In our current political climate, it’s not hard to look back on the fraught aughts and apply something of a rosy tint. But Second Stage Theater’s new revival of Dying City, playwright Christopher Shinn’s response to the Iraq War, reminds us it wasn’t terribly long ago that we didn’t focus on George W. Bush’s amiable civility, or admire his painting skills.
As anyone who saw Shinn’s play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, in its original New York run in 2007 (or its world premiere in London the previous year) could tell you, his approach is hardly didactic, or grandiose; to the contrary, City uses the war for context in examining the personal battles fought by three characters, played by two actors: Kelly, a young therapist; her husband Craig, an Ivy League graduate student who enlists in the military and dies under circumstances made less than clear; and Peter, Craig’s gay twin brother, an actor.
In scenes that alternate between the evening before Craig departs for Iraq and the night, a year after his funeral, Peter shows up unannounced to Kelly’s apartment, City traces the tangled, sometimes repressed emotions of the characters as they discuss their work and the war, all the while dancing around questions and doubts concerning their relationships with each other. It’s delicate, intricate stuff, and this production, which Shinn directed himself, evinces the challenges posed in making it translate into vital drama.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★ review here.]
Despite Shinn’s thoughtful, sensitive guidance, the staging lacks a certain dynamism. The actors, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Colin Woodell, are attractive and intelligent, bringing compelling nuance to their characters. Woodell in particular distinguishes the brothers’ shared struggles to contain heightened feelings without exaggerating either the often comical vanity that is the flip side of Peter’s insecurity—”The guy trainers I’ve had, it’s weird, I think they’ve all been jealous of me—my manager thinks it’s because I’m so handsome,” he tells Kelly at one point—or Craig’s more stoical machismo, which is gradually revealed as more complex, and disturbing.
Then there are Kelly’s own efforts to fully comprehend, or come to terms with, a partner who likes to refer to one of her patients by a crass phrase suggesting an almost predatory need for sexual domination. Winstead makes the quandary poignant, and highlights its irony; her character is supposed to make a living helping people confront and deal with their issues, and until the end, she either can’t or won’t fully acknowledge her own spouse’s tortured pysche. But for all her grace and warmth, the actress seems emotionally muted for much of the play, as if too determined to emphasize Kelly’s relative discipline.
Kelly’s exchanges with Peter, an unwanted visitor—he arrives at her apartment after having none of his calls returned, and discovering she has changed her numbers—find Winstead a bit more animated, suggesting a sense of relief, once Kelly recovers from the initial disruption. Sitting with her brother-in-law on the large, homey couch that dominates Dane Laffrey’s spare set, Winstead’s Kelly indulges his complaints about his thriving career (for a while) and engages him in debate about the larger conflicts that engulf them all.
After a pair of meaningfully contrasting, inextricably intertwined scenes with Peter and Craig, however, Kelly is left alone, packing a new item into a box full of obviously painful memories as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” plays on TV. It’s a beautifully played reflection of the line between connection and isolation—even finer now than it was when Dying City premiered, as this lovely, if flawed, production makes plain.
Dying City opened June 3, 2019, at Second Stage and runs through June 30. Tickets and information: 2st.com
