Looking back

Hello again!  I'm in the midst of frantically trying to finish a million things before I head to Portland, OR tomorrow for work.  I'm looking forward to the trip, but I never look forward to the pre-trip.  There's always too much to do.  I've been laying a little low on the theater front, though I have seen a couple of new play readings.  I never like to chat about readings, though.  Those rooms need to stay safe spaces.

I hope to have a good long post about Portland for you next week - I'm spending my birthday there, so I'm taking myself out to a recommended restaurant and I will be taking part in many activities.  Your fingers should be crossed that it all comes out as it should.  Since I'll be away until next week, I decided to share an old review that I dashed off before the blog was a 'thing.'  Since Donald Margulies has a new show coming up this season, this seemed a fine time to share (plus just look at the date!).  See you soon!

3/26/2010:  I went with a lovely gal pal to see Donald Margulies’ new play, Time Stands Still, at Manhattan Theater Club’s Broadway space last night.  With such wonderful company, how could the evening be anything BUT a success?!  But I give this show a big thumbs up.

The play is smart, funny, sad, and about people who are so real to me.  Laura Linney plays a war zone photographer who has been injured in Iraq—the play opens with her coming back to her apartment in Brooklyn with her longtime companion, played by Brian D’Arcy James.  They are very tentative with each other at first, but as the play unfolds, so much that they’ve been hiding comes to the surface.  How Linney adjusts (or doesn’t adjust) to being back is a big part of the plot.  Eric Bogosian and Alicia Silverstone play the other characters (Bogosian plays Linney’s former lover and current photo editor, and Silverstone is his new girlfriend).

All four of these characters are so interesting—they’re flawed and selfish and smart, yet dumb…just like in real life.  They want things (sometimes the wrong things, but that doesn’t stop anyone) and they understand the consequences of their wants.  Well, they understand the consequences most of the time.  Nothing is easy in this play and I loved that.  There are no easy answers and no simple questions.  There isn’t a happy ending and that’s ok.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

All four actors are terrific.  I was really most taken with Alicia Silverstone, though.  Maybe because she surprised me more.  I’ve enjoyed her well enough in movies, but I thought she was really great in this role.  It’s a difficult role, as someone who is, on the surface, the complete antithesis of everyone else in the room.  But she’s not.  She just wants different things.  But she wants them just as fiercely.  And she wants them with such a sunny optimistic disposition that she seems foreign to the other more jaded characters.  Bogosian describes her character as ‘guileless.’  And she is.  And that is hard to play - she pulls it off wonderfully.  Brian D’Arcy James just broke my heart; he’s so guilt-ridden and almost helpless, but when his long-sublimated anger comes out, it was scary and terribly sad.  You can tell he is proud of Linney’s celebrity, but he is also resentful that he isn’t as successful.  Subtle digs here and there are very effective.  Linney is wonderful, as always, and Bogosian is great, too.  They all work terrifically well together and have created an intimacy that is very exciting to watch.

The whole script is really effective.  There was one section between Linney’s character as a rather hard-bitten photographer and Silverstone’s more naïve viewpoint about the responsibility of the photographer (or filmmaker or reporter) to save the subjects they’re observing that I thought was strikingly good.

I was talking with my boss about the show this morning; he was a little less enthusiastic about it, and he thought maybe I was having ‘post-Humana-syndrome.’  That perhaps seeing a good play about something was such a welcome thing, I gave it a less critical eye than I might have ordinarily.  I disagree.  I think I would’ve liked it regardless.  Of course, I am always predisposed to enjoy Donald’s plays.  I just really appreciate the way he writes about the role of the artist in society, and also how he writes relationships between mature adults.  I can’t wait to see the revival of Collected Stories coming up with Linda Lavin.  


So…thumbs up from me.  I wish I had seen it sooner in the run so I could see it again.  That’ll teach me.  Next week:  The Scottsboro Boys, by Kander & Ebb, at the Vineyard.  REALLY looking forward to it.  Have a great weekend, everybody!!!