Theatre in Review: Well, I'll Let You Go (Studio Seaview)

	Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Will Dagger. Photo: Emilio Madrid

In Well, I'll Let You Go, Quincy Tyler Bernstine is Maggie, whose only defense against tragedy is the endless cups of coffee she serves to a series of interlopers seeking to console, advise, or obtain absolution from her. On her fourth day as a widow, still struggling to grasp the facts of her husband's death, she is importuned by a steady stream of friends and relatives, insistently offering their help while often pursuing agendas of their own. Each visit brings her closer to the truth about Marv's death, news that potentially has a make-or-break effect on the state of her soul.

Indeed, each condolence call results in a skirmish, not least because Marv, her spouse of twenty-five years, died under such strange circumstances, saving others from a random shooting outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. Marc is viewed in some quarters as a hero, and tributes are in the offing. Yet the whispers persist: Why was he seen lurking near the local community college campus? Why was he escorting Ashley, a young woman unknown to Maggie, to her medical appointment? Depending on how you look at it, the event takes on different casts, portraying Marv as a lifesaver, an adulterer, or, maybe, something worse. What should Maggie make of it all? And where does she go from here?

The debut work of Bubba Weiler, an actor who got the attention of New York audiences with his sensitive turn as a troubled addict in Rebecca Gilman's Swing State, Well, I'll Let You Go made an impression when first seen last August at The Space at Irondale in Brooklyn. But the cavernous former church was entirely wrong for it; a nuanced drama of sensibility threatened to vanish into thin air. (One might as well stage Waiting for Godot in SoFi Stadium.) Studio Seaview provides a much more salubrious home, allowing one to fully appreciate the abundant grace notes in Jack Serio's infinitely sensitive production; even elements of the play that previously seemed overly literary and derivative are revealed to be essential to a remarkably mature dramatic design.

With one exception, the outstanding original cast returns. Chief among them is Bernstine, wrapped in a cocoon of sweatpants and a hoodie (the fine character-specific costumes are by Avery Reed), shuffling around, her posture slightly stooped, her expression both quizzical and grieving, insisting that she is fine -- no, really -- while quietly spiking each visitor's cup of java with uncomfortable home truths plus the occasional startling outburst. Her Maggie is stuck in a state of suspended animation, unsure if she was married to a saint or a scoundrel, and, either way, wondering what the last quarter-century of her life was all about. (It doesn't help that her house carries a huge mortgage, and her chances of reclaiming a long-abandoned teaching career are vanishingly slim.) In Bernstine's hands, the kindly, stubborn, often shockingly tough-minded Maggie is the heartbreaking still center of Weiler's drama.

Going toe-to-toe with Bernstine are Will Dagger as a feckless family friend, an aging gamer with a lousy employment history and a taste for conspiracy theories; Constance Shulman, who never lets a laugh escape her grip, as a deadpan, balloon-toting funeral consultant ("No one of any quality has been born after 1975"); Amelia Workman as Maggie's unhappily married sister-in-law, who plants the first seeds of suspicion about Marv; Danny McCarthy's as Marv's brother, who has good reason for his oddly evasive attitude; Cricket Brown as Ashley, struggling, like Maggie, to process the entire ghastly experience; and Emily Davis as Ashley's mother, a former student of Maggie's, a bone-tired single mother who unwittingly drops a bombshell that reframes Maggie's understanding of her marriage -- and has the audience gasping at how easily it has been misled.

Interestingly, these highly naturalistic confrontations are folded into a stylized format that includes such nods to Thornton Wilder as a stage manager-like narrator (Matthew Maher, new to the cast and first-rate) whose true identity becomes clear late in the play, and a starkly empty set design by Frank J. Oliva that is gradually filled with props, climaxing in a scenic coup that packs a considerable emotional punch. And Weiler places his characters in a fully realized landscape of Midwestern American decline, a once-prosperous town that, having lost the industry that made it thrive, has devolved into a series of shabby buildings sprawled around an Amazon fulfillment center. If Well, I'll Let You Go is influenced by Wilder, Weiler also makes a fair bid to be a twenty-first-century William Inge with his clear-eyed view of the American heartland.

Serio's production also benefits from Stacey Derosier's lighting, which keeps track of the play's major emotional shifts (especially in the play's quietly stunning finale), and Brandon Bulls' sound design, offering discreet amplification for the actors and solid reinforcement for Avi Amon's plangent incidental music. Most of all Well, I'll Let You Go transforms the mundane details of Maggie's story into something authentically luminous, a meditation on the gorgeous singularity of every human life, no matter how fleeting. Last summer, I thought Well, I'll Let You Go was a notable debut. Now it looks like a major event. --David Barbour