(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Times, 10/15.)
There they are again, Max and Lola, framed in the doorway of a pitch-black room, the light behind them and the darkness ahead. Their wariness about taking the first step inside seems unreasonable, given that where they’ve arrived is a spick-and-span, soothingly generic condo in Florida. But Max and Lola aren’t wrong to hesitate. Monsters wait in the dark for this elderly couple; they always have and they always will.
The man and the woman in the doorway, first glimpsed in the opening moments of Donald Margulies’s “Model Apartment,” haven’t been seen in New York in 18 years, and it’s been way too long. Max and Lola aren’t exactly cozy company. Quite the contrary, they are sure to make you uncomfortable.
But getting to know them is essential. And now that they’re back in town, in the first (and first-rate) New York revival of a very fine playwright’s masterwork, it’s important that you find the time. Max and Lola, you see, are going to make one of the most horrible chapters in world history feel very real and personal to you, though at first you won’t have a clue that this is what they’re doing.
(Monologues from Margulies’s work The Loman Family Picnic are available in One On One: Playing with a Purpose from Applause Theatre & Cinema Books: http://www.amazon.com/One-Playing-Purpose-Monologues-Applause/dp/1557838410/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381934106&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=One+On+One+Playign+with+a+Purpose .)