At the start of The Last Schwartz, Anne Bowles as Bonnie deftly sets the tone, relating how she saw Siamese twins on Oprah. They strike her as oddly optimistic in hoping to get married. Her cousin, after all, can’t find love, “and she’s pretty and smart and has only one head.” Moments later, she’s weeping for her miscarriage: “… if I could have had him for just one full day…” It’s a dark,
Passing time is painful. So what could be more titillating than other people’s hell when it comes to distracting the mind from its own personal grief? In a powerfully evocative stage adaptation of David Grossman’s novel, Theater J brings Falling Out of Time to the stage as the penultimate production of their 2015/2016 calendar season. Directed and Adapted by Derek Goldman, this strikingly emotional drama hones in on the potent power of grief and its ability to transform the lives of an entire village.
Nothing seems to be going Joseph Douaihy’s way. His body is racked with mysterious chronic pain, he desperately needs health insurance, his disgraced publisher boss is certifiably nutso, and his father has just died in the wake of a freak accident involving a plastic deer decoy, leaving him as the primary care-giver for both his younger brother and his ailing uncle. This sets off Theater J’s stellar production of Stephen Karam’s award-winning play Sons of the Prophet,