Melancholy Play is a poem, and a meditation on what it means to be alive. It embraces all emotions as being valid and valuable - sadness just as much as happiness. With five characters and a cellist, Melancholy Play pokes fun at the absurdities of life. Tilly is melancholy, and therefore mysterious, and the other characters fall in love with her, one by one. But what happens when Tilly becomes happy? It certainly won't make sense. The play is a farce, a slapstick comedy about a type of sadness that doesn't have a cause. In the age of knowledge being power, Ruhl invites us to accept things that don't make logical sense and feel our feelings to the fullest, without shame or self-recrimination.