Off-B'way Reviews: Lunar Eclipse; Bus Stop

Lisa Emery and Reed Birney in
Lunar Eclipse.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Donald Margulies’ tender and moving new play Lunar Eclipse from Second Stage at the Signature Theater Center, is a simple, direct depiction of a long marriage, the elusiveness of memory, and the endurance of love. George and Em, an elderly couple, are sitting up in a field in the middle of the night on their farm in Western Kentucky, to obverse the titular astronomical event. As the seven stages of the eclipse progress, we gradually learn the intricacies, compromises, joys and pitfalls of their decades-long union. George is going through a deep depression after the loss of his beloved dog (the last in a long line of cherished canines) and his growing frustration with the futility of life in general. “We’re taught that good triumphs over evil. Right? And love and generosity triumph over hate and greed. But, what if it turns out we’re wrong. The bad guys won the battle?,” he moans, without specifically naming any political figures or movements. Even Em’s cheerfulness drives him to distraction. 

Em attempts to lighten the mood, but, after a couple of shots of bourbon, she lets her smiley-face mask slip and reveals a long-term sadness, largely over the death of their adopted son Tim from a drug overdose. (We eventually learn Tim’s birth mother was an addict.) Margulies subtly reveals the couple’s inner conflicts through realistic details such as the fate of a telescope and attempts to bring failing crops to fruition.

At times, his language is bit too writerly and on-the-nose as when Em compares her melancholy to an eclipse or when George contrasts his blighted efforts at connecting with Tim with raising a non-productive batch of sugar beets. But this is a minor flaw in an otherwise endearing and heartbreaking play with a physically beautiful production under Kate Whoriskey’s sensitive, nearly invisible direction and a pair of veterans actors bringing two everyday people to vibrant life. 

Calm Cat and Placid Picnic

Sebastian Stan in Picnic
Credit: Joan Marcus

Two of the hottest playwrights of the 1950s are represented on Broadway right now with recently-opened revivals of Pulitzer Prize-winning works. Both William Inge's Picnic (1953) and Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) are by gay authors, feature hunky heroes in states of undress, and deal with the adverse effects of repressed sexuality.Both new productions which opened in the same week are surprisingly tepid. When they first opened, the plays addressed the rampant puritanism of America which included ignoring homosexuality altogether. Today, open sexuality of all persuasions is everywhere and the directors of these productions seem to have forgotten these topics were once so shocking.

In Picnic, the forces of repressions work to stifle the happiness of all the characters. The "old-maid" schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (played by Elizabeth Marvel here, Eileen Heckart in the original Broadway production and Rosalind Russell in the movie) derisively comments on the bare torso of Hal Carter, the macho drifter who sets off sexual fireworks in a small Kansas town.It's later revealed Rosemary led a committee to have a naked male statue "castrated" by a janitor with a chisel. She represents the hypocrisy of sexual repression.