Sigourney Weaver stars as a journalist helping fire chief Bill Murray write eulogies for eight men lost on Sept. 11 in Anne Nelson's play 'The Guys.'
A Flea Theater presentation of a play in one act by Anne Nelson. Directed by Jim Simpson.
Nick - Bill Murray
Joan - Sigourney Weaver
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say, but surely similar material is used in laying the path to tedium? "The Guys," a new play by Anne Nelson, is a case in point. This sober, journalistic slice-of-life revisits the horrors of Sept. 11 through the experience of a writer and a fire captain collaborating on a series of eulogies the latter has been asked to deliver. It's somber, sincere and remarkably well-observed in its depiction of a man of few words struggling to find the right ones for his extraordinary responsibility. But it is also, at this particular point in time, utterly superfluous -- and dramatically a bit on the dull side.
The play, commissioned by the small Flea Theater in Tribeca in response to the events of Sept. 11, has been garnering plenty of press attention due to its subject matter and its cast of two: Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver, who is married to Jim Simpson, the Flea's a.d. and the director of "The Guys." As a result, there's a slightly off-putting aroma of hype about the production, a feeling enforced by the fact that Murray and Weaver perform with the play's text handily present on music stands in front of them.
Why not hire actors who can devote the time necessary to learning the (admittedly lengthy) text, rather than stars whose other obligations make it impossible? Because stars bring bigger audiences and more attention, and justify the Flea's $55 ticket price, unusually high for this Off Off Broadway space. In a program note, Simpson explains the hefty price as a way of regaining some ground after the losses the Tribeca theater incurred when business downtown plummeted after Sept. 11. Fair enough -- but it's a little distasteful to find a play dealing directly with the terrible human cost of Sept. 11 in the service of theatrical fund- and profile-raising, however necessary.
Murray, in fact, left the production after the opening night, to be replaced by Bill Irwin. That's a shame, because Murray's delicate, deeply felt performance is the real revelation here. The actor's average-guy mug only rarely sports the mischievous, faux-innocent smirk so familiar from his movie and TV work; he's abandoned his comic charisma and disappeared into the aching soul of the shell-shocked Nick, who lost eight men on Sept. 11 and is terrified at the thought of delivering eight eulogies.
Nick has been put in touch with Weaver's Joan, an ex-journo and mother who narrates the tale, and together they sit trying to hash out a text. She prods him with questions about "the guys"; he fumbles out answers, gradually growing more comfortable even as his recollection of the day's events becomes overwhelming.
Murray's performance is utterly artless and unactorly, and very touching in its honesty. He may not have memorized the text, but Murray has clearly assimilated the gentle heart of this regular guy who has endured an extraordinary loss. Nelson's writing for Nick is beautifully unassuming, too: There's not a misplaced note in it, and Murray plays them all --bewilderment, numbness, deep-seated guilt and anger -- with uncommon simplicity.
The writing for Weaver's character is much more problematic. In her narration, she describes her personal history and her recollection of the events: She heard about it from her father in Oklahoma, who called just as she was getting ready to vote for Mark Green. She turned on the TV, watched as the second plane hit, called her husband in his office, wanted to help but didn't know how, etc.
But as she relates her experience, it's hard not to feel that pretty much everyone in the audience has -- sadly enough --been there, done that, in actuality, and that a fictionalized recounting of events shared by all is neither necessary nor, at least in Nelson's conception, illuminating. Joan's story is no more extraordinary than anyone else's -- and, being fiction, it's automatically less compelling than the actual ones still echoing in our heads and hearts.
We don't go to the theater to meet ourselves, after all, but other people. We don't go to relive our own experiences, but to enter into others'. Audiences at a greater distance from the events, both geographical and temporal, would likely find more to ponder in the show, but when Joan starts interrupting the colloquy between the two to quote from "Listening to Prozac" about the stages of grief, or to offer commonplaces about what she's learned from the experience ("We have no idea what wonders lie hidden in the people around us"), something close to irritation sets in. (It's not about you, Joan!) The writing traps Weaver in a monotonously earnest mode; her cool contralto and thoughtfully furrowed brow keep reminding us how painful and moving it all is.
And truth to tell, even the colloquy itself isn't terribly compelling. The soft-spoken give and take between Nick and Joan has a preordained structure, from which it never varies, despite a few comic asides and a tango interlude; conflict, emotional or otherwise, is out of the question here. Joan asks sympathetic questions ("What else did Bill love?"). Nick responds. She works up a text, he reads it. The pattern is repeated for the first four of Nick's lost men.
It's a bit like listening in on the creation of some of the Times' "Portraits of Grief." But since this is art and not life, we can be forgiven for finding the process a little tedious. Journalism has already done a remarkable job of bringing us into the heart of the terrible events of last fall; there's little more that theater, at least of this journalistic kind, can do.
Set and lighting, Kyle Chepulis; costumes, Claudia Brown; stage manager, Rebecca Gura. Artistic director, Simpson. Opened Jan. 26, 2002. Reviewed Jan. 25. Running time: 1 HOUR, 30 MIN.
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Date in print: Mon., Jan. 28, 2002