The Shadow Box
Image: Photo: Robert Catto
Image: Natalie Behjan
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, The Shadow Box gives a 24-hour snapshot into the lives of three terminal cancer patients. Red Line Productions and producer Dino Dimitriatis bring this courageous play to the Old Fitz.
Having reached the end of their treatments, each patient lives with their respective family in a cottage on the grounds of a hospital. There is the estranged mother and daughter duo of Felicity and Agnes; couple Brian and Beverly, whose marital complications are exacerbated by the presence of Brian’s new lover, Mark; and Joe and Maggie, unprepared for the strain of Joe’s impending death and the effect that it will have on their teenage son.
The Shadow Box seems quite grim and morbid on the surface, but as Anthony Gooley (playing the role of Mark) explains, the show is a “celebration of living” and the “triumph of the soul” as the respective characters learn to accept that death is part of life. As Gooley sees it, the show is really “art achieving its highest purpose”.
The show promises to entertain, but also to challenge. To make you think, and to make you realise that while we have no choice in death, there are plenty of other choices that remain open to us in life along the way. Ultimately the show will make you appreciate that while the human condition can be messy at times, it can also be beautiful. (RP)
Nov 15–Dec 10; Tue-Sat 7.30pm, Sun 5pm. Old Fitz Theatre, 129 Dowling Street (cnr Cathedral Street), Woolloomooloo. $28-$38. Tickets & info: www.redlineproductions.com.au
BY RAFFAELE PICCOLO
