Review: A new play takes end of life questions with wry humor

How would you choose to die?

Would it be better to go quickly and painlessly into that good night? Or, as Dylan Thomas wrote, is it preferable "to rage, rage, against the dying of the light," even if it entails protracted suffering? Is death something we can schedule after a well-lived life? And how would you know when is the best time to have your own plug pulled?

Those are questions that many of us are loath to even contemplate. After all, what comes after this life is the stuff that awesome mysteries are made of. And various faiths often tell us that even thinking about these matters is beyond our human pay grade.

But playwright Benjamin Benne considers these existential questions with poignancy and emotion in his work that has premiered at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis.

The play is still a work in progress, as you might surmise from its awkward title, "What/Washed Ashore/Astray." It's as if Benne couldn't settle on a theme or point of reference. But that academic sounding name tips us off to the fraught uncertainties that surround death.

The plot is straightforward. Twin sisters Cat (Melissa Hart) and Chris (Barbra Ann Berlovitz) have gathered at the beachside cabin the family has had for generations. Cat has news. She has a terminal diagnosis that means she will lose the ability to speak as her body gradually shuts down. The twins start practicing how they will communicate once the inevitable happens, and how to honor Cat's end-of-life wishes even if her daughter, Jamie (Tracey Maloney) is troubled by them.

Director Noel Raymond's humor-laced production, which runs for less than 90 minutes and is played out in designer Joel Sass' detailed three-part scenography, is intimate and moving. Sass uses lantern paper and other elements for a screen in the middle of the set that is used for a puppet show of the twins' memories. (Oanh Vu designed the puppets and performs as one of three puppeteers.)

That screen, evocatively lit by designer Kathy Maxwell, also serves as a place of projection for what's happening in Cat's subconscious. To the left and right of that screen are spaces in the cabin. And there's a beach with sand and shells and the detritus of the ocean.

Raymond elicits subtle, affecting performances from this accomplished cast. Hart's turn is like an egg — strong enough to support the weight of a fowl but also delicate and brittle.

And she builds to a powerful feeling as Cat's body shuts down to a blink and as her breath starts to suggest the character may be nearing a death rattle. Using her formidable craft, Hart, a one-time Tony nominee, moves seamlessly and credibly between end stage gravitas and the recalled felicities of youth.

She has an excellent scene partner in Berlovitz, a co-founder of the Tony-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Berlovitz's Chris wants to help her sister be as comfortable as possible, and she is always ready with an offer of gummies, presumably the THC kind, although that's never specified.

Berlovitz's performance is like a strong, clear tonic, cutting matter-of-factly through everything with understanding and understood affection. In fact, her performance raises the question of the dimensions of love as Chris comforts Cat.

Maloney shows her own brilliance by coming in hot, unnerved and grasping to be respected as an adult. She lets us see and feel Jamie's palpable heartbreak as the daughter struggles to hold onto her mother receding into ether.

Still, as twins, Cat and Chris have a closeness that may even be stronger than mother and daughter, but in the end, the whole family arrives at a place of understanding, and their emotions, raw and unspoken as they try to cope, put us in a place where we can't help but contemplate our own mortality and grief, and our place in this stark world.

'What/Washed Ashore/Astray'
By: Benjamin Benne. Directed by Noel Raymond.
Where: Pillsbury House Theatre, 3501 Chicago Av. S., Mpls.
When: 7 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 3 p.m. Sun. Ends April 16.
Tickets: $30 or pick-your-price. pillsburyhouseandtheatre.org.
Protocol: Masks required.