We struggle under the weight of things that weigh nothing at all. Like shadows and light beams, we are boxed in by invisible borders - things we believe society expects of us, fear of some kind of failure, resistance to a new idea, assuming a loved one will be hurt.
What if we gave in to disbelief? What if we just went along with things? What if we just laughed in the face of discomfort or a contrary opinion?
There are no obvious answers in Half Life but there are a lot of questions posed by this award-winning play on now at Theatre Northwest. They are inspired questions. They are the biggest questions, really, and that can be boring or preachy in the hands of the mediocre. They are delicious in the hands of playwright John Mighton, passed on to director Jack Grinhaus and his rich cast of actors.
This is a rare script. It has no hero, nor is there a bad guy. The villain is that invisible deflection shield that keeps us from living to our fullest potential.
The symbol of how we are held back by our own ambition has a name in this play. It is Donald, a handsome, financially set, middle-aged man who is stepping higher and higher on his professional ladder. Yet he is yolked by a misplaced sense of obligation, a set of assumptions. Adam Kenneth Wilson demonstrates a powerful acting skill: drawing inward. Actors are often people who excel at showing off, but he shows in. It's especially appreciable if you watch the docu-drama Manson on Netflix where he portrays the titular real-life murderous cult figure Charles Manson. That is an outburst to Donald's inburst. What riveting range.
Another actor in this cast who wins his character by keeping his cards close to the vest is Alec Willows in the role of elderly Patrick. Willows hardly moves a muscle - he's slow and methodical - yet does heavy lifting as the partially confused, but still partially vital war veteran, who still has to live the life of a walking, talking classified file. It's all in Willows's face. He would have been a superstar in the silent film era, and he gets to be a star on the local stage.
This character and his actor needed a peer, a reflection. She is Clara, played by the incomparable Linda Goranson. These two, embodied as one, are far more powerful than appearances would indicate. It's difficult for Clara's son Donald to grasp just how complex his elderly mother's life is. She's fading away into fits of sleep and generic congeniality in her old folks home. How could she still have a drive to reconcile complicated emotions? Watching Goranson, a warm and dynamic actor, handle Clara's moods and mental storms put a streak of hot truth to what bright times await in the second half of life.
No doubt actor Lauren Brotman is soaking up the mentorship from Goranson. Brotman plays Anna, Patrick's daughter and the mirror character for Donald. Anna is, like Donald, spending time at the old folks home to look after a parent. But she, too, is conflicted by her sense of duty to love and comfort someone who has not exactly done that for her growing up. While her invisible borders are not as rigid as Donald's, she is no farther ahead on the emotional scale, just a bit off his rhythm. Brotman provides those sparks that ignite us, the audience, as much as they did Donald, which causes us the same pangs of concern when that budding romance, ever so wispy and delicate, has its moments of falter.
Can there be any more compact lesson packed into Half Life than when Mighton writes us the character of Agnes? She's crusty. She's obnoxious. She's a streak of comedy. Yet what exactly are we laughing at? She breaks our heart in one tiny little line - just the finishing of her own sentence (and I won't repeat it, you'll have to go and feel the sting for yourself) - and it stabs us, right through the laughter. She is there like a flag waving for the concept of "never judge a book by its cover." Never forget that a perpetually grumpy disposition had to be born somewhere back in time.
It was a tall ask of any actor, but Lisa Dahling brings us that hilarity and that slap of empathy and that ache to comfort someone in pain even if they are being one themselves. Dahling is so capable at this craft of acting that she was handed two other roles as well.
Chris Ralph also has two roles, but the main one, the Reverend, is a man of two minds. He's someone who has to wear the uniform and the persona of a clergyman out in public, but not deep below his surface is a regular guy who, for all his priestly wisdom, is the same bumbling dummy we all are. Ralph is smooth at this juggle. He doesn't turn the Reverend into a laughable caricature nor does he sink him into a pit of unknowable pontifications, although Mighton provides that ammunition. Ralph is just careful not to shoot it wastefully.
Some playwrights put wasteful characters on the stage. Mighton does not. Everything in his mathematically calculated world of symbolic fiction has a higher purpose. The character of Tammy almost comes across as a minor part, but she is actually the hot part of the moral metal of this play, the part the story bends on. Everything we see of Tammy brings us into a decision about what's acceptable behaviour and what's not. She also represents that part of life that I know I could go mad turning over and over in my brain. Tammy is the living interruption. She is that moment in our lives where we were on a path towards something definite, and then something happened to knock us off the momentum and it never came back. The course of our life was altered by a twist of fate you can never get out of your head. We've all had them. We've all had our Tammies. And Tammy, in this production, has Donna Soares, an actor to breathe that zest into her. She delivers, through her character, the hope that youth offers and also the impetuousness of that time of life. She makes impulsive, rebellious decisions with little accountability, yet maybe they were the correct decisions anyway. Soares gets that flow just right.
These actors are doing the most important job a thespian is ever tasked to do: show us life. Show us ourselves. The script has it all there, but the wrong inflections can still dull the effect. Grinhaus needed an all-star ensemble to pull this one off.
The other cast member in this play is you. As you watch, you might just find yourself wondering what life is all about, and then you might wonder if that's part of what Mighton was trying to show us with this play. Is this a Rubick's cube we're trying to solve? Or are we the Rubick's cube getting turned end for end towards the ultimate answers to life's great puzzles? Will all our sides one day suddenly tumble into place, or are we just turning in random squared circles?
What Half Life does demonstrate time after time, though, is how much fun life is no matter what may go wrong. Through the regrets and mistakes and pains of life, there is always laughter and sunshine and sex and games and the good company of others. For all the math and science and commerce and medicine and religion we may impose on ourselves, our lives are a story. This one is so very well told.
