Review - Fifty Words: Who's Afraid of Alaska Woolf?

Ah, there's nothing like watching the marriage of a pair of tortured intellectuals crumble before our eyes from the safe distance of an auditorium seat to happily send audience members to the nearest nightcap retreat with that special glow that comes from a satisfying night at the theatre. And actors Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz, along with director Austin Pendleton, do their darndest to whip up a frenzied evening of dangerous, verbally (and a bit physically) violent theatre. If playwright Michael Weller's Fifty Words were a complete enough piece to match its stellar production we might be close to having one of the must-see events of the season, but for now the two-character evening plays more like watching a pair of skilled actors doing exceptional scene work.

Set in the Brooklyn brownstone of Jan and Adam (Neil Patel's exactingly detailed set appropriately reflects the eclectic taste of only ½ the couple), the intermission-less piece takes place near-continuously throughout the first evening they've spent alone together since the birth of their nine-year-old son. The gregarious, sexually aggressive Adam met his future wife as a casual elevator pick-up on a rare occasion when the more conservative Jan was willing to let loose for a crazy night with a stranger. But now it seems sex has become the wall that separates them; his steady voraciousness clashing with her growing disinterest.

Passive-aggressive actions quickly give in to not so passive ones, as marital issues are hurled about between concerns about the boy. And while the author's dialogue is sharp and realistic, the play sometimes relies on too obvious foreshadowing and that reliable mood-changer, the telephone call, to move the thin drama along.

The more serious problem, however, is that Wellman fails to show us any signs of what kept these two together for so long. The animated, attention-seeking Adam and the cold, distancing Jan seem so detached from one another that watching their marriage fall apart is an unemotional experience. We can thrill to Marvel's horrifying unleashing of bottled-up emotions and be repulsed by the selfishness behind Butz's playful groping of his topless wife, but the reactions come more from watching two daring and committed performances than any feelings nurtured for Jan and Adam.

"It's a stupid word, 'love.' There should be Fifty Words for it; like Eskimos have for snow," says Jan during a sobering moment. And while there is much to be admired in Weller's play, there is little impact without a fuller exploration of the love that exists, or at least once may have existed, between its characters.