan Silverstein for Keen Company. As the two characters spar with