The play was written at a time when the story would hit home for a lot of middle-aged, middle-class men.
Reuben then receives a call almost immediately after he hangs up with Sarah from Peter telling him he needs to come to the office.
When Reuben arrives he is confronted by Peter and two other colleagues, Frank and Janice, and is informed that he is going to be removed from the firm.
They proceed to tell him that he was the reason they lost the Korean deal and that they knew he had stolen money from the company.
They talk about how Paul had begged Sarah to stay, which she did and then nine years later he told her that he was not happy anymore and was leaving for Vancouver to make movies.
Phil continues and tries to tell Reuben that he should not try to find the connections between events and that attempting to pinpoint the starting point would only drive him insane.
“A butterfly leaves a tree somewhere, and it stirs the air, which effects the wind, which causes turbulence, which brings down a passenger jet” (Sherman 73).
Sarah goes with him on this journey to find out where everything started going wrong, and during the process confesses that she would have run away with him if he had called.
Sarah comes to the conclusion that the time they kissed at the party ten years ago started everything.
He tells Liz that he has started dating Sarah, the girl from the past and that even though he fell in love with her ten years ago he cannot stop thinking of someone else.
Reuben asks her to play the song; she starts but can't finish and bangs her hand on the piano.
Phil shows up back from his run completely out of breath, gasping, and asking for water.
Sarah and Phil are looking at photos of the new house while Reuben sits to the side drinking and thinking about Donna.
Reuben goes back to the pinpoint of when everything started going wrong in his life and he has come up with a new theory, his birth.
However, in "Patience," Jason Sherman takes viewers and readers to a non-linear route using flashbacks of the past, mainly a party ten years ago, which help give insight to the play's direction.
The flashbacks help viewers understand the characters' thought processes and give answers to questions one might have about their lives.
Point of Attack or Major Dramatic Question- Reuben does lose everything, he gets fired, his wife leaves him, and his brother dies.
Reuben has many talks with his brother Phil, Sarah, Liz, and a Rabbi about finding the point that started all of this.
Edmond's path to redemption is a much more violent and physical one as he deals with his feeling on race and homosexuality.
Reuben may be seen as the average middle class man and therefore his story can really hit home to a lot of people.
The characters do not go to unrealistic places; they remain in the actual real world except for Reuben's encounter with Paul.
It ends with Reuben finally coming to grips with the fact that he is at fault for all the bad events in his life.
This is true for Patience as there are flashbacks but at very strategic points that give the audience insight into why things have just happened as they did.
A quote from A Student's Guide to Play Analysis demonstrates how much the theatre of absurd is involved: “The purpose of writing, therefore, is simply to express their despair and perhaps to share it with others; to find in a sense, comfort in knowing that they are not alone in realizing that they are in fact, completely alone” (Rush 232).
Sherman gives the audience many thought-provoking monologues where characters explain their ideas on whether individuals control their destiny or that their actions have no barring on outcomes.
The long monologues try to give rhyme or reason to what has caused these tragic events in Reuben's life.
In the playwright's notes Jason Sherman states “this play can and ought to be staged with elegance and simplicity.
It is a song about living in and taking advantage of the present, centering on the lyrics "For tomorrow may never come".
“Of his approach to his work, he told CBC (November 2, 1999), 'A great quote Charles Ludlum has is: 'If you are going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh.'
You want to feel like you are going to recognize something of yourself in what's going on stage otherwise, you feel left out.’"(Karch, Pierre) Works • A Place Like Pamela (1991) • To Cry is Not So (1991) • The League of Nathans (1992) • What the Russians Say (1993) • Field (1993) • The Merchant of Showboat (1993) • Three in the Back, Two in the Head (1994) • Reading Hebron (1995) • The Retreat (1996) • None is Too Many (1997) • Patience (1998) • It's All True (1999) An Acre of Time (1999/2000) • Afghanada (2006)