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Time Out New York / Issue 543: February 23 – March 1, 2006
Review
Norman & Beatrice: A Marriage in Two Acts
By Barbara Hammond. Dir. David Travis. With Graeme Malcolm and Jane Nichols. Connelly Theater (see Off-Off Broadway).
IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
Malcolm, left, is nursed by Nichols.
Barbara Hammond's Norman & Beatrice: A Marriage in Two Acts offers a sweetly heartbreaking look at a marriage that endures for more than half a century. The titular couple's story is told in reverse, with Act I taking place in their kitchen on a snowy Sunday morning in 2001, and Act II on the same kind of day in 1947, when the pair has only been married three months.
In the first part, the aged Beatrice is coping with Norman's Alzheimer's condition with grace and humor. The action is limited to their eating lunch, and the scene's charm comes from the utterly believable rapport between Malcolm and Nichols and from physical details that director David Travis highlights. When Beatrice is finished cooking, for instance, she removes her apron and ties it around Norman's neck - mixing the instinctive sharing of some long-married couples and the practicality of dealing with how messily people with Alzheimer's can eat. In the second part, Malcolm and Nichols do a terrific job of conveying a relationship far less intimate than the one we saw before; they're excited to be married, but lack familiarity and ease. By focusing on the bookends of her characters' lives, Hammond might have turned out a flat, emotion-starved portrait. But Malcolm, Nichols and Travis help audience members fill in the blanks without crossing over into sentimentality. If your Valentine's Day was disappointing, here's a story of love that lasts. - Josselyn Simpson
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