Playwright: William Nicholson
At: Northlight Theatre, Skokie
Phone: ( 847 ) 673-6300; $38-$54
Runs through: June 18
BY RICK REED
The Retreat from Moscow is about as perfect a production as a theater-goer could hope for. B.J. Jones' direction is subtle, sensitive, and always hits just the right emotional chords without ever lapsing into sentimentality. Rondi Reed, as a woman desperately ( and often pathetically ) battling the death of a three-decade-long marriage is her usual thespian self: brilliant, inspired, captivating ( even when she's being obnoxious and this character would test the mettle of a saint ) , and often funny as hell. Rondi Reed is a Chicago treasure ( and no, we're not related ) . Anderson Matthews and John Hoogenakker, as Reed's husband and son, respectively, acquit themselves admirably ( although Matthews' Brit accent could use some work ) , Linda Buchanan's set design and JR Lederle's lighting are gorgeous: evocative, versatile, and visually entrancing.
The Retreat from Moscow is almost too polished. It's so smooth and so slick that it lacks the spark of passion that might result from just a bit of anarchy. That's a minor criticism and certainly not one that should keep anyone away. This is an emotionally-engaging, often funny, very touching, universal piece.
The Retreat from Moscow ( the title comes from Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812 and is a metaphor, mainly, for survival and soldiering on in life and love ) is about the end of a thirty-three year old marriage and its effects on Alice ( Reed ) , her husband, Edward ( Matthews ) , and their only child, Jamie ( Hoogenakker ) . For history teacher Edward, his marriage has been over for a long time and he's long past the point of marital resuscitation. His wife wants to cling on to something that's no longer there, buoyed up by Catholic marital ideals, and a blind hope of a kind of relationship resurrection. When she and Edward argue and he says that their marriage is dead, Alice says, 'It's not dead to me; it's struggling to be born.' Playwright Nicholson paints a devastating portrait of a family in crisis ( devastating yet often caustically funny ) , but in the end we see how even when we retreat, we move ahead, adapting to change, and letting death occur as part of the natural order.
In the end, Nicholson shows the scars of the family's disintegration most tellingly on not the wife ( whom one would first think hurt the most ) but on the adult son, who delivers a heartfelt and heartbreaking closing speech calling his parents 'explorers' and explaining how their lives map out and inform his own. For him, and for us all, those explorers are flawed people, making the best decisions they can in the uphill battle we call life.