Theater: Wrecks

Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

Los Angeles

(310) 208-5454

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“Ed Harris has excelled for so long as a Hollywood everyman” that his subtle skill as an actor is now overlooked, said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. In Neil LaBute’s monologue play Wrecks, we meet Harris’ Edward Carr—a seemingly timid car salesman—in a funeral parlor, where he’s chain-smoking over the casket of his wife, Mary Josephine. What starts as the slow, sweet reminiscence of a man who just lost “the love of his life” takes an almost imperceptible turn into the dark depths of Edward’s psyche. At the end, we discover a terrible secret. Throughout, the impeccable timing of Harris’ sinister delivery serves as a reminder of the “delicate command” he brings to his character work.

This rambling, mysterious mourner “poses a true thespian’s challenge,” said Bob Verini in Variety. The audience needs to enjoy his company, at least enough to keep listening, and their pity for him must gradually morph into something else. Harris rises to the occasion “through qualities familiar from his film work: manifest charisma and an uncommon empathy for the common man.” Edward’s meandering observations on everything from Shirley Temple to pop psychology only thinly mask the “hints of pugnacity, even violence,” that surface when you least expect them. As Harris finally reveals the truth about his character, “the chill up your spine at evening’s end won’t be the winter cold.”