“Plants grow and die at the same time each year, and that makes them easier to love.” So says one character in Woolly’s current offering by Noah Haidle, a bittersweet fantasy about love, death, and letting go; the play’s theatrical construction has hints of Tony Kushner and Craig Wright.
Widow (all character names are anonymized to role names) has spent the last two years of her life mourning the death of her firefighter husband. Her clinging to the past takes on physical form, as she keeps his Soul (the surprising Michael Russotto) locked in a box at the foot of her bed. Widow (the always-strong Naomi Jacobson) and Soul replay and replay scenes from their less-than-happy life together—their marriage was forced by an unplanned pregnancy, which subsequently ended in a miscarriage— in sort of a Truly, Madly, Deeply meets Groundhog Day mashup. Unable to control their memories, Soul and WIdow replay scenes of pain more often than those of happiness, and although each would like to utter the words that would undo the pain, each scene repeats as in the past. Soul’s replays are carried out in part by Body (hunky Matthew Montelongo) because Soul is now blind, as he waits out the time on earth before Widow can release him to the afterlife. (The significance and theatrical effectiveness of Soul’s blindness is, unfortunately, lost on me.)
The three are almost overmatched by the perfect J. Fred Shiffman as the adenoidal Wooer, a fireman friend of the family. Shiffman’s Wooer is an amiable dork, awkward at small talk, who simply loves Widow and wants her to move on with her life.
Lest it be thought a heavy show, the play is still a comedy, and fantasy elements keep the mood light. A show-stopping set piece at a high school reunion calls for the four principals to line-dance to an old Britney Spears song, just because. Alas, the Foy flying apparatus for Soul and Widow, however effective, is still a bit obtrusive.
It’s an interesting twist that Wooer can interact, to a limited degree, with Soul. Haidle, young but already skilled in the art of putting a play together, says in a playbill interview,
To write the things I am trying to write, you have to establish the rules very quickly and the audience will give you their time. They’ll go with you for about eight minutes. And in those eight minutes you can do anything, but you have to show them that they’re in a world that has rules. You establish those rules, and most importantly I think, and I don’t know how you do this, but I think you have to tell them when they get to go home.
- Vigils, by Noah Haidle, directed by Colette Searls, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington