For the second time this season I had precisely the same feeling, provoked by precisely the same playwright. Donald Margulies has had two Broadway productions this season, Time Stands Still and Collected Stories, and at each I felt, right from the start, "Oh, I'm going to like it here tonight." Time Stands Still, all the better for the insightful direction of Daniel Sullivan, did, after all, have Laura Linney. I have to admit I am weak when it comes to Ms. Linney--in this case she held the center of a cohesive ensemble, irradiating the rest of the cast.
This time it is Lynn Meadow directing Linda Lavin and Sarah Paulson. All I can say is it is nice to be in the hands of old pros. I must say I have never been a huge fan of Ms. Lavin's, but she is marvelous here as the cranky, wise, soft-after-all Jewish intellectual mentor to Ms. Paulson's eager, gifted graduate student. The play follows these two from their first tutorial as professor and student. If it wasn't on a smaller canvas, and so closely observed, the evening might have become a reworking of All About Eve. But it's not--it has finely turning nuance, and the power of unspoken envy and competition. Ms. Paulson's television work, for me especially wonderful on Studio 60, made us forget she has real stage chops. What a pair these two make.
The teacher has never married nor had children of her own, the student has fantasized and idealized the great writer she finally finds herself sitting in front of. Well, setup in place, we are in for that greatest thing: a comfortable, well-worn sweater of a play that keeps digging deeper than you thought it would. I am a sucker for crusty smart codgers cracking wise, and Ms. Lavin turns me into a real fan with her deft, sharpened whine. And the fierce aroma of ambition Ms. Paulson gives off within her dedicated devotion has the power to disarm.
Oh, let me not forget--the set by Santo Loquasto (set-designer extraordinaire for evoking a certain lived-in New York quality) is simply perfect.
Ron Gallen
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