Review of: Ages of the Moon

You know Sam Shepard is feeling his age while you watch his play, Ages of the Moon, where two men in their 60's face their upcoming infirmities just around the corner with death not far behind that. Though this pair claims to be best friends, we suspect the friendship is tenuous at best as they have not seen or spoken to each other for a number of years. As they bicker about hazy memories, it becomes clear that Byron is the reasonable one who has settled into and accepted a calm, unexciting life, whereas Ames refuses to buy into a sedentary existence. Ames has even tempted fate by cheating on his adored wife and is paying the consequences, banished to his rural cabin. Desperate and depressed, he has summoned Byron from miles and miles away to comfort him and act as his confessor. Imbibing glass after glass of alcohol, the companions lose the threads of their conversation often digressing to any number of topics.

One such topic concerns the age of the moon and its impending scheduled total eclipse. As symbol and metaphor, one can come to some obvious conclusions as to what Mr. Shepard has on his mind. And as the moon is a full one, Byron and Ames become proverbial wolves howling at it. Being Shepard, you know there will be some kind of violent, physical confrontation and sure enough these two eventually go at it until Byron suffers a momentary heart scare, and a painful revelation is delivered.

To be sure we are in a world so real as to be surreal where time has no fixed point, where a ceiling fan has a mind of its own and where sound evaporates. To me, Mr. Shepard longs to be the American Samuel Beckett and though he might be able to lay partial claim to that title, his language simply doesn't possess the poetry that Beckett gave his characters. What ruins this otherwise affecting little play is the choreographed drinking the two characters are obliged to perform. If this act is in the text I would expunge it; if it is due to Jimmy Fay's direction then Mr. Shepard should have stepped in. Still Mr. Fay is at fault for having his actors speak passages of rapid give and take with a Mamet-esque elevation which constantly reminds us we are watching a play. This technique throws the excellent Sean McGinley and Stephen Rea off kilter from which they must repeatedly recover. Mr. McGinley has a tendency to take the reasonableness and blandness of Byron a little too far, but by play's end the choice makes absolute sense. Mr. Rea in the showier role is close to having a good time with Ames, but you can sense something is holding him back from completely inhabiting this wild, crazy and sad guy, and I suspect it is because of the director. No matter, Mr. Rea is always a pleasure to watch.

Brien Vahey appropriately designs his three-dimensional set to look two-dimensional and Paul Keogan's lighting evokes the other-worldly moods of two isolated beings.

The audience around me were by turns amused, exasperated, rapt and fidgety which tells you a lot about how much is right and wrong with Mr. Shepard's work.

...end