Stephanie Erb, Ivy Khan, Abigail Stewart and Grinnell Morris (Photo by Eric Keitel)
Reviewed by Iris Mann
Theatre 40
Through December 17
RECOMMENDED
In The Half-Light, playwright Monica Wood has fashioned a poignant delicate story, with the occasional gently humorous dialogue. Though there is a softness to the play, Wood deals with such weighty subjects as loss, grief, love, tough love and addiction as well as life and death. The play’s title refers to the light between this world and the next, and also to the light separating living souls from one another.
Is it possible for one to connect with the dead? Iris (Ivy Khan), the story’s protagonist and a secretary in the English department of a small university, was told by a clairvoyant that she has the gift, and he began training her to contact the other side, first by taking in and committing to memory everything in her surroundings. After the clairvoyant dies, Iris begins visiting people who believe their homes are haunted or who want to reach loved ones who have died, but to no avail. She receives no visions, yet the people all thank her for showing up.
When Andrew (Grinnell Morris), Iris’s close co-worker and a professor of Irish literature, undergoes an unspeakable tragedy and is overwhelmed by grief, Iris tries hard to get him to reconnect to life. Her friend, Helen (Stephanie Erb), a secretary in another department at the university, intrusively tries to promote a romantic relationship between Iris and Andrew. Helen has her own issues. Her daughter, Teresa (Abigail Stewart), is a seemingly hopeless alcoholic, and Helen is at the end of her rope because of Teresa’s repeated attempts at rehab and her repeated relapses. When Teresa, who is convinced a spirit is haunting her house, calls on Iris to get rid of the ghost, the four characters find themselves interwoven in unexpected ways as their individual stories come together.
Director Ann Hearn Tobolowsky skillfully creates a gentle atmosphere, with clean, fluid staging that flows easily from one scene to another. She has also staged the action to be so lifelike that it seems as though one is peering into the lives of real people, perhaps neighbors, instead of watching performers presenting a story.
Her actors are uniformly committed to their characters. Khan is a steady presence and projects an essential decency and an air of caring and concern. Erb is all high, boisterous energy until she reveals Helen’s underlying pain over her daughter’s addiction. Her transitions from one emotional level to the other are smoothly accomplished. Morris masters his character’s transition from a friendly, somewhat carefree and satisfied professor to a man totally felled by grief and loss. One feels for him as he reveals the guilt Andrew suffers over his growing attraction to Iris. As Teresa, Stewart starts out with a certain desperation and with a hint of hysteria just under the surface. But, when her character begins to straighten out her life, she projects a calmer, more self-controlled demeanor.
As the play draws to a close, it becomes clear that the playwright’s basic theme has to do with the profound need of the living, and the dead, to be really seen, to make a connection and to be acknowledged.
Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills. Thurs.-Sat. 7:30 pm, Sun., 2 pm; Mondays Dec. 4 and 11, 7:30 pm, dark Nov. 23 and 24; thru Dec. 17. http://theatre40.org Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes with an intermission.
