Peter Crawley reviews The Sunset Limitedat Town Hall Theatre, Galway
In the terse, often warmly comic and ultimately deeply wearing tête à tête between a nervy suicidal depressive and a kind-hearted religious zealot, the protagonists of Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limitedmay have more in common than they think. For a start, both of their positions are entirely unreasonable.
In a play which boils down to a debate on the merits of living - to be or not to be? - Steppenwolf's production pivots between two extremes: in Freeman Coffey's good Samaritan figure, who has saved a man from committing suicide on the subway tracks, we see a man of faith for whom no explanation is necessary; in Austin Pendleton's professor, who finds himself counselled in his saviour's run-down apartment, we see a clinically depressed atheist for whom no explanation is possible.
"You see everything in Black and White!" an unrepentant Pendleton says to his rescuer, in a crescendo of exasperation. That his character is called White and Coffey's is named Black (their ethnicities are not coincidental) underscores the Manichean clash engineered by McCarthy, one that is leavened by two sublimely naturalistic performances, but, alas, is not saved from a crushing sense of futility.
Director Sheldon Patinkin and designer Scott Neale have grasped both the potential and the problem of McCarthy's play, Neale limiting the playing space to the corner of Black's tenement kitchen, and Patinkin investing every minute display with significance. Both decisions foreshadow the dead end of the discussion: there is literally nowhere to go. But if the characters seem merely representative, in name and position, McCormac has granted each a rich characterisation, and Pendleton and Coffey are brilliantly engaging.
Slumped and crumpled, arguing existentialism with neurotic intelligence, Pendleton proves that there is no sight sadder than a professor in a tracksuit. There is a shy warmth in his performance, which is hard to reconcile with terminal despair: "Western civilisation went up in smoke in the chimneys of Dachau," goes one of his cheerier epigrams, while Coffey - the ex-con who once was lost but then was found - refuses to give up and counters with contemporary parables, homespun wisdom and a repartee he never confirms as deliberate obtuseness or crafty wiles.
There is, of course, a third participant in this dialogue - the audience. If McCarthy is thus fretful to draw a conclusion, allowing us our say, he nonetheless grants the "professor of darkness" an unwavering conviction and cogent eloquence that shakes the faith of the believer. Here, White's views are positively - which is to say, negatively - Beckettian: "If I thought that in death I would meet the people I've known in life I don't know what I'd do. That would be the ultimate horror." But Beckett, unhindered by naturalism, actually rings truer in his paradox, "I can't go on. I'll go on." The existentialist, unlike the suicidal depressive, sees all the reasons not to continue, yet keeps his feet on the platform. - Until July 21st
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