Center Theater Group has caught up with Morris Panych's much-produced, well-honed two-hander, Vigil. Starring at the Taper in the slight but amusing and ultimately moving play are Marco Barricelli and Olympia Dukakis, both of whom turn in scintillating performances.
Dukakis is Grace, an old woman living alone and near death in her cluttered, badly-skewed apartment (slanting design by Ken MacDonald). Barricelli is Kemp, her sharp-tongued nephew who suddenly shows up after an absence of thirty years, ostensibly to comfort her in the final days of her life.
Kemp is blackly humorous about death and given to bizarre rants about the human condition. Grace is near-silent throughout most of act one but takes great pleasure in playing practical jokes on the hapless Kemp.
Vigil is a character-driven piece whose gallows humor and sparse dialogue will remind some of Beckett, with the action unfolding in a series of mordantly-funny, vaudeville-like sketches.
To be specific about Vigil’s plot would be to give too much away. Suffice to say that the sniping between Grace and Kemp gradually grows into something deeper and more meaningful, something approaching compassion and love.
