Susan Granger’s review of “Time Stands Still” (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre 2009-2010 season)
With “The Hurt Locker” winning the Academy Award, one is struck by the relevance of Donald Margulies’ new play about the uneasy relationship between an injured female photojournalist and her reporter boyfriend as they cope with the physical and emotional effects of horrific violence and her near-fatal encounter with a roadside bomb in Iraq.
The domestic drama begins as badly wounded Sarah Goodwin (Laura Linney) and James Dodd (Brian d’Arcy James) return to their upscale Brooklyn loft (courtesy of John Lee Beatty) after she’s discharged from a hospital in Germany. They’d been working together in Iraq until James fled back to the United States in a mental breakdown a few weeks before the accident that’s left Sarah limping and facially scarred. Now they have different agendas: he’s looking forward to resuming a more stable, normal life, while she desperately wants to recover and return to the front lines as soon as possible.
When their longtime friend/editor Richard Ehrlich (Eric Bogosian) and his amiable, much younger, party-planner girlfriend, Mandy (Alicia Silverstone), arrive, they try to dissuade Sarah. And there’s a funny scene as James and Sarah verbally spar with Richard about the appropriateness of good-hearted, if shallow, Mandy Bloom whom acerbic Sarah derisively describes as “embryonic.” It’s also revealed that Sarah had a romantic relationship with her Iraqi interpreter who was killed in the roadside blast.
Along with the timeliness, Donald Margulies’ multi-dimensional characters and witty, insightful observations, particularly about the moral ambiguities of the press in covering atrocities, add to the appeal, enhanced by director Daniel Sullivan’s superb staging.
In brilliant performance, Laura Linney captures impatient Sarah’s ambitious drive and sharp intelligence, while Brian d’Arcy James adroitly reflects his character’s guilt/anger and desperation at the idea of losing the woman he loves. Eric Bogosian embodies male mid-life angst, as bubbly Alicia Silverstone exudes bewilderment about why Sarah and James thrive on conflict. This is Margulies’ best since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Dinner With Friends” and this taut production rings with emotional truth.