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Liz and Frank have spent the past few years achiev­ing the sort of anaemic exis­tence that passed for mid­dle-class suc­cess for my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion.  Careers, a house, a child.  Care­ful­ly curat­ed shelves of books and knick-knacks in the liv­ing room.  This liv­ing room is the stage for a reunion din­ner par­ty; two old friends have returned from their phil­an­thropic endeav­ours in the third world.

An awk­ward evening com­mences between two cou­ples who may have once been close, but whose expe­ri­ences now leave them grasp­ing for some­thing in com­mon.  Liz dotes on her daugh­ter, a child Frank nev­er want­ed, and tries to con­nect with Car­ol over the child she’d men­tioned in count­less let­ters.  Car­ol is clear­ly griev­ing, and Mar­tin is drink­ing twice as fast as any­one else.  Frank boor­ish­ly grins and winces when­ev­er his wife says some­thing.

The dynam­ic is deeply uncom­fort­able, but some light is shed on the unspo­ken issues through asides, where a light­ing cue freezes all actors but the one with some­thing to say.  It’s not an orig­i­nal device, and hon­est­ly became frus­trat­ing, espe­cial­ly as each aside would end with the action rewind­ing back before the line or two that had pre­ced­ed it.  The con­stant rep­e­ti­tion was eased by the actors lend­ing new and dif­fer­ent empha­sis and mean­ing to each repeat­ed line or moment.  They worked incred­i­bly hard, and that allowed the ten­sion to build and build through­out.

Ulti­mate­ly, some­thing has to break, and it’s Liz, vio­lent­ly.  Her real­i­sa­tion of at least some of what has hap­pened to Car­ol, or rather, the child she’d left behind, is ago­nis­ing to watch­ing.  Rebec­ca Park­er was extra­or­di­nary, emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, in this role, and I felt my face and body clench­ing up in sym­pa­thy with hers.  Fin­gal Pol­lock as Car­ol pro­vid­ed an excel­lent foil, with a dig­ni­ty and strength that was quite beau­ti­ful.  I feel like the hus­bands, ulti­mate­ly, were just dis­ap­point­ing props to their wives’ jour­ney.  In a way, the dis­tance with­in each mar­riage was far greater than the phys­i­cal miles that had sep­a­rat­ed the cou­ples for years.

There is no res­o­lu­tion in this play.  It’s about alien­ation and loss and grasp­ing at fan­tasies; the child that might mend a mar­riage, the dream of being a sav­iour in the third world, the acqui­si­tion of mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions…  real­i­ty is cold and mean and so are peo­ple… even the peo­ple you love.  I found a lit­tle hope in the moments of kind­ness and gen­eros­i­ty between Car­ol and Liz.  But most­ly it was a pret­ty damn­ing per­spec­tive.

Was it worth it?  I think so.