Love and Litigation
Two plays examine what happens when that loving feeling’s lost
By Don Shirley
Men and women marry. Then they divorce. This turn of events is so familiar that you’d think it would have lost its dramatic kick. However, details vary along with the individuals, and the stories can be told in radically different ways. Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still is relentlessly realistic. Divorce! The Musical is a broadly drawn satire, intentionally artificial in style. They’re both worth watching. Yet they raise a common question that deserves more consideration from the playwrights: Why do these couples get married?
In Time Stands Still, at the Geffen Playhouse, it’s easy to understand how news photographer Sarah (Anna Gunn) and freelance reporter James (David Harbour), whose romance was forged under fire in combat zones, might well consider formalizing their ties. They’ve been together for years, and they’re now back in New York in order to recover from wounds – physical injuries in Sarah’s case, but strictly psychological traumas within James. And they’re at an age at which they have to decide soon if they want to reproduce.
As the first act ends, James is aggressively promoting marriage. Sarah is apparently willing to entertain the notion but remains unsure. A lot of convincing takes place offstage during intermission – as the second act begins, they’re ushering the wedding guests out from their apartment.
While her say-yes moment doesn’t necessarily have to be on stage, it took me a couple minutes into the second act before I realized that this was a wedding party instead of a gathering to celebrate the publication of their joint war journal.
Sarah is such a strong woman that it’s hard to believe she would passively assent to something as momentous as marriage. Her reasons for later changing her mind also aren’t especially credible, and subsequent developments in James’ love life aren’t convincing. Margulies’ plot-turning manipulations feel somewhat transparent.
The play isn’t entirely about their relationship. It’s also about the conflict between journalists’ positions as uninvolved witnesses versus their needs as human beings – a dispute that’s brought into sharp relief by the candid Mandy (Alicia Silverstone), the much younger girlfriend of Sarah’s photo editor Richard (Robin Thomas). Under the direction of Daniel Sullivan, much of the play is involving and precisely drawn, in the tradition of the Margulies hits Collected Stories and Dinner with Friends. But Time Stands Still shouldn’t stand entirely still before its next production.
As the title indicates, Divorce! The Musical isn’t primarily about a romance or a wedding. The nuptials are quickly dispatched in the first number. It’s about the Big D, and it aims most of its arrows at attorneys and other professionals who capitalize on troubled couples.
Writer Erin Kamler paints her central couple, Brentwood radiologist Rich (Rick Segall) and would-be actress Penny (Lowe Taylor) as a lot more shallow and materialistic – consider the first names – than their counterparts in Time Stands Still. So the fact that we don’t even see them before the wedding day isn’t as important as it would have been in a more realistic play. Still, a little more background on their initial attraction to each other would help us care about their fate as they’re buffeted by their attorneys Laureen Grub (Gabrielle Wagner) and Lisa Groper (Leslie Stevens) and their mediator (Gregory Franklin).
While Kamler’s score is lively and witty, it’s almost a series of musical sketches more than a full-fledged narrative. But director Rick Sparks gets maximum mileage from it. And opening night was especially memorable when producer Rick Culbertson’s postlude climaxed with his public marriage proposal to the twice-divorced Kamler. She accepted. Maybe they’ll now collaborate on the prequel to Divorce! – a musical about the mutual wooing of Rich and Penny?
Time Stands Still, Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood, (310) 208-5454. GeffenPlayhouse.com. Tue.-Thur., 7:30 p.m.; Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. $15-$79. Closes March 15.
Divorce! The Musical, Hudson Mainstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 960-1056. DivorceMusical.com. Thur.- Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. $25-$34.99. Closes March 29.
Published: 02/18/2009
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