There Is No Happy Here

THEATERGOERS BEWARE: This Wide Night features American actors doing British accents onstage. Like strobe lights and herbal cigarettes, accents should always come with fair warning. If sufficiently alerted to the fact that Alison Pill and Edie Falco, as two former prison inmates lost in the world outside after they’re released, would be speaking in slangy Brit dialects, the first 10 minutes of Chloë Moss’ twohander won’t be so flummoxing.

This Wide Night is one of those modest plays almost totally lacking a plot, focusing the playwright’s microscope on two women’s struggle to survive in an unfriendly world. Dowdy, awkward Lorraine (Falco) shows up at the shabby apartment of her former cellmate Marie (Pill) unexpectedly one night, wanting to continue their friendship now that they’re both free women. Marie, whose hard shell has almost obliterated what we sense was once a fragile, sweet nature, wants no reminders of her time in jail, preferring to watch TV on mute alone. But Lorraine is full of plans, from taking a trip to rooming together again. As the play progresses, shot through with ellipses in time and story, both women struggle with what it means to be free when they once were emphatically not.

Moss isn’t interested in powerhouse moments or confrontations; the fights that Lorraine and Marie have are mostly below the surface. Director Anne Kaufmann shows an unusual affinity for such smallscope goings on, drawing forth quietly powerful performances from Falco (shedding all vestige of her neurotic New

Yorker shtick) and the always-reliable Pill. Typical of Moss’ style is a quietly devastating moment as Lorraine and Marie celebrate Lorraine meeting the son she was forced to give up 20 years before. Discussing his foster parents, Marie thoughtlessly asks when his mother died. Falco’s face sags for an instant, then she cheerily answers. The moment is never again referenced, giving us a reprieve from a recriminations-laden confrontation. The plot may be negligible, but fans of unshowy acting should snatch up tickets.

The plot is definitely not negligible in Ellen Fairey’s Graceland. In 80 minutes (the same running time as This Wide Night, coincidentally), Fairey gives us a suicide, a one-night stand, a girlfriend who cheats on her boyfriend with his father and an inappropriate moment between a fortysomething woman and an underage boy.

Had Fairey slightly streamlined her baroque story, which follows siblings Sam (Matt McGrath) and Sara (Marin Hinkle) in the days following their father’s funeral, she’d have a nifty dark comedy about redemption. Instead, she’s given us an intermittently entertaining play, as Sara sets her sights on self-destruction with the older Joe (Brian Kerwin), whom she meets in her father’s favorite bar, and his charming, charmingly manipulative son Miles (David Gelles Hurwitz).

Zipping back and forth with an increasing frenzy from Chicago’s Graceland cemetery to Joe’s apartment and back, the play feels disjointed and increasingly improbable. Sara has a hotel room; Sam lives in Chicago, but both of them seem drawn to their father’s grave, even spending the night passed out in the cemetery. And in a particularly unlikely twist, Miles is a caretaker there.

Director Henry Wishcamper can’t quite get all of the various ingredients to congeal, leaving Hinkle to give an uneven performance (for a woman frequently described as sad, she has a few too many moments of gleefulness) while McGrath barely registers as her unambitious brother. Hurwitz, however, is giving the sort of casual performance that belies the hard work he’s doing. He lands the laugh lines and has some nice moments of insight tinged with sadness, but something feels hollow in the way he flips his hair out of his eyes just so. It’s a smart performance, but not an entirely heartfelt one, which is as good a summary of Graceland as any other.

> THIS WIDE NIGHT Through June 20, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-279-4200; $70.

> GRACELAND Through May 29, The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 646-223-3010; $20.