Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
New York
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Choosing between “love and war” proves difficult for the pair of wartime journalists in Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, said Dan
Bacalzo in Theatremania.com. Photographer Sarah (Laura Linney) and writer James (Brian D’Arcy James) have just returned home from covering the Iraq war. Sarah was badly wounded by a roadside bomb, and James suffered a nervous breakdown while covering a wartime atrocity. Convalescing in their Brooklyn apartment, the couple is forced both to cope with what happened overseas and to “re-evaluate the trajectory of their relationship.” Shell-shocked James hopes for a future that entails marriage and family. Sarah would rather “return to covering war zones” than retreat into a more conventional life. For both characters, domestic life and life on the battlefield are “equally challenging.”
On top of the domestic squabbles, Margulies adds a debate about “the morality of journalists who observe atrocities without interfering,” said Frank Scheck in The Hollywood Reporter. Those questions arise during a visit from Sarah’s longtime editor, Richard (Eric Bogosian), and his much younger party-planner girlfriend, Mandy (Alicia Silverstone). At first, Mandy seems an “utterly vacuous” bubblehead who just can’t understand “what drives Sarah and James to live their lives on the edge.” Soon, though, it’s clear that she’s there to pose provocative questions about the couple’s work. The ethical debates threaten to sink the play, but Margulies adds humor to keep things moving.
Still, this play might not work so well if it didn’t feature four actors “at the top of their game,” said Michael Kuchwara in the Associated Press. D’Arcy James, who last appeared on Broadway in green makeup as Shrek, proves he can portray a character as complex and damaged as James. Bogosian brings a pitch-perfect “hangdog weariness” to the editor, while the evening’s biggest surprise comes from Silverstone, whose Mandy is “the epitome of the power of positive thinking.” Still, it’s Linney who galvanizes the ensemble and makes Sarah “one of the most compelling characters to grace a Broadway stage this season.”
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