| Two thematically related, beautifully rendered monologues. The terrors of loss, how it haunts and deepens us, is the subject here. SEA WALL, the stronger of the two works, is an impeccable dissection of the suddenness and the shock of harm. Tom Sturridge is quietly breathtaking as he attempts to give words to that which is, essentially, unspeakable. He's devastated and he knows it. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, breathlessly talks and talks until he runs out of speech. Both men are collapsed by sorrow, but it seems that Sturridge will be the wiser for it. The evening is, in every detail, scrupulously presented. It's a constant rush of feeling and a plaintive reminder that, as Stanley Kunitz has said, "the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking." |
