Neil LaBute’s All the Ways to Say I Love You is not an especially good play, in fact it can be rather trite at times, its central “issue” is so dated, that one wonders if having it be an issue at all is part of one of the playwright’s perverse jokes, or a sign that he’s no longer in sync with the times. Essentially it’s a confessional, in which a middle aged teacher, who only goes by the name Mrs. Johnson, goes into detail about the consequences of her affair with one of her students. As her guilt eats her alive, she tells the audience (are we her accusers or her jury?) about how she found she had regained her passion in the arms of her teenage student, but how much this relationship came to cost her.

If the actress playing Mrs. Johnson was anyone other than Judith Light, then the show would be insufferable and interminable, a misogynistic soap opera, in which a woman asks society to forgive her for seeking sexual fulfillment, within a culture in which pleasure is often frowned upon if it seems immoral (and what pleasure doesn’t seem immoral?). But because it’s Judith Light on that stage, the play feels almost majestic, a torrent of emotion washing all over the audience like waves coming from the depths of Light’s ocean.

If the fact that Light memorized LaBute’s often dry, emotionless text wasn't admirable on its own, watching how she infuses the material with such spirit, makes her look like a Greek priestess revealing someone their fate. Light travels from feeling to feeling seamlessly, and commands tears that vanish as we see Mrs. Johnson think of fonder memories. Watching All the Ways to Say I Love You, one can’t help but feel grateful for being alive at the time when Judith Light is onstage. She’s truly at the peak of her powers, and the title of the show should instead refer to how devoted we should all be to her work.