Shadow Box
(1999 Season)
BY Bob Fischbach, World-Herald Staff Writer

Theater Review:
Strong Script Keeps 'Shadow Box' Alive

You can't write a play about dying without also writing a play about living.

As hospices came into favor as a more humane way to die, Michael Cristofer wrote "The Shadow Box," winner of a 1977 Pulitzer Prize and the Tony for best drama. His pre-AIDS script has aged well, because what he has to say about facing death and not running away from life is timeless.

SNAP! Productions is staging the play at the Jewish Community Center, and director Todd Brooks had no problems setting it in the present. In fact, you might assume a gay character is dying of the disease that didn't yet exist at the show's birth.

What this production does have problems with is an uneven cast. But the strength of the script and several solid performances are enough to recommend it. In fact, the person sitting next to me at a Wednesday night preview was in tears after the emotionally powerful final scene.

"The Shadow Box" is not a disease-of-the-week weeper, though. It is packed with humor, some of it black, some of it profane, much of it offering wisdom and insight.

The setting is three cottages on the grounds of a hospital, and in each a person is dying. The drama unfolds from how they and their loved ones deal with that fact. The three stories don't intersect but rather offer different facets of the five stages in facing death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

At times some characters step into a spotlight to talk with an unseen hospital interviewer (Scott Jackman is excellent) about what they are going through. But mostly, they interact in fascinating and moving ways.

Brian, a failed writer living with Mark, a younger male lover, is visited by his ex-wife, Beverly. Joe is dealing with wife Maggie's denial and her inability to tell son Steve his dad is dying.

Long-suffering Agnes cares for her mother, Felicity, who fades in and out of reality and hangs on, waiting for a favorite daughter, long dead, to visit.

This show's best scenes are between Kristi Pederson as Beverly and Thomas Lowe as Mark. She, an exuberant redhead who drinks too much, loves too freely and verbalizes irrepressibly, vexes the uptight, cynical ex-hustler, who is exhausted with being a caregiver. It's fun getting to the explosion you know will come, though its outcome is perhaps unexpected. Both actors manage delicately shaded and layered portrayals, and you can read the conflicting emotions within them as they spar.

Becky Martin, who was so good last year in SNAP's "Imperfect Flowers," shines as a daughter desperate for the love her mother lavished on her prettier, favored sister. She digs deep to make some of the play's most painful moments ring true.

J. Scott Fowler is natural and low-key as Joe, a lower-middle-classguy who doesn't quite know what hit him. Patrick Schwery, as the literary Brian, is best when talking with the interviewer, but he has trouble baring the feelings he has for Mark and Beverly.

The show also has moments when lines sound recited and when nerves cause performers to rush past emotions behind the words. Experience and subtle direction can iron out those wrinkles as the show runs.

A massive but simple set and area lighting by Chris Torrey are functional as action overlaps in four playing areas.

The Shadow Box

• What: SNAP! Productions drama
• When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, April 15 and 17 through 19; 2 p.m. April 18
• Where: Theatre at the J, 333 S. 132nd St.
• Tickets: Adults, $15; Students, seniors, TAG and SNAP! Friends, $10
• Information: 342-9053