Maybe forgetting yourself once in a while is a good thing. From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends, Collected Stories) comes a stirring new play about the fragility of memory and the passage of time. Late on a summer night, in a field on their Kentucky farm, a long-married couple, George (Birney) and Em (Emery), have come to watch a lunar eclipse. As the seven stages of the celestial phenomenon unfold, the two sip bourbon and reflect on land and legacy, and children and dogs. But as more and more is revealed, they realize they are as much a mystery to each other as the heavens above. Lunar Eclipse is the funny, moving, universal story of a couple reckoning with the time they’ve spent on earth and the time they have left.
I wish there had been more “there” there, because these two actors are clearly up to the bit. I am sure of thief because as mild mannered as the text was, Birney and Emery made us believe that these two were the real deal. As performers and characters their bond is mighty. And that, my friends, is pretty much the whole deal.
Neither the play’s characterizations nor dialogue achieve the complexity of Margulies’ best works, and it all feels a little too neat in its set-up. But despite its schematic elements, Lunar Eclipse proves poignantly moving nonetheless thanks to its dramatic restraint and Kate Whoriskey’s pitch-perfect direction. Birney and Emery, who have long graced our stages, deliver impeccable work, never hitting a wrong emotional note and making us fully empathize with their characters — especially in a heartbreaking coda that depicts them at a very early stage in their relationship, getting together in the same field to witness a blood moon. Their superb work is abetted by the wonderful design elements including Grace McLean’s affecting music, Walt Spangler’s evocative set design, and Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting that gorgeously conveys every stage of that lunar eclipse.
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
Second Stage Theater Production Off-Broadway |
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