Magical Realism as Deus ex Machina at Lincoln Center

I've mentioned or  written about "How to Transcend a Happy Marriage," a current play by Sarah Ruhl, in a couple of previous posts, which you can find here and here.  But I want to touch on one more aspect of the piece before moving on.

When Greek playwrights spun out complicated and seemingly unresolvable plots, they would sometimes call upon divine intervention to sort things out. A god would be typically lowered onto the stage  from somewhere above (deus ex machine) and employing super-human powers, bring about a happy ending.

An Imaginative Plot Twist or "Cheating?"

Ok, I used that word "cheating" mainly to get your attention. There is no such thing as cheating in fiction, right? Anything goes. But then again ...

Writers often have trouble with plots. They develop a scenario and then, for one reason or another, can't figure out how to resolve it -- how to bring matters to a conclusion, or in the case of many short stories, to a satisfactory finish since conclusions aren't all that common.