REVIEWS ...
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
A painful, yet funny, funeral for a marriage gone awry
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
For all the passionately committed marriages that exist in life and Hollywood's imagination, there are other long unions that hang together -- or maybe drag on -- through sheer inertia.
British playwright William Nicholson parses the last gasp of a moribund marriage in The Retreat from Moscow, an engrossing, painful yet sometimes funny play that's now at GableStage, just a year after the end of its Broadway run.
Though watching the final disintegration of a marriage is no one's idea of fun, the powerful and beautifully detailed performances of Lisa Morgan and David Kwiat as the fractured couple are so absorbing that you willingly surrender to the intensity of Nicholson's story.
That story is one he knows only too well: As a young man, he was the go-between when his own parents' marriage ended, his reserved father leaving his devoutly Catholic, shattered mother for another woman.
In this dramatic interpretation of that family trauma, it's clear from the outset that Alice (Morgan) and Edward (Kwiat) are very different personalities. She is an adventuresome, outspoken woman who is editing an anthology of poetry, one of her most enduring passions. Edward, a teacher and history buff, is steady and reserved, comforted by routine and content to spend his evenings doing crossword puzzles.
The couple's 33-year bond is coming undone, as a restless Alice demands more genuine engagement from her dutiful husband. She pushes and pushes until Edward -- who, as it happens, has been having an affair -- walks out. And then the real trouble begins, with their grown son Jamie (Andrio Chavarro) running interference between his distraught, demanding mother and his determined, newly happy father.
The combination of Joseph Adler's smart, cinematic direction; Alice's pointed recitation of relevant poetry; Michael J. Hoffman's graceful musical interludes, and the way lighting designer Jeff Quinn projects barren trees onto the symbolic gray expanse of H. Paul Mazer's simple set make for a production in which the elements create their own melancholy poetry.
Chavarro makes the loyal, private Jamie someone who feels for both parents but, like his father, isn't given to sharing his own emotions.
Kwiat's Edward, who channels his inner boy as he enthusiastically reads aloud from a book about Napoleon's gruesome, deadly retreat from Moscow in the winter of 1812, demonstrates a low-key steeliness as he refuses to capitulate to Alice's demands. But the actor's most searing moment is his masterful delivery of a stunning, tender, resigned act-ending monologue about the disconnect between his first rush of love for Alice and the way their souls diverged.
Morgan, who has already done such great work this season in GableStage's Frozen and Mosaic Theatre's The Memory of Water, inhabits another complicated woman in The Retreat from Moscow. Her Alice radiates wit, longing, self-pity and unyielding determination. Though each member of this small family is affected by the long-in-coming failure of a marriage, it is Morgan who so skillfully guides us on a journey from heartbreak to the beginnings of healing.
Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
The Retreat From Moscow: Marital nightmare unfolds, laced with wit
By Bill Hirschman, Staff Writer
As Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf showed, no outsider knows what goes on inside a marriage. As The Retreat From Moscow shows, sometimes that goes for the husband and wife as well.
Playwright William Nicholson tracks the dissolution of a marriage at the GableStage in an emotionally shattering production, highlighted by the master-class performances of Lisa Morgan and David Kwiat under Joe Adler's direction.
Edward and Alice are tweedy English academics who have been married nearly 33 years. Edward is always retreating from interaction, never asserting his needs. Alice insists that he participate more in the relationship, to be "there" more. Although the couple spars and spats, Alice and their son (Andrio Chavarro) see it as the mild chafing common to some long-term relationships. But the hairline fracture is about to split into an irreparable schism.
Besides a talent for writing theatrical metaphors, Nicholson's skill lies in dissecting the labyrinth of relationships with equal parts compassion and clinical coldness. There are no villains or blame, just flawed human beings struggling to cope. He vigorously rejects self-deluding myths, whether it's false hope for a failed marriage or a shaky belief in God. He also knows how to lace the proceedings with enough hearty wit to keep the descent from becoming an unrelieved horror.
Morgan, who must have little time between shows this season to learn lines, adds another portrait to her gallery. While her characters seem similar from play to play -- variations on a frustrated and anguished middle-aged woman in desperate circumstances -- Morgan's ability to live inside a part and camouflage a considerable amount of technique is simply astonishing. Watch her Alice flailing like a drowning woman, trying everything -- even violence -- to engage her husband in the fight for their marriage.
Kwiat is equally successful in the less showy part of someone "brought up not to want things." We ought to see him as a traitor to the marriage, as Alice does. But Kwiat creates a man trying to save himself with a pragmatic survival technique akin to Napoleon's men abandoning their wounded in the Moscow snow.
Few great performances thrive without the shaping, pacing and guidance of the director's overall vision, and Joe Adler once again deserves credit as he did with last season's marital nightmare, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?.
Jeff Quinn's lighting is evocative, notably the projections of a tangled forest on the walls of the couple's barren home. The intentionally narrow palette of Jen Howard's costumes reflects the blandness of the character's exterior lives, adding only hint of color at key moments to show the turmoil within.
Bill Hirschman can be reached at 954-356-4513 or bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com.
