Playwright: Michael Christofer
At: Tinfish Theatre, 4247 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: (773) 549-1888; $17.50
Runs through: March 1
Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross theorized in 1969 that the news of one's imminent death meets with five responses: first you deny it, then you rage at it, then you try to bargain your way out of it, after which you sulk about it until you finally come to accept the inevitable and savor the moments remaining. The three terminally ill patients and their caregivers in Michael Christofer's play display all these 'symptoms,' but their confrontations with the Last Mile are not so neatly arranged.
Take Joe, for example, a laborer as simple as his name, whose wife refuses to enter his hospice-residence. Or Felicity, her body scarred by multiple operations, stubbornly clinging to the prospect of a reunion with her favored daughter, while scorning the selfless attentions of this absent paragon's sister. And then there's Brian, the university scholar determined to live to the fullest before Going Into That Good Night—an attitude shared by his free-spirited ex-spouse (who smokes, drinks, screws and tokes with hedonistic glee), but not his fastidious gay lover.
The appropriate mood for the presentation of this material must have been difficult for director Jon Frazier to decide. At the preview performance I attended, however, the tone was largely contemplative, allowing audiences to find their own path to empathy and identification with these people (whose affliction is probably, but not necessarily, cancer). Certainly, most of the acting was up to standard, with richly crafted work from Vincent Lonergan and Judith Day as the defiant Brian and Beverly, and also Reid Ostrowski as the wistful Joe. Less prepared were Samuel J. Dryer's Domestic Companion and Jeanne Scurek's Mrs. Joe, both capable players as yet unsure of their characters. But don't be lulled by its subtlety into dismissing the poignant dynamic forged by Kimberly Inouye and Sierra Cleveland as the angry Felicity and patient Agnes.
'It's all over in a minute, but it seems to go on forever' observes Christofer. With the onset and aftermath of the AIDS epidemic, we are far more familiar nowadays with the nuances of lingering death than were audiences in 1977, the year that The Shadow Box won both the Best Play Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. But the topic, sadly, has lost none of its timeliness.
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