Longtime married couple George and Em sit in a dark field on their midwestern farm in lawn chairs and discuss their long and winding lives together while watching a lunar eclipse unfold. Margulies rotely sketches their decades-long relationship, as difficulties with childbirth led to adopted children: daughter Mary Ann turned out fine and is living in Denver, while son Tim (“Poor Tim,” Em calls him) became a drug addict. George and Em themselves are similarly perfunctorily sketched out—he’s sullen and quick to anger while she is a consoler and optimist. Indeed, at one point, George berates her for being too cheerful (“the smiley-face act,” he derisively calls it).

 

That’s not to say that there aren’t couples like this, seeming opposites whose decades together were meticulously cultivated to form a more or less stable family. Unlike in his masterpiece Dinner with Friends, here Margulies’ psychologically acute analysis is less than penetrating. Sure, his crisp, tart dialogue can still reverberate, as in George’s touching monologue about weeping over the death of Belle, the latest in a long line of beloved family dogs. 

 

But the conceit of the eclipse itself—each segment of the play is prefaced by a description of how far into the eclipse we are, e.g.,” Moon enters penumbra. Penumbral shadow appears”—lacks poetic power, especially when Em spells it out: “Everybody’s got their own sad and messy lives to deal with. What do they need to hear me belly-aching for? My sadness is not unique. It’s the oldest story there is: Eve lost a son. The trick is not to let it take over. Cast its shadow over everything else. Like an eclipse.”

 

Still, as enacted by Reed Birney and Lisa Emery, George and Em become vivid and immediate, even in a strained epilogue that shows them on their first date—a solar eclipse, naturally. Director Kate Whoriskey’s understated direction, on Walt Spangler’s marvelously evocative set, rarely lets their talk go slack—but Amith Chandrashaker’s often resourceful lighting doesn’t mirror the ongoing eclipse. George and Em’s intimate drama would benefit from such moodier shading, especially from its talented creator.