Two plays at Valley theaters, both running through Saturday, share a common source – the ongoing Middle East catastrophe – and a similar circumstance: two Americans caught up in it, one unwillingly, the other almost compulsively. Both plays are receiving strong productions with excellent professional casts, making the most of smart, literate scripts that make the most of distressing situations.
Sarah Goodwin, the central figure in Time Stands Still at New Century Theatre, has come home from Iraq with her leg shattered and her face disfigured, the result of a roadside bomb that killed her “fixer,” her local interpreter and close companion. She’s a photojournalist who’s drawn to war zones, as much for the adrenaline rush of danger as the desire to document them, “gathering evidence to show the world.”
Michael Wells, in Two Rooms at Silverthorne Theater Company, went to the Middle East to teach, but has been kidnapped by one of the shadowy factions fighting over power and dogma. He’s now a prisoner, blindfolded and shackled in a windowless room in a hidden location.
Each of these four-character plays revolves around one couple and another pair who serve as foils to the others and as tests of their respective impulses and ideals. Both directors – Nicole Ricciardi for Time Stands Still and Rebecca Daniels for Two Rooms – give sensitive attention to the material and their casts, moving the action briskly while making room for emotional depth and occasional levity.
The two rooms in Lee Blessing’s 1990 play (the date itself is a mark of the tenacity of the Levantine upheaval) are Michael’s cell, furnished only with a woven mat, and his home office in suburban Washington, D.C. His wife, Lainie,
has completely emptied that room and shuttered the windows, wanting to feel closer to him and share in his experience.
The two bare rooms share the same stage space. In alternating scenes, the sundered couple speak to each other in imaginary letters, until their will and longing bring them together in piercingly poignant fantasies of shared captivity. Charles Holt’s Michael is matter-of-fact, neither fearful nor hopeful but almost bemused by his predicament, while Emily Bloch’s Lainie is edgy and volatile, careening between fear and anger, blame and sorrow.
Lainie is torn between solitary anxious waiting and impulsive risky action. The delicate maneuverings and political calculations involved in hostage situations are represented by two strategic adversaries: Ellen van Oss, the State Department officer who cautions her to keep silent and “maintain cautious optimism,” and Walker Harris, the reporter who urges her to go public in order to get attention for Michael’s situation and force the government to take action. Sheila Siragusa and Jay Sefton are convincing opposites – she restrained and soft-spoken but with her own impatience bubbling under her professional façade, he forceful and persistent, eager to pull Lainie into the spotlight and out of her self-imposed shackles.
Donald Ma
rgulies’ 2010 drama Time Stands Still takes place in the one-room converted loft that’s the Stateside home of Sarah and her longtime partner Jamie. (Daniel D. Rist’s efficient exposed-brick set looks out over industrial Brooklyn rooftops.) Kim Stauffer’s Sarah is tetchy and restless – we feel her sense of being caged by her debilitating injuries and forced withdrawal from the thrilling tumult of the battle zone – while Nathan Kaufman, as Jamie, plays a steady counterpoint that, for a while, masks his own needs.
To Jamie’s horror, Sarah is considering going back as soon as she’s mended, while he has had enough and only wants to settle down to a “comfortable” life that includes finally getting married and even having a child. Which is just what has finally happened to their old friend Richard, who arrives with a new girlfriend, 20-something Mandy, a blonde beauty and intellectual “lightweight,” as Sarah unkindly but accurately terms her. Richard is smitten, ecstatic and more than twice her age, but they’re apparently made for each other and headed for marriage and parenthood. Alana Young’s grounded performance keeps Mandy from being an airhead, and Sam Rush’s light touch keeps Richard from being creepy.
The title of Time Stands Still refers, as Sarah explains, to life as seen through the camera’s viewfinder – a frozen moment that hopefully captures the essence of the swirling action that surrounds it. For Sarah, her enforced convalescence is itself a freeze-frame, detached from real life. Time stands still for Michael and Lainie, too, in their two rooms, worlds apart but connected by a mutual yearning for the time when their lives can begin again.
Time Stands Still photos by Elizabeth Solaka
Two Rooms photos by Lucinda Kidder
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