"Bright but Slight"
Pulitzer Prize nominee Tanya Barfield’s new play
BRIGHT HALF LIFE, being given its world premiere by the Women’s Project Theater
at City Center Stage II, is about a relationship between two women, covering 51
years, from 1985 to 2031. There’s nothing extraordinary in the relationship,
not even the fact that the women are lesbians, or that one, Vicky (Rachael
Holmes), is black and the other, Erica (Rebecca Henderson), white. That’s not
to say their sexuality or racial issues are insignificant; these things are
discussed, but they exist mainly to help define the characters and are not what
the play’s about.
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| From left: Rachael Holmes, Rebecca Henderson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
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| Rachael Holmes, Rebecca Henderson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Vicky and Erica are smart, witty, nice, middle-class
women, whose lives are not particularly memorable, but who experience the ups
and downs, thrills and disappointments, breakups and makeups, of a loving
relationship that, despite their divorce, remains essentially intact. Ordinarily,
the story of Vicky and Erica, neither of whom is deeply drawn, would not be
especially stageworthy, especially since its outlines are so familiar. For all
the occasional tensions in the play, even the angry moments are rather muted
and there’s no single moment of crisis that dominates the rest.
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| Rachael Holmes, Rebecca Henderson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
But Ms. Barfield succeeds in making the familiar
unfamiliar by her device of telling the story not linearly, nor even backwards
(as in Pinter’s BETRAYAL), but in a more or less kaleidoscopic deconstruction
of the events into scenic shards that move back and forth in time, so that the play
lies before us like a puzzle that only gradually gets filled in as each piece
is put in place. The sequence, however, isn’t random, but carefully gauged so
that scenes—some of them repeated—play off one another by their proximity to
others, expressing inherent ironies. Something like this was done by Diana Son
in 1998’s STOP.KISS, and other reviewers have noted similarities to
CONSTELLATIONS, now on Broadway.
Ms. Barfield’s dramaturgic method helps lift what is
otherwise a rather thin and conventional narrative to a somewhat higher level,
as does her clever, often overlapping dialogue, but if the piece were any
longer than its 75-minute running time it would have overstayed its welcome.
Leigh Silverman’s direction makes the most of the playwright’s requirement that
the work be performed without props or pantomime, although a horizontal bar
drops down to suggest the restraint on a Ferris wheel gondola. She also has
succeeded in eliciting multilayered performances from her actresses, who bring
a solid sense of everyday reality to their dialogue and behavior; they
successfully manage the difficult task of making speeding bullet transitions as
the action keeps jumping freely from one level of intensity to another.
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| Rebecca Henderson, Rachael Holmes. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Rachel Hauck’s spare platform setting, using only a
couple of simple benches, is wherever it has to be. The rapid scenic changes
are all indicated by Jennifer Schriever’s expressive lighting and Bart
Fasbender’s sound design. Both Ms. Henderson and Ms. Holmes are forever young,
never having to resort to suggesting their aging selves, or even to changing their costumes (designed by Emily Rebholz); both wear slacks outfits, although
Ms. Henderson’s definitely reeks of butch.
The brighter half of BRIGHT HALF LIFE is the way Ms. Barfield has constructed it. The slighter half is the material itself. My guess is that audiences will appreciate both halves for what they contribute to making the play whole.
The brighter half of BRIGHT HALF LIFE is the way Ms. Barfield has constructed it. The slighter half is the material itself. My guess is that audiences will appreciate both halves for what they contribute to making the play whole.
City
Center Stage II
131
W. 55th Street, NYC
Through
March 22