"The first time I met Melissa Bangs she pitched me her story for Mamalode: a big, hard story about postpartum psychosis. I told her to tell it true, and she did. You can read it here.
Later I heard she was doing a one-woman stand-up show to share her story live. It was called “Playing Monopoly With God” – a show that was, at turns, sad and hilariously funny. How could a story of postpartum psychosis be funny? Intrigued and slightly nervous I agreed to attend..." read more

"Melissa Bangs is a storyteller, plain and simple, with a powerful story to tell. Her one-woman show, Playing Monopoly with God, is a masterpiece, wonderfully written and performed, although the subject matter is not what you would expect. Delivering her first child at the age of 40, Bangs encountered postpartum psychoses which resulted in a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder and a month-long stay in a local psych ward. Bangs rose above that misadventure and now tells her story in her stunning show, currently running at the Crystal Theatre on the Hip Strip in Missoula..." read more

"Some performances are harder to watch than others. You’d think a one-woman show about postpartum psychosis would be among that group, right up there with movies about Alzheimer’s patients, over-earnest after-school specials and cautionary tales about catastrophic historic events. You’d be well within reason to presume Melissa Bangs’ Playing Monopoly with God & Other True Stories, a first-person account of how a new mother ends up in a psych ward and ripped away from her perfect newborn daughter, fits snugly into the downtrodden category... " read more