One of the first plays to appear after 9/11, The Mercy Seat hones in on a couple in New York City the next day. They’re selfish when most Americans are giving of themselves to help their fellows. Ben should have been in the World Trade Center, but he stopped for a tryst with mistress Abby and escaped. Now he’s thought to be dead.
Indeed, Cale Haupert’s Ben looks barely alive as Abby brings in cheese and crackers from a 4AM uniquely open shop. His idea of “the American way” is to “look to the future.” She swears he first reacted to the “tragedy” as opportune. Beginning with offers and rejections of the cheese, they set about a day of arguing over their relationship and how to pursue it. That it’s been floundering soon becomes obvious.
In a typical Neil LaBute battle of the sexes (waged with watered-down Albee dialogue), Ben and Abby show they differ in personalities, general interests, career pursuits, security concerns, familial responsibilities. Sex vs. romance occupies center stage in their mutual arguments over and assessments of their “love” -- that they show is as much for self as the other.
Every ring of Abby’s home phone or Ben’s cell, each sound from outside of ambulance or fire truck attempts a follow-up Pinteresque, fraught-with-meaning silence. Kimberly Wiczer is better at varying Abby’s reactions than is Haupert, since his Ben’s remain static.
Ben’s got the edge on admitting his cheating ways and claiming to think of others, in particular his wife and kids, who won’t be dragged through divorce and will probably be better off financially if he remains officially dead. Wiczer’s stuck with trying to make Abby, who’s smarter and more successful than Ben, seem like a single gal who’ll settle for unsatisfactory sex just so he’ll leave the wife and kids to stay with her. Yet she’s worried about her job.
Director Ronda Hewitt uses the minimalist set to make the production concentrate on the text. She can’t overcome, though, casting too-young actors who don’t ever seem to have cared for more than “banging” each other over three years. I guess the suspense lay in what he’d choose to do now, since he maintains “this is the time” when he’s “worked out” everything, and they can take off. It’s been “the time” since the opening scene; however, and suspense turns to lack of interest much before the final decision.
