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Confessions of a Dope Dealer

nytheatre.com review by Eric Michael Kochmer
August 15, 2005

Sheldon Norberg used to be a drug dealer. He grew up in a fairly well-cultured environment in Oakland, California, and knew all about the evils of drugs. One day, he is on a boat with his older brother, who informs him that he has been smoking pot for years and years. This terrifies Sheldon down to his very roots, thinking that his older brother whom he respects so much is a pot-smoking hippie. This of course leads to Sheldon smoking pot with his two older brothers, while still having a wide variety of cultural activities for a 13-year-old boy—he’s in school, he’s in plays as an actor, and he has a rock band. Then his parents move away from the city to the middle of nowhere. There isn’t even good weed in Rosedale. This leads Sheldon to dealing drugs…Sheldon Norberg really lived through the life of a drug dealer until about the age of 30, when he went back to school and studied Chinese medicine and meditation. He then wrote a book, Confessions of a Dope Dealer, from which he adapted this solo play. His tale is very realistic, and happily it isn’t a "drugs are bad" play; it's more of a "drugs could be good if we knew more about them and could license them out legally" play. I’m not sure if I agree with a lot of the theories about the legalization of all drugs that Norberg wants to do by the end of the play, but a lot of them make sense and his glowing positive nature makes them convey very easily. I might also add that Norberg is clearly very intelligent—not only did he survive in the illegal drug trade for almost 15 years, but he was never arrested. I have to say that I liked Confessions of a Dope Dealer quite a bit, especially the first 45 minutes (after that I felt it dragged a bit—it was almost too predictable once he got into the points about how his confidence was dropping and his paranoia was increasing). But Norberg has such a compelling nature that his performance more than makes up for a little over-writing.