Who needs a neighbor from hell?
In Wendy MacLeod’s “Things Being What They Are,” currently on stage at Live Theatre Workshop, Bill does.
Bill (Steve Wood) is fastidious, anxious, thoughtful, loyal and waiting at his new condo for his cheating wife to join him (kudos to scene designer Jason Jamerson, who made this condo scream “short-term, divorced men”).
Barging in before he’s unpacked is next door neighbor Jack (Stephen Frankenfield), slovenly, boorish, misogynistic and, not surprisingly, divorced.
It’s unlikely the two will become friends. And yet …
MacLeod’s play is very funny. But underneath it is a world of angst about love, mortality, relationships and masculinity.
While Jack and Bill are opposites, they both are heavy with loneliness, fear and denial.
Jack has not found the freedom and joy he expected when he divorced his wife after he was caught cheating on her. The thought of life alone, especially now that he thinks he has cancer, terrifies him.
Bill loves his actress wife, and is willing to forgive her affair with a fellow actor. His job as a marketing executive meant he had to move; his wife is supposed to join him when she finishes an acting job. But he has doubts. He is weighed down with the thought that he has lost the love of his life.
The two challenge each other — and bring a sort of clarity and peace to each other.
MacLeod manages to take us through this friendship, these life-changing conundrums, with dark humor and tender insight.
And these two actors infuse their characters with an honesty that underscores the poignancy of the story.
Jack is not a particularly likable guy, but Frankenfield shows us his heart and his vulnerabilities.
And he is the perfect foil to Wood’s Bill, who seems lost and heartbroken and confused. Wood does this with a rootedness that makes his character painfully real.
Samantha Cormier directed with a light hand that understood there is more to this than laughter.
Tucson summers are thin on theater but productions like this fill us up.
