The equinox, in case you don’t recall, is that time when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator and day and night are of equal length. In Joyce Hokin Sachs’ ménage a trois play, the Eternal Equinox, currently playing at the 59E59 Theaters, everyone is working very hard to keep their world in perfect balance. But that’s the problem. In the theatre, unlike real life, something had better go off-balance before the night is through.

The characters are well chosen enough: Vanessa Bell, the very open-minded artist sister of the more famous literary icon, Virginia Woolf; Duncan Grant, the talented painter and bisexual lover (also open-minded) of Vanessa’s, who shares a summer home in Charleston, Sussex with her; and George Mallory, the dashing, mutually-adored mountain climber who drops in on the happy couple before his final and fatal last attempt to conquer Mount Everest. This is an intriguing trio, if there ever was one.

It’s an early autumn morning in 1923. Within the first few minutes of the play, we learn that Duncan was out drinking with the “boys” on the equinox eve of Vanessa’s birthday, and when she came to his bed at three a.m., it was only to discover a boy of “good country stock” was sharing it. Hardly surprising, as he reminds her that he was her brother’s lover long before they came together. In reasoned tones, she tells us she may see things differently when approaching “the other side of 45.” He flippantly explains his behavior by professing that “love’s the very devil, and when it flies out the window, you find you can get along very well without it.” These two are so world-weary, so used to one another, that not a single glass gets broken in the process.

Enter the great man himself, George Mallory, mountain climber extraordinaire. In Duncan’s words, seeing his old friend, he exclaims: “The God has descended!” Not to be upstaged, Vanessa is quick to remind Mallory that they were on a first name basis long ago. The scene is now set for the kind of high wire tension we expect at the theatre.

The fact that we remain grounded is not really the fault of the performers. Hollis McCarthy, a veteran who cut her teeth on Shakespeare at regional theatres nationwide, knows how to play the major and minor keys of a part. Here, there’s a bittersweet edge to her performance as Vanessa, accepting what she cannot change. There’s a moment after Duncan and Mallory indulge in a bit of horseplay, splattering one another with red paint and then quickly disrobing to full-frontal nudity before romping offstage, ostensibly to a nearby pond that you hope she will erupt. But no — boys will be boys. That night at dinner, discovering the two in a passionate kiss, she seethes underneath her sinuous gown, but too quietly.

And how do our two male protagonists handle their predicament?

Michael Gabriel Goodfriend as Duncan is saved by his dark good looks, natural energy, and occasional bursts of wry humor. A graduate of the distinguished Yale Drama School, he has appeared in many L.A. and New York off-Broadway theatres, as well as in film, (i.e. Helter–Skelter), and received the Garland Award from Pittsburg Post-Gazette’s “Year’s Best.” He can almost be forgiven a few over-the-top effeminate turns in a Rudolph Valentino costume, as a counter point to Christian Pedersen’s stalwart Mallory. Not surprisingly, with his Procter and Gamble handsomeness, Pedersen’s theatre resume is seasoned with appearances on soap operas such as All My Children and the current nighttime hit, The Good Wife.

Unfortunately, Pedersen is cast as a younger, more innocent version of himself, when the script indicates he has seen his share of war as well as enough menacing glacier peaks to last a lifetime. A more mature actor could have conceivably brought the amount of irresistible charisma the character called for.

It is to set designer Leonard Ogden’s credit that a few set pieces—such as a dress trunk with intricately painted panels, a simple table and chairs, an ornate mantel piece with a number of delicate knick-knacks, and enough drawings on the back wall to justify an artist’s studio—provide the needed atmosphere. But even these spare items threaten to trip up our actors in the tiny “C” space that the 59E59 Theatres complex has allotted the company. Director Kevin Cochran has done his level best to choreograph the trio in and around the space, and to use its limitations as a point of tension between them. Tracy Christensen’s costumes add just the right flair and provide the actors sufficient comfort to dress and undress at the slightest whim.

The program notes tell us that Sachs was early drawn to these members of the famed Bloomsbury Group, and wrote her college thesis on Virginia Woolf. The “Bloomies” were a free-wheeling ensemble of writers, artists and philosophers, largely young aristocrats from Cambridge, who, according to writer C.P. Snow, “believed in pleasure…if this meant triangles or more complicated geometric figures, well then, one accepted that too.” When the playwright discovered an early letter from Duncan to George, with its own intimations of love, the impulse for the play was born.

There’s no question that the genius and daring of the Bloomsbury set and their open defiance of the conventions of the day must have inspired Sachs. Her descriptions and observations are first-rate; only the drama is missing. An interesting sidebar: In 1999 an expedition found Mallory’s well-preserved frozen body 27,000 feet up Everest’s north face. And what was his reason for the undertaking 75 years before? As he simply put it: “Because it’s there.”

One can only wish that the writer had pushed her characters off the page and onto the stage, to scale the same heights, if not the summit itself.

***

Kevin Cochran, has been the Artistic Director and Co-founder since 1994 of the Grove Theater Center in Burbank, California. He has a treasure chest of L.A. Ovation Awards (the equivalent of New York’s Obies) for projects such as Film Chinois, Blake…da Musical! and The Beckett Project II, among others. He was happy to share some of his impressions of the production’s genesis with us.

GALO: How difficult was it to find actors to recreate these dynamic free spirits from an earlier time?

Kevin Cochran: We decided against getting actors to look like the original characters. We went instead for the same spirit, the same personality, and that made the casting challenging. All of them, from the beginning, have to have a certain stage charisma.

GALO: Mallory needs to be a magnetic counterpoint to Vanessa and Duncan; doesn’t he? 

KC: He needs to be strong. He wants to be more like them. He knew some of the members of the circle.

GALO: When you were developing the play through the Grove Theater Center Initiative with Joyce Sachs, did you get involved with the research?

KC: We wanted to put the light primarily on her for that. The play did go through changes, not major rewrites, but revisions. The production was initially very different. We wanted more conflict with Duncan and Vanessa from the earlier Burbank production.

GALO: Were there discussions about whether to allow the nudity on stage with the two male characters?

KC: It’s interesting…our production practice is generally not to have nudity on stage. We talked about it and decided that here, it’s necessary. Mallory was accustomed to going skinny-dipping.  [Cochran mentioned that this had been in the script from the beginning and seemed amused that the choice had come from a 76-year-old playwright and grandmother.]

GALO: Does the Grove have plans to develop an East coast/West coast collaboration?

KC: We definitely want to start that. Our production of Bobby and Matt was presented at the New York Fringe Festival last year.

GALO: Thank you and best of luck.

Eternal Equinox will run through March 31st at 59E59 Street, New York, NY. For ticket information visit http://59e59.org or call (212) 753-5959, ext: 102.

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