Theatre in Review: Shifters (Cherry Lane Theater)Des and Dre, the young couple at the heart of Shifters, are, without question, soulmates, a status that, rather than generating joy, ironically leaves them feeling irresolute and uncertain. Bright, accomplished, and damaged by life, they enter their thirties still unclear about what to expect from each other, even as they continue to build substantial separate lives. We're not exactly short on romantic two-handers these days, but playwright Benedict Lombe has an acute eye for her characters' dilemma. Occasionally lovers, more often fast friends, and, as the action begins, semi-estranged for years, Des and Dre remain trapped in an emotional net of their own making, unable to let go yet incapable of moving forward. We first encounter Des and Dre just after the funeral of Dre's grandmother, who raised him after his mother returned, permanently, to her home in Nigeria. Des has arrived in their small UK hometown too late for the service but with a few hours free time for relitigating the past. Their paths have diverged: She is an artist, known for both her high-concept gallery work and her children's book illustrations. He has opened a restaurant serving African fusion cuisine and is making a go of it. There's an entirely false gaiety to their reunion that's hard to miss. Has it really been eight years? "Mad," Dre says, "Maaad," agrees Des, laughing. But there's a tension on display that has nothing to do with the passing of Dre's nana. At the other end of the play's timeline, we meet them as teenagers, when Dre, having noticed Des' penchant for arguing over any point in the classroom, recruits her for the debate team. ("I don't want to choose a side," she says. "Coz there are more than two sides and more than two choices.") They have much in common: Each has lost a mother -- Dre to abandonment and Des to a brain tumor -- and their African descent (Nigeria for him, the Congo for her) makes them social outliers. Then again, as Des recalls in one of many passages written in the second person, there is something more: "You see colors around him -- curious colors -- light and dark hues, dancing together, bleeding into the space around him." Soon, she adds, "You're sketching the boy who appeared out of nowhere and became your friend before you could stop him and feeling a strange sensation one might call: deep regret." What follows is a kind of archeological dig through layers of time, allowing us to catch Des and Dre at different moments in their ever-evolving connection. Each time, we detect a spark that can't be ignored. They spar over pop music. ("Don't make me bring Fela into this," he warns her.) They construct elaborate put-ons for their own amusement. And they share their unspoken sorrows, including Dre's lost brother and the secret violation that keeps the traumatized Des deflecting any sexual intimacies. (There's a reason why the smell of cinnamon sends her into a panic attack.) The latter incident, not to be mentioned here, explains why Des vanishes from Dre's life for months following a single intimate moment. However, it doesn't explain what happens when, after they finally get together, her nascent career threatens to separate them, and neither can take a step toward commitment. Meeting up again, now fully entangled in lives of their own -- she is engaged to a jazz musician, he has a partner and a son -- he casually mentions "losing all faith in love, how you were the one that got away and how my life hasn't been the same since you left." He rushes to add, "Obviously, I'm kidding." It's an exquisite problem, one that many in the audience will recognize: a man and woman deeply attracted yet who, despite -- or, perhaps, because of -- their deep mutual understanding, must remain short of fulfillment. Here it is lifted by extraordinary work all around. Lombe's dialogue is rich in perception: "You just keep smiling...like you don't think it's safe to stop," Des says, nailing Dre in a single sentence. Recalling his girlfriend's surprise pregnancy, Dre says, "I spent my whole life trying to be part of a family. Was hungry for it. Know what I mean? And then suddenly life said, Here you go. Here's your perfect 'normal' family. From scratch." Regarding his son, who is on the spectrum and doesn't speak until he is four, Dre, reproaching himself, says, "I panicked, coz I got scared, I just forgot. To listen. He reminded me there are so many different ways of communicating. And instead of trying to change him, I just had to meet him where he was. Just had to pay attention." Even at the most self-sabotaging, Des and Dre retain an unshakeable hold on our hearts. Under Lynette Linton's precise direction, the two leads play together with total sensitivity to subtext and subtle mood shifts. (Among her revealing staging touches are a wary, halting embrace for Des and Dre, and a kiss, followed by a long, what-just-happened stare between them. Linton also knows the value of a pregnant pause whenever an inconvenient truth bursts out.) Heather Agyepong's Des is wary, assertive, and often given to bursts of hilarity, yet clearly tending a wound that has, in many ways, shaped her life. Daniel Ezra's Dre uses his smile as a shield, his eyes often projecting rather different feelings. He makes particularly good use of Dre's habit of blurting out feelings that he quickly disowns as mere speculation. Equally impressive is how attentively both actors listen to each other. Not for a second does one doubt that these characters share a bond of nearly two decades. For a play that spans many years and locations, Alex Berry has devised a spare set that works as an illuminated sculpture draped in small LED tubes. Lighting designer Neil Austin makes fine use of these units as an index to the shifting emotional weather onstage, changing colors, performing chases, and, in one especially telling moment, turning them off, one by one. (Berry dresses both performers attractively and appropriately.) Tony Doyle's sound design solidly reinforces the music of soundscape designer Xana, while providing numerous effects, most notably a cacophony of voices that plays a key role in the finale. The production, imported from London's Bush Theatre, is both extremely delicate and brutally honest in its consideration of these would-be lovers and their unresolvable situation. Des tries to comfort herself with a magazine article about "the myth of first love," but who is she kidding? She and Dre share a connection that never has, never could, be fully satisfied. But, without it, their lives would be markedly different and, most likely, much, much poorer. It's a puzzle that one can spend a lifetime trying to parse. --David Barbour 
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