photo by timothy richard
Misery Loves (Theatre) Company’s new show Together We Are More is a quiet, poetic reflection on the ways that we experience a world around us that is often terrific and often tragic.
Mary Fay Coady and Ailsa Galbreath exemplify two disparate personalities. Coady wants to bounce. Galbreath is grounded in her crossword puzzle and keeps stepping on Coady’s exuberance. It becomes clear that Coady’s wide smile is a cover for a vulnerable pain, or the potential to someday encounter vulnerable pain. It is an armor as much as Galbreath’s exasperated pessimism. They have a mysterious box, which is kept locked, but both toy with the idea of taking a risk and opening it up, even though it may bring them extreme joy or it may bring them extreme hurt. It may even bring both.
Together We Are More becomes a metaphor for taking a risk, for recognizing that we are all wounded creatures, continually stitching up our hearts, building up our thicker skin while still grasping for joy, for connection, for the possibility of the beautiful, terrific, ecstasy.
Directed by Rhys Bevan-John, Together We Are More plants the creative seeds of powerful questions into the human spirit but allows the audience full freedom to piece its non-linear structure together and to infer a myriad of different conclusions. It is an insightful, whimsical and heartrending play and a nice compliment to last year’s The Perfection of Man.
TWISI Rating:
Together We Are More at the Atlantic Fringe Festival has closed.
