Lisa Emery, Reed Birney (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Lunar Eclipse

By Marc Miller

The 21^st century theater has distinguished itself by consistently being a welcoming space for viewpoints that might have a hard time finding safe harbor elsewhere. Minorities-racial, sexual, whatever-can confidently assert their opinions and identities, with little fear of political opponents shouting them down or rounding them up. All well and necessary. But some of us, and I may get in trouble for saying this, can find comfort and reassurance in the simple sight of two white actors of a certain age on a stage, just talking. And when what they're saying is written by Donald Margulies, a white playwright of a certain age, that goes double.

You may know Margulies as the Pulitzer-winning author of Dinner with Friends, or any number of worthy works. To name a few: Brooklyn Boy, Time Stands Still, Sight Unseen, Collected Stories-Uta Hagen, and then Linda Lavin, were really unforgettable in that. His new one, the Second Stage Theater production Lunar Eclipse, is smaller than usual, an 80-minute two-hander on a single set (but it's a lovely one, by Walt Spangler). He hasn't much on his mind but aging, and couple dynamics. Luckily, the couple in question are played by Reed Birney and Lisa Emery, and that's all you need for a rewarding night out.

Spangler's set, on the wide Irene Diamond Stage at the Signature Center, takes in an expanse of lightly tended Kentucky farmland, limited here to tall green grass dotted by wildflowers, a tree, and a pair of lawn chairs center stage. But we don't see them at first, for it's the dead of night, and Amith Chandrashaker's lighting rises very slowly. What we can make out is George, a farmer in his 70s, hunched over and crying. (Birney's a good crier.) We'll find out what he's crying about soon enough, but first he'll quickly stanch the tears at the arrival of Em, who's there to share the coming lunar eclipse with him.

George, we soon see, is an amateur astronomer, fascinated by the skyscape and knowledgeable about constellations, though that knowledge is starting to slip. We also see that he's moody and quick-tempered, and Em, a lifetime of experience behind her, is diligent at confronting and controlling his frequent minor rages. Margulies leaks out their personas gradually, in scenes divided by the eclipse's evolution ("Moon enters penumbra," "Middle of totality," etc.), and what we increasingly see is, well, an unremarkable marriage.

How to mine drama out of that? Margulies does so subtly, doling out George's and Em's history fact by fact. George inherited the farm and has long prided himself on running it; Em's a town girl who didn't relish moving out there but accepted it as wifely duty. They adopted two children, one of them a terrible disappointment who George admits he never loved, the other an independent spirit who moved to Denver and is no longer a large presence in their lives. He's a sturdy old guy, but he's aging and he knows it, forgetting friends' names and grunting to lift himself out of that lawn chair. She exists mostly as a sounding board, helping him reason out their conflicts and managing his moodiness. They're both dog lovers, the surroundings littered with the bones of canines past, and memories of the recently departed Belle trigger some of George's most fervent emotions.

She'd like him to talk out his troubles more, but he's not wired like that: "Why have people got it in their heads talking makes things better?" She does pull feelings out of him, though. And what a pleasure it is to witness Reed Birney, one of our great character actors, create a whole being out of what might have been in lesser hands just a random collection of character traits. Emery perhaps has an even harder task: Em is, as she herself admits, practically a nonentity, a helpmeet who pushed down whatever ambitions she had to perform the responsibilities expected of her. The two play beautifully together, as they did in Casa Valentina, and Kate Whoriskey's direction brings out the small character details and reactions that you may have witnessed hundreds of times in couples of this generation, but seldom paid much attention to.

It's an exquisite production, from Chandrashaker's slowly evolving lighting (watch the stars brighten and fade) to Sinan Refik Zafar's natural, unaffected sound design-birds, crickets, the occasional passing vehicle, and no mics. S. Katy Tucker's projections narrate the eclipse effects without clonking us on the head with them, and Jennifer Moeller's costumes are just what you'd expect George and Em to wear.

Lisa Emery, Reed Birney (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Why a lunar eclipse? It's a metaphor, I think, an arc mirroring the marriage, an accumulation of cosmic forces shaping a shared lifetime. The character revelations come steadily and convincingly; and a sweet epilogue, with Birney and Emery transforming themselves into the teenage George and Em, surely contains some of the best acting you'll see all season. Lunar Eclipse has familiar themes on its mind, and virtually no plot. Leave it to these actors and this playwright to turn such quotidian elements into something memorable.

Lunar Eclipse
Irene Diamond Stage, The Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42^nd Street
Through June 22
Tickets: SignatureTheatre.org