Susan Granger’s review of “Vigil” (Westport Country Playhouse, March ’08)
With Joanne Woodward and Anne Keefe back at the helm, the Westport Country Playhouse is back on track with this morbidly dark, existential comedy about loneliness and death.
Summoned by his elderly, dying Aunt Grace (Helen Stenborg) to whom he hasn’t spoken in 30 years, Kemp (Timothy Busfield) dutifully leaves his bank job and travels cross-country to be at her bedside. When he arrives, however, the silent woman doesn’t seem to be as ailing as he’d frankly hoped. Indeed, as months pass, the self-absorbed, misanthropic fellow grows increasingly desperate and agitated.
“I’m concerned about your health,” he tells Grace after more than a year of serving as her nursemaid and companion, preparing endless batches of butterscotch pudding and funeral plans. “It seems to be improving.”
Canadian playwright Morris Panych has crafted a bizarre, gimmicky concept that doesn’t truly reveal itself until the second act – after Kemp has delivered a seemingly endless, often redundant series of short monologues, recounting his wretched, dysfunctional childhood with emotionally abusive parents and rebuking Grace for her inattentiveness to his paranoid needs and inexplicable lack of interest in his welfare.
While director Stephen DiMenna maximizes the crisp amusement of the strange, campy vignettes, it’s a tour-de-force for Timothy Busfield (TV’s “thirtysomething,” “The West Wing.”), who delicately balances the dry, cynical humor with neurotic pathos. And Helen Stenborg (Broadway’s “The Crucible,” “A Month in the Country”) gleefully steals scene after scene with her bemused, often bewildered facial expressions. She is the dramatic foil and she underplays the crucial role to wondrous perfection.
Credit the team of set designer Andromache Chalifant, costumer Ilona Somogyi, lighting designer Ben Stanton and sound designer Daniel Baker for the effectiveness of the decrepit, threadbare, high-windowed old house.