Life Is Terminal

By T.E. Kalem

THE SHADOW BOX

by MICHAEL CRISTOFER

It may sound odd, but Broadway is not healthy enough to accommodate this gallant and luminous play about dying.

Yet the regional theater is able to. The Shadow Box was launched at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum and has found a second home in New Haven. The original director, Gordon Davidson, repeats that task at the Long Wharf Theater, over which Arvin Brown presides. Both these artistic directors are nurturing top regional theaters.

Though the three pivotal characters are terminal cases, they live in cottages where their families and lovers can be with them. Both the dying and the living share a common ground of anguish.

There is a hardhat (Clifton James) whose workaday life seems to have been as terminal as his present state. His distraught wife (Joyce Ebert) cannot ac cept her husband's imminent death.

Next there is an intellectual (Laurence Luckinbill) who, in a fury of last-minute creativity, is working on bits of poems and novels. He has a homosexual lover (Mandy Patinkin) who is desolated, and a stand-up lush of an ex-wife (Patricia Elliott) whose sassy words rain mockery on all. Finally there is a cranky old biddy (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who will not go gently into any night. Her slavishly devoted daughter (Rose Gregorio) fears that all meaning in her own life will slip away with her mother.

Apart from bruising wisdom, there is an unexpected quota of humor in Michael Cristofer's play. Aided by a splendid cast, Davidson's fluent direction suggests an affecting choreography of lost souls.

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