A woman looks out the kitchen window. An image of a small boat slides by behind the house. Intriguing. In a lengthy opener a woman talks about the past, actually one day in the past that she is trying to understand. She acts out her narration as her older self. Her younger self keeps looking out the kitchen window. There’s a pretense of kitchen sounds, but there are no kitchen items. Outside the house a huge black thin plastic sheeting represents the ocean which, along with a small boat, and the house, are important elements.
There’s an older woman and a young woman, and an older friend and a young friend. The women speak of their anxiety in long, unhurried talks. There is a man who wants nothing more than to spend time out on the water. Not a fisherman, he simply wants to be there, and by doing so, becomes the cause of an unsolvable mystery. The inability or unwillingness to change leads to isolation, alienation, and loss. An existential and eccentric play , it’s not light-hearted theater. Director Yury Urnov, is able, and the actors bring life to a difficult production.
Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable.” Fosse says, “Theatre is a large act of listening – a director must, or at least should, listen to the text, the way actors listen to it and to each other and to the director, and the way the audience listen to the whole performance. And the act of writing is to me to listen: when I write I never prepare, I don’t plan anything, I proceed by listening. So, if I should use a metaphor for the action of writing, it has to be that of listening.”
[The Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad Street] June 10-29, 2025; wilmatheater.org
80 minutes, no intermission.
80 minutes, no intermission.
Krista Apple …………………….Older Woman
Campbell O’Hare………………Young Woman
Melanye Finister………………Older Friend
Brett Ashley Robinson……….Young Friend
Jaime Maseda……………………Asle
Ross Bescher……………………..Man