Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun demonstrates that it’s possible for a play to be annoyingly specific and generic at the same time. The drama about three generations of women, receiving its world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club, is filled with references to events, historical figures and locations relating to New York City over the last half-century. We hear about Bobby Thomson’s epochal home run, the Beatles playing Shea Stadium, Valerie Solanis shooting Andy Warhol, the demolition of the old Penn Station, and the assassination of John Lennon. You’ll find yourself mentally placing a bet as to how long it will be before we hear about 9/11.
And if that isn’t enough, the British playwright, who clearly loves the Big Apple, throws in asides about the White Horse Tavern, Peter McManus Café, Murray’s Bagels, the Circle Line and the New School, a derisive comment about the last earning the biggest laugh of the evening.
Unfortunately, the characters and situations of this frustratingly inert, non-linear effort prove far less resonant. Stephens’ works often traffic in intellectual gamesmanship, and this work is a prime example. It concerns three women all living at one time or another in the same Greenwich Village two-bedroom walk-up apartment: Charley McBride (Edie Falco), her mother Charlotte (Blair Brown), and her daughter Tessa (Marin Ireland). They are all onstage together for the duration of the play even as the time frame shifts, exchanging barbs with each other in Three Tall Women style as they relate their life stories spanning many decades.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Each of the actresses plays other characters as well, making for a confusing experience as they suddenly assume the identities of the various men in their lives, friends and relatives, and even such historical figures as urban activist Jane Jacobs (another example of the play’s flagrant name-dropping). The central focus is on Charlie, who endures failed relationships and friendships, an unplanned pregnancy, and a drinking problem, among other things, while working such jobs as being an emergency room receptionist at St. Vincent’s Hospital during the AIDS crisis.
The snappy dialogue proves too snappy, often consisting of a seemingly endless series of single lines that the characters deliver in rapid-fire fashion as if engaged in a verbal tennis match with one too many players. It becomes very difficult to sustain interest throughout the amorphous proceedings, with only the protean talents of the amazing trio of actresses managing to lift the material above the banal. They’re all superb, playing off each other beautifully, but Falco, whose character is given the primary focus, is particularly mesmerizing in her emotional range.
One might be able to relate to the characters more easily if Stephens weren’t so intent on demonstrating his technical agility in relating their stories in such unconventional fashion. The playwright’s works usually demand strict attention, but such previous dramas as Heisenberg, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Sea Wall offered far richer thematic payoffs. The pedestrian staging by Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery), offering little more than occasional echo and rainfall sound effect to provide theatricality, proves another letdown. And for the first time in as long as can be remembered for this theater, the set design (created by a collective dubbed “dots”) is tediously drab. It only accentuates the feeling that Morning Sun is really a radio play that’s somehow made its way onstage.
Morning Sun opened November 3, 2021, at City Center Stage I and runs through December 19. Tickets and information: manhattantheatreclub.com
