I received a lovely email a week or so ago from a fellow involved in Broadway productions. He wrote that he had stumbled across my website and noticed I was “very into theatre” (guilty as charged!) and would I like to attend “Time Stands Still,” starring Laura Linney, Brian D’Arcy James, Christina Ricci and Eric Bogosian?
Um, YES!
So I took my college girl friend Kristin, who was the perfect person for this particular play (forgive me for bragging about her - Kristin has her master’s in journalism from Northwestern and has won an Emmy for her on-air reporting - ahh!), as it focuses on the struggle of two war journalists.
It’s certainly not a light play, although there are moments of levity (thanks to a brilliant performance by a very talented Christina Ricci), but the issues with which the characters grapple are important. Kristin & I both agreed the playwright (Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies) captured war journalists - their gravitas and misery, their frustration and their anger, their inner conflicts and their guilt - with the acute eye of someone who must have known many of them.
This is not escapism; instead it is a nuanced portrait of an exceedingly complicated question: how does one cope with a profession in which witnessing suffering is inherent?
Oh, and The New York Times called it “flawless.”
I won’t argue with that.
