Susan Granger’s review of “Time Stands Still” (Cort Theater: 2010-2011 season)
You only have until the end of January to see Golden Globe nominee Laura Linney in what I consider to be the best play on Broadway, because that’s when she must depart to resume her high-profile gig on Showtime’s “The Big C.”
“Time Stands Still” revolves 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 (Linney) and James Dodd (Brian d’Arcy James) return to their upscale Brooklyn loft 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 Bloom (Christina Ricci), 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, 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, Pulitzer Prize-winning 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 and John Lee Beatty’s set. 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 Christina Ricci, making her Broadway debut, exudes bewilderment about why Sarah and James thrive on conflict. This taut production rings with emotional truth.