#andre gregory

WHAT WE DID BEFORE OUR MOTH DAYS by Wallace Shawn, directed by Andre Gregory: This is a very demanding play. People left at both intermissions. It was their loss, because it’s also a very rewarding play. I normally object to works I consider more storytelling than drama, but Shawn’s four-hander, written primarily as a series of monologs, combines rich writing with peerless performances. I’m still unpacking all of this, so my companions for the night, Shane Grant and Joan Lipkin, can fill in their impressions.

Four actors sit in front of a wall with three large arched windows that can change color and reveal an image of large, animated moths in flight. The moth days of the title are the days on which a person dies; one character envisions moths coming to fly his spirit away. It opens with Tim (John Early) telling of the night he learned of his father’s (Josh Hamilton) death. Until the third act, the play principally deals with the events leading to the man’s heart failure at the age of 45 — a marriage to his high-school sweetheart (Maria Dizzia), success moving them apart as each becomes consumed with their own work and his eventual taking of a mistress (Hope Davis). But later we learn that they’re all dead, all looking back on what they did before the moths came.

The play deals with a lot: perceptions of time, male and female approaches to careers and sex, self-destructive behavior, dealing with personal limitations. The list could go on. Yet the language is so rich and so expertly delivered you can get swept up in it. It’s seductive. The staging is incredibly simple. The only big movements are the characters’ entering and exiting, though the way each physicalizes their long speeches also adds to the visual element (in that Hamilton and Davis are particularly strong). Yet, even here, Gregory’s direction makes a point. After describing her visit to Hamilton’s apartment right after his death, when she finally meets his wife and son, Davis leaves the stage, not to return until Act Two, when Hamilton describes meeting her. There is one dialog, when Early goes to visit Davis after his father’s death, and one monolog during which Davis reacts to Hamilton’s description of her. It’s really a two-person scene with one partner silent, which is what most monologs should be (even if you’re talking to the audience, and here endeth your lesson for the day).