The Sunset Limited
Author Cormac McCarthy has written ten novels, receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road. His novel, No Country for Old Men, was adapted into a film, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. I could extensively continue listing his literary credits. The point is, however, that The Sunset Limited, his second play, is written with an extremely precarious dramatic format and is, in my opinion, more about artistic daring than imagination.
I suppose since the success of the film, My Dinner with Andre,it is assumed that no plot is needed for drama, and two conversationalists can create an adequately entertaining experience. I admit that My Dinner with Andre did somehow work. But The Sunset Limited (two hours without a break)—although an excellently written thesis about religious faith versus nihilism—never meant more to me than an intellectual exercise, nor touched me below the neck. I thought throughout the evening that Mr. McCarthy should have chosen a different literary form for his ideas—a long short story, perhaps, where action could be described and details of living could fill in silences and create the illusion of time passing.
Drama is a great and unique art form about behavior and relationship as much as dialogue. Story has always meant more than diatribe or lecturing and argument. The plot in this play (an ex-con locks a would be suicide in his apartment to bring him to a mind change) appears to me to be contrived,—a convenience enabling hours of long harangues. Jesus’ one kiss to the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (a novel, to be sure) said more than a thousand words could have done. In this play, one actor does make an effort to embrace the other at the end of the play (the one attempt at feeling without words), but it is too late—we have been drowned in verbiage. In my opinion Mr. McCarthy is trying to say far too much in the wrong format.
The play could not stand at all without the brilliant performances of Tucker Smallwood and Ron Bottitta. Mr. Bottitta brought a true intellectuality to his performance; I was totally convinced here was a disillusioned professor with all the words imaginable at his disposal to turn an argument. Tucker Smallwood has a great physicality which spiced up the static verbalization but he must learn to relax in his emotional moments, allowing feeling to flow rather than be forced.
The set by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz is good, although uncluttered, with a terribly clean coffee pot. The sound design by Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski is also good; I would, however, have liked to have heard more hallway noises interspersed, indicating the tenement life in which this play takes place. I wish the lights could have done more to indicate the passage of time, from night to morning; perhaps rippling effects of light as it seeps in through the window. Director John Perrin Flynn did well with what he had: primarily, two very good actors.
Although intellectually stimulating and extremely erudite, The Sunset Limited left me cold, and I cannot recommend it.
Theatre/Theater
5041 Peco. Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca.
www.roguemachinetheatre.com
November 6th –December 19th 2010