Hearts growing fonder

A year after last hearing from her husband, kidnapped by leftist rebels while on a business trip to Colombia, Colette (Elisabeth Nunziato) is haunted by guilt and grief. Their last encounters were not pleasant. Did she wish him dead and get her wish? How much blame can we take for bad thoughts that seem to result in bad acts?

Absence, anxiety, loss and loose ends are at the heart of Canadian playwright Morris Panych’s latest play, getting its American debut at B Street Theatre. The prolific playwright generally deals with dark humor, and while the tone of this mystery has its darker shades, it has plenty of lighter moments, too.

Colette hasn’t been sleeping—“I’m afraid of my dreams,” she says—and she’s been drinking—“too much, or not enough.” She carries on conversations with her absent husband, Tom (Kurt Johnson), and clings to the belief that he is not dead, merely missing. A young drifter (played by B Street acting intern Dan Fagan) mysteriously drops into her life, bringing sexual tension and a tantalizing possible connection to her husband’s disappearance. David Pierini, in a fine second-fiddle role as neighbor Bill, who would like to take Tom’s place in Colette’s heart, and Jamie Jones as her disconcerted sister Evelyn complete the cast of engaging characters.

Buck Busfield does a commendable job of translating Panych’s wordy and sometimes problematic script to the stage. At two hours, the play is some 20 minutes shorter than at its world premiere last month in Montreal and it’s no doubt better for it. The play slips back and forth in time and place in swiftly shifting scenes that Ron Madonia’s effective lighting and Steven Schmidt’s gorgeous, multilevel set isolate and intensify. Busfield and cast seem perfectly attuned to Panych’s sensibility, thrown off only by his rush of revelations and wrap-up at the end.