At the outset of My Name Is Lucy Barton, Laura Linney enters the stage, pronounces the title statement and continues to talk. A lot. Like so many one-person shows, this one has a fictional character going through all the high and lowlights of their life in vivid detail, describing them and playing all the parts rather than have the playwright actually depict the events.

In this case, Barton is a married woman with two little daughters who winds up in the hospital for an appendectomy that goes wrong. In her reverie, she’s stunned to wake up and see her mother, from whom she’s been estranged, sitting at the foot of the bed. This prompts all kinds of interactions with Mom—whom Linney impersonates as a sometimes petty, grasping caricature, but one who may have meant well—as well as remembrances of Lucy’s relations with an abusive father and a cross-dressing brother, as Lucy recalls moments of having to sleep in a cold garage and being trapped in a truck before running to New York in hopes of being a writer.

Breaking free of her dirt-poor Illinois past is obviously her mission as she verbally works things out for us to the point where I thought we should maybe get paid for being her therapist. (There are even seats onstage for closer proximity to examine Lucy.)

The play—based on a novel by Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge), adapted by Rona Munro and directed by Richard Eyre—also sprinkles in some fairly rote references to AIDS and 9/11, but it is a colorfully written tale of isolation, not to mention an actor’s dream come true. Backed by Bob Crowley’s set of just a bed, a chair, and a window, Linney is literally the whole show, and she barely pauses for breath. There aren’t many reflective moments or surreal flourishes, just Linney prattling on, which she does with timing and presence.

Like Mary-Louise Parker’s character in the recent The Sound Inside, Lucy is a neurotic writer who’s trying to escape some personal damage via literature, connection, and monologues. I was never a fan of the one-person play as an art form because of the extreme contrivances involved, but as a chance to dissect and make peace with the dark side of American family life, Lucy’s story has its merits. But next time, let’s have a play.