Theatre Review by Ron Fassler . . .
When the curtain goes up on Lia Romeo’s new play Still, we join two extremely attractive people, Helen and Mark, in mid-conversation at a hotel bar. Helen, early sixties, appears every inch a professional woman, decked out in a pair of thigh-high boots and dressed to impress. Mark, also in his sixties, has the look and bearing of someone well-employed and well-off. Both are good listeners and quick to laugh at one another’s jokes, yet assiduously avoid stepping on land mines the whole time. The territory is fraught since these are former lovers who shared an intense relationship many years ago. It’s a situation most people can relate to in life; looking back at things they did to another person and the reasons they did them. “Who was I back then?, “What was I thinking? and “Did I do the right thing? are questions that can plague someone a lifetime.
This 75-minute intermissionless piece now playing at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in NoHo in downtown Manhattan, flies by due to expert pacing from director Adrienne Cambell-Holt and the considerable charm of its entire cast: Melissa Gilbert and Mark Moses as Helen and Mark. In the show’s second and much longer scene, the action moves from the lounge to Mark’s upstairs hotel suite with their interaction more intimate as well as somewhat unstable. What at first seems to be a plot concerned with whether two sexy sixty-somethings can find true happiness, darkens when it becomes clear Helen and Mark are on opposing sides of our nation’s current political crisis. When the conversation inevitably gets to Trump and Harris, they are referred to only as “He” and “She,” which doesn’t disguise anything but at least it leaves their names out of things.
Discussions like the ones heard onstage are available to anyone with the stomach for going online and engaging in political discourse with strangers. Personally, I like when a good writer is able to make cogent arguments on both sides, which Romeo does quite well here. But if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to go to the theatre and hear this sort of thing, this play won’t sit well with you. Certainly we’ve heard many of these arguments before, but the characters here are both so likable that you are rooting for them to get together. Hell, you’re rooting for them to get together after the play’s first two minutes what with the graceful manner Gilbert and Moses handle their dialouge. These are well-credentialed actors with years of experience that allow them to slip into these roles with confidence and ease. They are open and fearless and truly make the kind of connection that makes every minute count.
The two settings are in the fine hands of scenic designer Alexander Woodward and the lighting by Reza Behjat is spot on (her work on English, currently on Broadway, is also first rate). The costumes that Barbara A. Bell has conceived for the first scene perfectly inform who Helen and Mark are. Of course, once we get to the bedroom, sweats and hotel robes take over for much of the rest of the play, also dead on for these characters.
At the core of things, this is a penetrating look at a man and a woman who are facing the years they have left honestly. No one should look at their sixties as heading that much closer to the graveyard, but again, we’re all here for a finite time. What you do with those years is entirely your own choice. What Helen and Mark have to face is whether they can possibly spend that time together when the odds seem insurmountable over fundamental differences in how they perceive the most pressing issues of the day at this anxious and nervous moment in our nation’s history.
That Lia Romeo has put two sixty-somethings front and center is commendable for a younger playwright to concern herself with and that Adrienne Campbell-Holt has led excellent actors like Melissa Gilbert and Mark Moses to sterling performances is worthy of excessive praise. What Still offers is food for thought that makes for a fine meal, especially for those hungry enough (and willing enough) to bite into something substantial.
Still is currently playing now through March 23 at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, 18 Bleecker Street, NYC. For ticket information, please visit: https://www.sheencenter.org/events/detail/still.
Photos by Maria Baranova.
Headline photo: Mark Moses and Melissa Gilbert in silhouette.
