Two intelligent people who accompanied me to see Arthur Kopit's Wings … found it boring. I on the other hand was fascinated.

The reason for this discrepancy of reaction—apart from the fact that such contradictions are always to be expected—is that the play is in a sense a monodrama, and it is always a "tricky" matter to maintain interest in a play almost wholly centered on a single individual. But the more crucial hazard in the project is that it undertakes a visualization of a cerebral stroke, its symptoms, its treatment and the possibilities of its healing….

If Wings is viewed simply as a sort of medical documentary, it may be considered informative but it cannot be genuinely evocative or moving in an artistic sense….

But Kopit's play is more than a description of a diseased condition. It is a metaphor, indeed a multi-metaphor. The patient and central figure is a middle-aged woman of some cultivation and sensibility who had been in her youth an amateur aviatrix. While we watch her tormented effort to emerge from her breakdown, we are made aware of the puzzle and miracle of the human soul which science can detail but not explain. That is what Wings accomplishes and what gives it its special value….

[We hear that Emily Stilson], one stormy night, apparently lost because of a defect in her plane, stepped out with unaccountable bravery and stood upright on its wings. She did it for no "reason"—and survived. Her recognition of the madness of the action brought on a kind of euphoria—"wings!" It inspired a surge of spiritual elation. What Kopit implies or suggests is that living itself is something willynilly for which we must give thanks. It is a nonrational affirmation of the joy in existence. There is little that is "mystic" in this: whether we realize it or not, it constitutes the very essence of our common experience.