During the course of the nearly three hour long world premiere of The Starry Messenger, writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s newest play, we witness the protagonist, Mark (Matthew Broderick) comfort his mistress Angela (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who has just lost her 9-year-old son; we see Angela, in her job as a hospital nurse, kiss a dying 72-year-old man (Merwin Goldsmith) on the lips to comfort him; and we see Mark repeatedly tell his wife Anne (J.Smith Cameron) how much he loves her, as he assures her he’s not on the verge of asking for divorce. Throughout The Starry Messenger, Lonergan showcases his characters as they baldly express themselves, often on the verge of or in the midst of tears. But the portrayal of all this emoting is in no way saccharine; there is a painful irony beneath each of the characters’ sincere expression of their feelings.
The Starry Messenger, which takes its name from Galileo’s 1610 treatise on the wonders of the telescope, takes place in 1995, when the original building that housed New York’s Hayden planetarium was about to be torn down. Mark, who long ago settled for a career as a City College astronomy professor rather than pursuing the field work about which he is truly passionate, meets an attractive 28-year-old single mom and begins sleeping with her on the sly. The play covers a month or so of their lives, and the production features a single set with four different sections. The action drifts fluidly back and forth between scenes in Mark’s classroom, his apartment, Angela’s apartment, and the hospital room of Angela’s patient Norman, a 72-year-old dying of cancer.
The play’s funniest and most telling moment is when urban dilettante Ian (Kieran Culkin), Mark’s young Introduction to Astronomy student at the Hayden Planetarium, offers him a mid-semester critique of his teaching. The comedy of Ian’s earnest but arrogant attempt to offer his teacher guidance quickly turns to pathos when the student leaves the room and Mark reads aloud from the critique. “…I have to say it is truly amazing how anyone could possibly take such an incredibly pedestrian approach to what has to be the single most expansive, awe-inspiring subject of them all,” Mark reads aloud. “But you do. Almost as if you thought the stars themselves were boring.”
Ian’s observation accurately reflects Mark’s inability to find magic in his life. Mark struggles throughout the play to discover something greater than the mundanity of his everyday, but Lonergan shows this as an often hazardous and futile journey. When Mark makes a conscious effort to convey his love of astronomy to his students, he is interrupted by a loud-mouthed woman (Stephanie Cannon) asking irritating and irrelevant questions. And when he comes home from work, his wife bombards him with the boring details of their holiday plans. Mark can only find wonder in adultery and, as Lonergan makes clear, this has its own consequences.
Set Designer Derek McClane’s stunning backdrop to the set, a large digital screen that extends the width and height of the stage, is emblematic of the lyricism in Lonergan’s writing. Between sets, the audience is treated to glimpses of the wondrous cosmos as the screen shifts from images of a nocturnal New York skyline from the perspective of Central Park, to depictions of the galaxies in the night sky.
The influence of Chekhov is evident in the biting irony beneath the tender moments of The Starry Messenger and also in the play’s ending. While the characters are offered a temporary resolution to the play’s conflicts, the audience is assured only that the pain and difficulty in these lives will continue long after the play is over.
The performances here are all superb, with standouts by Broderick and Cameron Smith, who both capture the humanity in their flawed characters. I haven’t seen everything on stage in Manhattan this season, but my guess is that there’s nothing that comes close to topping this show. You should see it.
The Starry Messenger is at the Acorn Theater, 410 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 279-4200. Through Dec. 12.
