The most impressive aspect of Anna Ziegler’s intriguing A Delicate Ship, about an ill-fated love triangle is the lyrical flow of the text and the clever way that time is used to explain the past, the present, and the future. The most difficult aspect to embrace are its three mostly irritating if also romantically entangled characters.
It’s Christmas Eve but the lighted tree in Sara’s (Miriam Silverman) modestly furnished Brooklyn New York apartment with a lovely view of the Manhattan skyline (good work by designer Reid Thompson) is notable for the lack of any presents beneath it. What her living room doesn’t lack is the flow of smart and playful repartee between Sara, a social worker, and her good-looking boyfriend Sam (Matt Dellapina), a budding composer who is inclined to sing as well as impress her with philosophical quotations.
It seems like a nice romantic evening for these thirty-somethings who have only recently considered their brief courting may be taking a turn toward the serious. Just how serious it is becomes evident when a knock at the door signals a sudden change in the atmosphere and a dramatic change in their current relationship. The unexpected caller is Nate (Nick Westrate), a life-long friend of Sara’s with whom she has shared more of her life, possibly including a fleeting sexual blip. Growing up as neighborhood intimates and allies, the daily phone chats between Sarah and Tate did not extend to Sam.
Nate, who teaches third graders in an elementary school has gotten wind of Sarah and Sam being a couple, and he has plenty to say on the subject. His unsettling presence is not only an ill-wind but a gale force of words and mean-spirited behavior, possibly neurotically motivated. Sam does his best to be a gentleman, but Nate’s blistering tongue and his rudeness are not to be abated.
The playwright, with the attentive help of director Margot Bordelon, charts the course as well as the discourse of all three characters as they step in and out of the present to remember their past and as well as to remember the present from the future. This neat construct not only relieves the constant build-up of tension and tempers the possibility of a physical encounter, but it is used to artfully define Nate’s emotional instability, the inherently shy Sam’s difficulty to appraise what’s going on, and the stunned Sara being able to come to terms with her conflicted feelings. At moments we see each of them reflected through a personal prism of what-ifs and whys.
If you can tolerate Nate’s long and blistering tirades, you will appreciate the excellence of Westrate’s performance. If you can forgive the conflicted Sarah’s inability to tell Nate to simply scram after five minutes, you will see the depth of Silverman’s performance. And, if you can empathize with the nonplussed Sam, you will appreciate Dellapina’s beautifully modulated performance.
The title is derived from a poem by W. H. Auden and the theme takes a cue from Pieter Brueghel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” I only wish I cared more about these people that Ziegler has gone to such lengths to dramatize.
