PRELUDE TO A KISS
It’s not a new trial. Myths and fairy tales teem with transformations that test or prove love: Beauty comes to prize the prince’s soul within the Beast; the Frog King is redeemed by the trust of a king’s daughter; the Witch in Into the Woods gives up her powers, transforming herself into a much younger woman to win back the love of her daughter Rapunzel.
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Lucas beautifully captures the bewilderment of two people who were strangers six months before and now must improvise a shared future–though as Peter says, they’ve never known each other’s pasts. Inevitably they worry whether they’ve found the right person. Peter is troubled when Rita tells him she won’t have children: morbidly aware of the threat of Armageddon and afraid to invest so much love in an unsure future, she thinks it best to have as little to lose as possible. No wonder Peter compares their relationship to a fun-house ride bearing the disclaimer “Ride at your own risk.”
By the second act Rita is no longer the woman Peter married. She charges a $1,500 gold charm bracelet to her parents’ account. An insomniac since age 14, she now sleeps like a baby. She’s plagued by memory lapses and won’t touch booze or salt. Her socialist ideals vanish; social inequities leave her undisturbed. She understands Dutch. She wants to give up tending bar and have Peter support her, and strangest of all, she now wants to have kids. “You’re not you!” Peter cries.
Sheldon Patinkin’s staging treats Lucas’s play with delicacy and grace. The spell is cast from the start by Linda Buchanan’s set: an elegant classical colonnade with a backdrop of imitation marble and billowing curtains that partially conceal a starry scrim. Rita Pietrazek’s dappled lighting effects woo the set like a lover, Frances Maggio’s costumes anchor the characters in the contemporary world, and the music and sound, by Rob Milburn and Larry Shankar, subtly shape emotions–they’re not intended to replace them.
