A Delicate Ship

The Road Theatre Company presents: “A Delicate Ship” written by Anna Ziegler and directed by Andre Baron

"A Delicate Ship” is a play about love, the memory of love and the mythology we all create around it for ourselves. 

A young couple, at the very beginning of their love, are together on Christmas Eve.  Sarah and Sam played exquisitely by Paris Perrault and Philip Orazio are full of the potential of their future, shyly flirting, with talks of marriage and children in the air.  A knock at the door brings Sarah’s best friend Nate, played by the extraordinary Josh Zuckerman, into their perfect evening and he arrives unannounced and with a purpose, fueled by booze, a brazen longing for Sarah and determination to convince her once and for all that they are much more than best friends.

Philip Orazio and Paris Perrault

As the evening unravels, with plenty of humor, the play leaps back and forward through time, specifically the timeline of Sam and Sara's and Sarah and Nate's relationship.  As they all remind each other of what and who they are, Sam and Nate spar and maneuver and Sarah pushes each of them away, while simultaneously trying to hold on, not knowing quite what to do.  She loves Nate, deeply, but is enchanted by Sam and the prospect of something completely new and uncluttered. But what Sarah and Sam hoped for together seems to slip away in spite of how hard they both want it,  as Nate’s desperation for Sarah grows.

Nate and Sarah have a long history.  Friends from childhood they are so entrenched in each other's souls, more like twins than lovers.  Sarah loves Nate, but he is a life Sarah wants to let go of and his mausoleum of their memories confuses and infuriates her.  Nate leaves, heartbroken, but he has already altered the axis of Sam and Sarah and the rawness of his love for her and even his absence only affirms their growing doubts.

There is something else, but I would do the play a disservice to tell you now. 

What I can tell you is that I held my breath through most of it, it was so absolutely wonderful.  The premise is simple enough, the eternal triangle, but the way the playwright draws out the story and twists a pretzel of time and memory and the brilliance of the performances, the beauty of the staging and the lightness of the direction brings this simple story to an altogether other level. 

The playwright Anna Ziegler is well renowned, a multi-award-winning writer, with her plays performed all over the world.  So it’s hardly surprising that The Road Theatre Company would choose her work.  But this play is something else…I keep returning to it in my mind over and over again, it really moved me.  We are all bound up in the memories of our life, our own individual versions of events and this play turns beautifully on that, and how some of us need to leave suffering behind and some of us need desperately to hold on, perhaps because we fear that is all we ever are.

The director Andre Barron, a “Road” alumni, has created a fragile and fascinating place for these characters to inhabit and allowed these three riveting actors to truly find each other and themselves in their roles. 

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The Road Theatre Company always produces such incredible work, and “A Delicate Ship” is another triumph…bravo!

Runs through March 11

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Cast

Sarah - Paris Perrault

Sam - Philip Orazio

Nate - Josh Zuckerman

Production Crew

Director - Andre Barron

Producers - Brain M Cole & Makena Metz

Asst Director - Jacob Smith

Scenic Design - Sarah B Brown

Lighting Designs Jared A Sayeg

Costume Design - Michele Young

Sound Design - Cricket S Myers

Production Design/Video - Nick Santiago

Props - Christine Joelle

Stage Manager - Maurie Gonzalez

Fight Director - Bjorn Johnson

Original Music Composer - Matt Schatz

Graphic Designer - Cele Tsou

Publicist - David Elzer

Online Marketing - Kay Capasso