Cormac McCarthy won a Pulitzer Prize for the book The Road, and the movie version of his novel No Country For Old Men won four Academy Awards. He is also a National Book Award winner, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, plus many other accolades. This 2006 play is his second effort at playwriting and it was first produced by Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in 2006 and then it traveled to New York later that year.

Ron Bottitta - Tucker Smallwood

This is a slightly different story in that the two actors are only identified as White and Black. It just so happens that one of them is a Black man who is an ex-con and seems to have found God after almost being killed in prison. White is a White man who is a college professor and wants to commit suicide. Their meeting is unique in that Black pulls White from the train tracks of the Sunset Limited just in the nick of time, and then takes him to his house to try to help him figure out why he wants to kill himself.

It's a run down room in Harlem with the barest of necessities, the sparse furniture chained to the floor so no one will steal it, the front door heavily chained and it seems that White has no choice but to remain there until Black decides to let him leave. White tries to go several times, but each time Black refuses to open the door and engages in a relentless barrage of questions

Tucker Smallwood as Black and Ron Bottitta as White are exceptional in their portrayals of two men sparring verbally from two diametrically opposed positions, with neither one willing to yield an inch. Black continually badgers White with questions which are heavily laced with religious underpinnings. White often skirts the questions, not answers or sometimes partially ignores them. Black is certain that when White leaves he will try to kill himself again, so he keeps nagging with question after question after question, which White artfully dodges but soon becomes tired of the exercise.

With almost no action in the play, director John Perrin Flynn tries valiantly to infuse life in the story by having the characters move from the kitchen table to a small sofa and back again. He has them scream at the top of their lungs at times and even has Black prepare food and brew coffee on stage. This works well for awhile, but the constant nagging by Black and the continual denials by White begin to wear thin after the first hour.

It soon becomes evident that we are witnessing a stalemate on a grand scale and the only thing these two characters will learn is that neither one is capable of bringing the other to his point of view. White remains dogged in his views about the futility of hope and Black admits he is powerless to change White. The audience became aware of that the first half hour but it took the characters almost three times longer to get the point.

Successful plays usually leave the audience with a thirst for more, a new revelation, a lesson learned or a sense of exhilaration. This one left us wondering why there was no intermission where one could make a discreet escape, and in that sense it was very much like the play where White felt trapped in the room and could only leave at the whim of his unsolicited host. This is one of those rare cases where the author is among the best, the actors are superb, the direction is flawless but the sum of the parts fails to make a significant whole. The production runs through December 19, 2010. Click the website for additional information.

www.roguemachinetheatre.com