They all wrote problem plays. Her Argument Against the Sky , a tremulous psychological drama by Seattle playwight Peggy Stafford now playing at Union Garage, gives new meaning, however, to the notion of what constitutes a problem play. Aquiver with angst, the characters hit from one little vexation to the next until some two dozen problems have been touched upon. The setting by S.E. Dunne offers a quick tip-off. Eight clotheslines crisscross the stage.
Laundry is strewn on the floor.
A woman washes a few things in a little pond. All full of portents. The portents are more than fulfilled. Before the evening is over we hear of an overdrawn checking account, moldy financial records, performance anxiety, lost sheet music, lack of appreciation for a birthday cake, hostile chickens, cancer, emphysema, enuresis, alcoholism, starvation, Argentine colts cruelly separated from their mothers, bad weather, a faulty computer printer and a storm in the plumbing. It is this latter problem, a storm in subterranean plumbing, that most concerns Stafford's protagonist, Celia.