Photo by Joan Marcus
Impeccably produced, acted and directed, playwright David Margulies’s Time Stands Still achieves the singular feat of making us like and sympathize with a woman who couldn’t care less if we did or not. Of course, having Laura Linney in the role had a helluva lot to do with it. Celebrated photographer Sarah Goodwin (Linney) is back in New York with her partner, in safety, nursing the physical wounds inflicted by a war zone bomb. Her partner, James (Brian D’Arcy James, compelling) has scars in his mind from another deadly explosion he survived. Sarah and Jamie have lived together more than eight years. They know each other completely, their lives in the same channels of danger, creating a record of inhumanity in order to make a better world. That’s what they tell each other. Sarah’s visible scars give ready reason for her veers of temper and contriteness. Jamie’s scars are harder to heal; now they manifest in overly caring, nurturing Sarah, of swallowing slights and hurts because that’s what a loving partner does. They’re visited by Richard (Eric Bogosian, brilliant) their kindly, grizzled agent and friend along with his new wife, Mandy (remarkable Alicia Silverstone), adorable, open, a generation younger than they. Sarah mocks her, Jamie aches with embarrassment and Richard and Mandy leave. Jamie, to fill several voids and pain, asks Sarah to marry him. It is not easy for Sarah to say “Yes”.
We are in the world of ordinary people, ordinary as in the movies, as on television, the sincere characters, not the nasty ones, people we think we know, we recognize: the star photographer, her overshadowed mate, just a good journalist, their busy, well connected agent, his young wife, an “events” planner, har, har, used to put-downs and rolled eyes at her expense, well aware that the things the others do are important and important things such as photos and news stories and an agent’s cleverness are what makes the world go round, not events planners who just make people happy. In the multilayered currents of Margulies play are, of course, questions about what really matters and director Daniel Sullivan has never been more successful in encouraging his actors to put before us an array of psychic colors. They, I must repeat, are just wonderful. We come to care, the ultimate bond across the footlights between actors and audience, sharing in their problems, their foibles. None are perfect, but then who is?
Sarah knows the true shallowness of her job, knows her importance is based on perceptions inflated by a good agent. Jamie is all too aware of the way news people have turned their news into self serving product and the importance of an agent propping their own esteem. Richard juggles clients and jobs and melts happily into his new backwater of domesticity, complete with their new baby. And Mandy, she can take events planning or leave them; what’s important is what has always been important and always will be, her baby, her husband, her home. No, not for Sarah, maybe for Jamie. But for Sarah its back to the glamorous trappings of danger, to game the game from the top, that is what holds her together. And we, we almost understand. Linney, complex, is stunning. Eric Bogosian, finally in his Broadway debut, is amazing, has never been better. Alicia Silverstone, a beacon of hope in a world of distorted values, shines, both as her self and in fulfilling Mandy. The entire production is testimony to the collaborative magic of theater.
Scenic designer John Lee Beatty has given us a subtle grounding with a gentrified grunge of a set that grows on you as the play works its way. This loft’s calculated simplicity reeks money in a deliberate overlay of taste and style atop barebones derelict factory. Rita Ryack has costumed her company so well they’re apparently wearing their own apparel, each defined by what they seem to have chosen. Now, if I could only figure out who ate all that wedding cake.
*
Samuel Friedman Theater, 261 West 47th Street. Tickets: $55-$111. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm, Sun 7 pm. Mats, Sat,Sun 2 pm. 212-239-6200