Time Stands Still
Tolstoy’s contention about every unhappy family being unhappy in its own way is, quite possibly, not the whole story. There is indeed some universality to unforeseen disaster and private hardship: the mere fact of it. Every life is fractured, everyone has been thrown a curveball, and the emotional and personal atrocity of the experience transcends the particulars of the circumstance. Playwright Donald Marguiles’s difficult Time Stands Still is an extreme perspective; most people’s problems aren’t triggered by catastrophic injuries incurred while on assignment to document war-torn Iraq. Even so, in the production at Performance Network Theatre, director Kate Peckham recognizes the fear, resentment, and unfairness of entering uncharted territory and seizes on the commonalities.
Photojournalist Sarah (Suzi Regan) returns to her home in Brooklyn just weeks after fully half her body was ravaged by a roadside bomb. In some ways, convalescence agrees with her: she’s parlayed being unable to smoke into quitting smoking, and she is reunited with her longtime partner, James (John Lepard), himself a writer and reporter who had left Iraq separately before the incident. Forced to assume the mantle of homebodies, Sarah and James have time and perspective they didn’t allow themselves previously — to clear the air about past rifts, to compare the effects of her physical injuries to his psychological ones, to reassess and align their personal and professional needs, to ask themselves about their future together. Thanks to Margulies and Peckham both, the characters don’t seem strictly bound by a conventional narrative structure: major differences do not necessarily translate to exploding conflict at climactic points in the story, just as insignificant points snowball into desperate arguments without respect to rising action. Regan and Lepard form a phenomenal team committed to honestly conveying a supportive partnership that is no less immune to flaws and pitfalls. The evolving fate of Sarah and James is unpredictably happy, sad, and even cruel, but it’s true above all else.
The pair is given added dimension and contrast in the relationship with Richard (Hugh Maguire), Sarah’s longtime friend and editor to both, and his new girlfriend. Adding Mandy (Heidi Bennett) into the equation lets the other three characters believably shift their existing dynamic to make room for her, and the new entry into an otherwise like-minded group encourages more direct examination of the play’s themes through a direr facet of adversity — specifically, the responsibilities of people with power and privilege to document and disseminate the plight of the disadvantaged, and the morality of the journalist’s passive role even within arm’s reach of devastating suffering. No one point of view is held up as correct, nor is any direction that the characters’ lives take cast as a mistake. Instead, Maguire’s Richard alludes darkly to a former relationship as he relaxes in genuine happiness and surprise that someone less like himself actually complements him better. Even Mandy, in whom Bennett finds plenty of humor in slightly daffy disparity, is given a fair shake in a truly sweet and generous characterization, which highlights her contrast to hyperconscious Sarah without coming across as odiously facile. It’s refreshing to let opposites be partners and friends and still keep their differences, especially in light of this ensemble’s easy, witty chemistry.
Designer Sarah Tanner’s loft setting has lived-in panache, all exposed brick, factory windows, offstage details, and utterly perfect scale. Trappings of the neatly packaged publishing world commingle with artifacts from other locales in Charlie Sutherland’s well-integrated properties. Similarly, sound design by Phil Powers represents the cacophony of the everyday, from news reports to Middle Eastern instrumentals to very specific, indulgent selections from wallowing’s greatest hits. Mary Cole’s lighting design consistently follows through on a major theme of the story, adding definitive punctuation to the encapsulated scenes, and costumes by Mary Copenhagen subtly speak for the characters and bolster their trajectories.
In all, this production is an emotional rollercoaster because the notes of its hard-won drama resound so unanimously. True, the show is sad for the magnitude of its devastation, both micro and macro, but it is also sad because of its accessibility and striking familiarity. This is ultimately the success of Peckham and company, and why it’s so easy to feel for Time Stands Still. We know this anguish, and hurting people without wanting to, and moving on to something different and unexpected — it’s life.
October 6, 2011