Review - Bright Half Life

I've been trying to see as many new plays written by female playwrights as possible lately.  I just feel as if the more support they receive, the more theater companies realize these are plays people want to see.  I've been supporting the Lilly Awards reading series, which has been interesting, and I'm constantly on the lookout for more to see.  When I noticed press about the new production produced by the Womens Project, Tanya Barfield's Bright Half Life, I immediately picked up a discounted ticket.  Last night was my night.

I've only seen one other play by Tanya, Blue Door at Playwrights Horizons about eight or nine years ago.  I remember enjoying the production well enough, but I wasn't sure if the piece should've been a play or a short story.  The ideas were interesting, but it didn't seem theatrical enough to me. I didn't have any such reservations about Bright Half Life last night - this was a PLAY and its inherent theatricality was terrific.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Bright Half Life is a story of a couple, told in a nonlinear style, in scenes both short and long, that illuminate the relationship in interesting ways.  Long story short - they were together for many years and then they broke up.  We see the couple in various stages of their lives, in courtship, in parenthood, in divorce, with flashes of memory that lead to other flashes of memory.  The use of memory to conjure emotion is beautifully realized here.  The use of memory as a distancing thing is also wonderfully done - what if one half of a couple doesn't remember a moment in the same way?  Does that somehow negate the moment?  I was especially taken with scenes that were replayed from a slightly different angle, where you learned more (or did you?) when the perceptions were slightly changed.  The scenes that took place on the ferris wheel the couple rode on their third date were especially wonderfully done.

The couple has love throughout their lives, whether they're still together or not, and seeing the scenes played out in a nonchronological way only emphasizes the permanence of love, even while one character laments that (and I paraphrase) that once you say "I love you," the words aren't big enough to sustain the emotion.  There's also a lot of talk about soulmates, which I enjoyed because I certainly believe in soulmates.  The fact that the couple was made up of two women added another layer of interest for me.  There just aren't that many plays with lesbian couples at the center who are just written as real people, not symbols of anything else.  So I liked that.  I liked their very realistic dialogue which filled in many details with just a few words.   I thought the actresses were fantastic and believably played these women across many years.  They had a lot of charm and connection and made the journey that much more enjoyable.

Unlike Constellations, another non-linear love story produced this season, Bright Half Life doesn't really show the scenes as 'what might happen if we made another choice.'  There is a choice that's made in the play, and we see it from different angles, but the different angles only illuminate how the choice slowly but surely destroyed the relationship.  There really could be no other outcome, given these two people and their personalities.

I really enjoyed Bright Half Life and was sorry that the house was only about half full last night.  Though the audience members who were sitting on the far sides were probably grateful because they got to move to center seats right before curtain.  The audience was very responsive - I could hear gasps throughout when some line or another particularly touched someone.  I really related to the ferris wheel scenes myself.  There's a lot in the play for people to attach themselves to, since this is an ordinary couple living an ordinary life.  How they respond to their own, and their partner's, ordinary lives makes the play more than ordinary.  At least that's what I think.  Go see the show and check it out for yourself.  But hurry, I think it's closing soon...