Tamara Hickey as Sarah Goodman; Photo: Emma Rothenberg-Ware

Tamara Hickey plays Sarah Goodman, the photo-journalist whose return from the edge of death is truly a miracle. Though she seems changed by the experience, in reality she is the same woman she has been, only more noticeably so. The love she feels for her long-time partner is paired with her frustrations with their relationship. She makes time stand still through her work with her cameras. She also attempts to do the same with her lover. She is not a great fan of change; her family is kept at bay as it always has been, for example. Her two-week coma, another instance of time redacted, is not time lost for her. It is just one more example of a way to view life.

Hickey is remarkable in this role. She expresses love through a chilled exterior. She shows us her eagerness to return to work through an obstinate singularity. She gives us a view of a mind that can accept new concepts simply by overlooking them and their inherent difficulties. When angry she is impassive to reason; when loving and romantic she is textual. There is a peculiar attraction to her which we see and hear but cannot acknowledge. Her belief that she cannot change things, but only record them is the key to her psyche but that key has no door to unlock. Sarah is accurately and definitively portrayed by Hickey who has not given a better performance with this company in any other play. She deserves every kudo ever sent her way for this performance. 

Watching actors mature is a dangerous thing. David Joseph has impressed in so many plays and musicals, in so many styles and so many phases that watching him play James "Jamey" Dodd at this stage in his career is almost revelatory. He plays a writer whose journalism has touched on many subjects but whose passion is the suffering of humanity around the world due to the cruelty of their fellow-man. Suffering from the near-loss of his own sanity after becoming a victim of all this human aggression, and then recovering the much-altered love of his life after her near-death experience has shoved him brutally into a new form of existence. His needs and goals have changed. His future holds no bouquet of roses. He is not the man he was and his judgement has been rendered almost useless.

Joseph plays all of these personality changes as though we already know who and how he was. There are no "accidental" glimpses of the earlier Jamey. We get him in the here and the now, with no snapshot to refer to for our elucidation. Joseph allows Sarah and their friend Richard to paint the other view of his character, giving them no assistance. Instead he is caught in his own here-and-now and he plays with a steadiness that is just remarkable. In an early scene Jamey says to Sarah, "Babe, you're the best," and it is clear from her physical reaction that this is not the man she has known. Joseph acts with the correct amount of realism, just the perfect amount.