From the get-go, Michael Weller’s “50 Words,” which plays through Sunday atGableStage in Coral Gables, doesn’t paint the rosiest picture of a modern marriage. The tiniest domestic minutia set off husband and wife in this one-act play’s opening stanzas, and you get the feeling these minor kerfuffles are only the tip of this couple’s iceberg of conflict.
Dramatic revelations abound, and by the end of the play, marriage has come to represent many things, none of them positive: “50 Words” shows marriage as a mutual charade, a bipolar roller coaster of emotion and, ultimately, a passionless negotiation. Married life, after a certain point, is a perpetual midlife crisis with occasional hiccups of pleasantry–a soul-bruising, life-ruining nightmare of concessions, affairs and sleeplessness. In other words, this is a great date play!
With their son on his first-ever sleepover, Brooklyn couple Adam (Gregg Weiner) and Jan (Erin Joy Schmidt) aim to celebrate their first night alone together in seven years. Architect Adam, who will be leaving in the morning for a contract job in the Midwest, has designs on Jan, hoping to reignite the sexual fire of their first night together, an intimate encounter in the back of an NYC cab. But times have changed since then. As fights increased, sexual passion disintegrated. The birth of their son Gregory added stress. The contemporary economic climate has caused the well-off Adam (I’m envious of their immaculate interior set design, a typical GableStage marvel) to struggle financially, taking jobs in Middle America out of desperation. And Jan gave up her career as a dancer to become a mother (something she reminds Adam of on a seemingly daily basis), so instead of a creatively fulfilling career, she slaves over a laptop in data-entry tedium.
When Jan discovers a phone message to Adam from a mysterious woman, all the stars of marital strife align, and the conflict bubbling under the set design’s placid surface finally explodes, changing things irrevocably… or does it?
I have nothing to spoil here, because the real climax of “50 Words” happens after the play ends, and it depends on each viewer’s level of optimism and pessimism. But this modern-day “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” appropriately updated to reflect 21st century anxieties, is a crushingly realistic, revelatory experience for anyone, regardless of his or her level of marital happiness. “50 Words” has the acrid sting of lived experience recreated onstage, and Schmidt and Weiner are so outstanding as they fling insults at one another – engaging in informal battles of whose life is most miserable – that the patina of “acting” wears off completely. Jan may believe that maintaining propriety and decorum is preferable to exposing the raw, ugly truth underneath, but playwright Weller is more than happy to revel in the filth, educating his audience in the process.
Tickets are $37.50 to $42.50 and are worth every penny. Call 305/445-1119.
