TIME STANDS STILL

TIME STANDS STILL

How far do moral obligations reach in humanity and love?

Reviewed by: Sandi "D"

When Sarah Goodwin (Laura Linney) returns home to her Brooklyn loft injured and scarred from shrapnel as a photojournalist in the Iraqi warzone, her significant other James Dodd (Brian d’Arcy James), with whom she’s been living for the past eight years, appears overly attentive. She is a bitter and complex person not used to being pampered and eager to return to the action. Jamie, a war correspondent himself, is anxious and feeling guilty for leaving the chaos and Sarah, having suffered a breakdown when people blew up around him.

Donald Margulies’ latest drama, that sometimes appears as more of a comedy, is a brilliant conflict of morality and deterioration of relationships. Does the person behind the camera have a moral obligation to step away from it in the face of horror and cruelty and come to the aid of the subjects? According to Sarah “the camera reports life, it doesn’t change it.” Can an eight year relationship survive when two people have suffered unbearable hurts and no longer share common goals?

Tensions grow as long-time, middle-aged friend, Richard (Eric Bogosian) who is also Sarah’s former lover, mentor and the photo editor at a magazine that publishes her photos, shows up with a girl half his age. Mandy (Alicia Silverstone), an event planner, has brought balloons and it’s evident she isn’t exactly a ‘deep’ thinker. Emotions and words pour forth as whatever is in her brain is on her tongue, allowing Sarah to remark to Richard “you always wanted a little girl.” However, Mandy’s shallow appearance is overshadowed, at times, by stunning outbursts of endearing qualities and words of wisdom. As friendships grow and personalities become apparent, Mandy emphatically remarks to Sarah “there’s so much beauty; all you see is misery.”

As the story continues, Mandy, who is pregnant, and Richard marry while the stress between Sarah and Jamie to follow the same path reach greater proportions. Sarah reveals a love affair with her now deceased interpreter in Iraq, as Jamie divulges that all he wants is to marry Sarah and lead a comfortable life. Sarah, needing the adrenaline of her profession, thinks she can change things by continuing to take pictures of war. Marriage, babies…are just not part of her life’s plan.

The opposing needs of Sarah and Jamie along with past events result in the emergence of true feelings of rage, disloyalty and anger and a love that can never be.

Stars Laura Linney and Brian d’Arcy James are consummate actors who approach their roles with sympathy and understanding unearthing the underlying feelings of the complicated characters they portray. Alternatively, Bogosian and Silverstone’s characters are easier and fluffier and a good contrast.

This Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, is efficiently directed by Daniel Sullivan with scenic design by John Lee Beatty and lighting by Peter Kaczorowski. The two-hours zip by in scenes that include confrontations, secrets revealed, and a push-pull look at the roads people take in search of happiness and fulfillment.