The Tamesis
The rain stopped for a moment in New York on Thursday night as audiences of all ages packed into the Greenwich Palace Theater for the premiere of “The New York Times.” What did we do before the age of the moth?is the latest work from playwright, actor, and all-around New York icon, Wallace Shawn. Enjoying a rare dry moment of the day, people stood outside the theater talking and laughing. A young woman in overalls is smoking a cigarette while a couple a few feet away are kissing passionately. “I heard it was a Greek tragedy combined with an American tragedy,” one gentleman told his friend.
Directed by Sean’s old friend Andre Gregory, the pair appeared together in Louis Malle’s 1981 film Andre and I had dinner—moth day is a dark comedy that explores the life and death of four characters: a husband and wife, their son, and the husband’s mistress. The title comes from one character’s reflections on the fact that although people have many birthdays, they only have one day to die. He calls this day their “Moth Day” because “I kind of imagine that when people die, they’re being gently, vaguely, fluttered into death by a swarm of blind moths.”
The actors—Hope Davis, Maria Dizzia, John Early, and Josh Hamilton—sat on stage in chairs facing the audience, mostly delivering lengthy monologues about their lives, relationships, and innermost thoughts. The results are funny, devastating, and painfully resonant.
Even in their shallow thoughts, the characters speak in a sometimes mysterious poetry, conveying a pervasive fear and philosophizing about relationships gone sour. “We’re kind of like two sheep grazing on the same mountain—we’re more or less together, but we have no obligations to each other,” one character muses, and we know exactly what he means.
Before the show, Sean can be seen strolling through the audience in a simple black blazer and greeting friends, many of whom are in their eighties and nineties. Behind him, shadows of moths illuminate the arched windows. There were also younger members present, mostly friends of Early, including Cole Escola, Kate Berlant, Naomi Macpherson and Jack Haven.
