“Lunar Eclipse” is a play that a young playwright could not create. The insights offered about a long marriage gone arid needs a vision from a person who has lived a long life.
The play is being given its world premiere at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA through October 22. It looks at a couple who, after many years of marriage, are at a point where the relationship is merely co-existence.
George and Em have been married forever and work a family farm somewhere in the Midwest. One night Em joins her husband at what he calls “a sacred space” and together they watch a lunar eclipse. Sharing hot chocolate and bourbon they reminisce on their lives and their relationship. An added Coda gives us a quick look at who both were at the start of their relationship.
Playwright Donald Margulies won a Pulitzer Prize for his play “Dinner With Friends” in 2000. Written when the playwright was 46 years old, it told the story of urban friendship and relationships of people dealing with encroaching mid-life crises.
Now 69, Margulies has written an incisive look at a relationship between characters who have less time ahead of them than spent behind them. George describes a possible future lasting two more decades as one filled with loss of friends, family and minds.
Despite this depressing view of the future “Lunar Eclipse” is not grim. There is an honesty about how people of a certain age reflect on the past and imagine the future. Actually the play is filled with wise thoughts you’ve probably already heard from people of an older generation.
But the play is mostly about how life shapes you, even though you think you are shaping life. George loved working the farm and needs a legacy. Em loved George and tolerated the farm. She values the product of her life and feels that is her legacy. What happens after death is not her concern.
Em describes George as gruff. It is one of the many instances that shows how kind, patient, and forgiving a person she is. Gruff is one of the more gentle descriptions one can offer this abrupt, rude and often hurtful human being.
Thanks to an amazing portrayal by Reed Birney, George is not a monster. Birney never makes the mistake of playing him for sympathy. Instead he meticulously shows us a man who has lived a hard life and his spirit has been drained. It’s a portrait of a man who is consumed by the negativity of life.
Some might call him a realist. Others might see him as an uncaring person. Neither is accurate. Birney creates a character who doesn’t care what others think. In so doing, he brilliantly forms an individual who we will think about long after leaving the theater.
This is a world premiere so don’t go expecting a perfect play. Certainly one area of improvement is Em. Lovingly played by Karen Allen, she almost overcomes the fact that the character is underwritten and passive to the point of being tragic. Birney probably has 70% of the dialogue, which doesn’t permit us to get inside Em to let us know why she has stayed with the cold George for so long.
As I said, “Lunar Eclipse” is filled with wisdom, some insightful, some not. Indeed, there are moments like George’s rant about evil having triumphed over good that could be considered pontificating.
Director James Warwick does a terrific job keeping a static two-handed piece of theater visually interesting for 90-minutes without an intermission. He also guides his two wonderful actors to establish through kind physical gestures that they do care about each other’s comfort and well-being.
They are both people who live in the present but exist in the past while being uncertain about the future.
“Lunar Eclipse” plays in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA. through October 22. For tickets and schedule information go to Shakespeare.org
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
