RICHARD FRANT/@frantvisuals
Clockwise from top left, Katie Maul, Ian Murphy, Owen Sheridan and Leslie Darcy co-star in Bergen County Players’ production of “Seascape.”
Charlie and Nancy — the married grandparents who are two of the four characters in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1975 play “Seascape,” which is currently being produced by Bergen County Players in Oradell — have different ideas about how they will spend their Golden Years.
“We’ve earned a little rest,” says Charlie.
“We’ve earned a little life,” says Nancy.
They are alone, on a beach, for most of the first act of this two-act play, which is directed here by Dottie Fischer. And they seem like just a couple of ordinary folks, having an ordinary conversation, before Albee takes an audacious turn to the surreal that makes “Seascape” a unique and exciting theatrical experience.
RICHARD FRANT/@frantvisuals
From left, Ian Murphy, Katie Maul, Leslie Darcy and Owen Sheridan in “Seascape.”
To get back to Charlie and Nancy (played here by Owen Sheridan and Leslie Darcy) … they love each other, but annoy each other as well. Nancy wants them to spend their retirement exploring the world together, having fabulous experiences and making new friends “with all the wondrous people that we’d meet.” Charlie wants to do little more than what he is doing right now: sitting in the sun, reading a magazine.
As they talk on this enticingly peaceful-looking beach (set design and construction by Gerard Bourcier; set decor by Ellyn Essig), we learn bits and pieces of their past. Charlie once went through a serious depression; Nancy wondered if he was having an affair, and thought about divorcing him. When he was younger, Charlie used to like the experience of dropping to the bottom of a cove and staying under the water for as long as possible, wondering what life was like down there.
Nancy sees “some people, I think,” off in the distance. Later, she sees them again, closer. But then she loses sight of them.
And then it happens.
Toward the end of the first act, one of the people Nancy spotted is shown lurking near her and Charlie. Except it’s not a person. It’s some kind of giant lizard (colorfully and whimsically costumed by Terri Caust). Or maybe I should say some kind of lizard/human hybrid.
Another shows up. Nancy and Charlie are terrified. They look for a weapon to defend themselves with, but can’t do any better than a small, useless stick. They decide to play dead, and that’s how the first act ends.
RICHARD FRANT/@frantvisuals
Katie Maul and Ian Murphy in “Seascape.”
The second act, humorously, begins with them still playing dead — lying motionless, with their feet up in the air. But they soon discover that the lizard people — a committed couple like them, named Leslie (Ian Murphy) and Sarah (Katie Maul) — mean them no harm. They are, in fact, just as scared as Nancy and Charlie are, and just as perplexed about what is happening.
They speak English. But as they talk, it becomes clear that their understanding of certain concepts is lacking. Nancy tries to explain love to them, for instance. And Charlie takes a shot at teaching them about evolution.
The discussion in the second act does get a little dry, at times. But Maul and Murphy help make it as engaging as possible with their colorful reactions. Sarah, like Nancy, comes off as inquisitive, and friendly, and alive to life’s possibilities. In a kind of mirror image of Charlie’s passivity, Leslie often takes a defensive stance: suspicious and glowering, sometimes seeking to intimidate but also sometimes seeming like a scared child.
Charlie wonders if he and Nancy are dead, and in some kind of afterlife. And why not? That’s as good an explanation as any. Or, obviously, it could all be a dream.
Albee never resolves this question. And he never explains things like how the lizard people learned to speak English. He just lets this wild encounter play out, with all of its verbal fireworks and a bit of physical sparring, until its characters come to a shaky truce, and a hopeful glance toward their future, on the planet they share.
Yes, Nancy certainly got what she was asking for when she said she wanted to meet some “wondrous people”
Bergen County Players will present “Seascape” at Little Firehouse Theater in Oradell through Jan. 18. Cast and crew members, along with Jakob Holder, executive director of The Edward F. Albee Foundation, will take part in a question-and-answer session following the Jan. 16 show. Visit bcplayers.org.
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