Word: painfulness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Reaching these conclusions brought only limited satisfaction. It's nice to understand why you face 30 years of intolerable boredom and frustrations, but it hardly eases the pain. Two years after arriving, I'm about to leave...
...exactly the problem. George cannot reconcile his love for his new wife with his memory of the deceased one. The fact that she understands his compulsive comparison of spouses only provokes his anger. "You leave me so much room to be cruel in," he tells her. Out of a painful episode in the playwright's life evolves a broader study of a marriage trapped in a vicious cycle of guilt that inspires pain, which in turn yields compassion--only to create new guilt...
Even the generally weak cast of this production cannot distract from the play's inherent flaws, especially an excessive length. Still, Chapter II is well worth seeing; Simon doesn't often deal so openly with human pain. Just don't go expecting a typical Simon laugh-riot. Instead, you will laugh a little and be more than a little moved. At the Shubert Theater...
...physical gestures. At one point, he strokes his dead wife's picture as tenderly as if he were touching the woman herself--then jerks his hand away to hide the private gesture from his brother. Whether indulging in outrageous facial clowning, or making his voice crack with pain, Orbach's performance is perfectly controlled...
...help the play transcend its excessive length and half its cast. Chapter Two is not a funny play; it is a fundamentally somber play with some funny lines. The man so often heralded as America's greatest comic playwright has now chosen not to make us laugh at human pain this time. With Chapter Two, Simon puts the hurts people inflict on each other center-stage, instead of allowing us an indirect glimpse through snappy one-liners...