Tonight is the final performance of C.P. Taylor's "And a Nightingale Sang" at the Westport Country Playhouse. Part love story, part comedy, and part World War II history, the play skillfully blends three genres to create a show that is at times heartwrenching, at times hilarious, and always historically relevant.
Playwright C.P. Taylor brings to life the intimate dramas and dysfunctional dynamics of a British working class family dealing with the war and the Nazi's blitz campaign to bomb London. The characters--from the adorably acerbic grandfather Andie, played by Richard Kline ("City of Angels) who steals the show as he wanders in and out to the lead, Helen Stott, played with deft emotional range by Brenda Meaney ("The Caucasian Chalk Circle")--pull together as the threat of war approaches their doorstep and pull apart as their efforts to grow and pursue their own relationships outside the nuclear family tear them in different directions. Helen's father, George Stott (Sean Cullen, "Golden Boy") tunes out the war and the family's troubles as he plays his piano but is revealed as the linchpin that holds the Stotts together when tragedy strikes.
Death looms throughout the play outside the Stotts' door as an uninvited guest--not just physical death but the death of relationships and of lives not fully lived. The Stotts mercilessly mock the mother Peggy's (Deirdre Madigan, "A Delicate Balance," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf") faith, and yet it is faith that sees them through their darkest moments. Grandpa Andie, though he can't remember in whose house he's supposed to be when, offers the play's sharpest words of wisdom, laced with irony and black humor: "Dying is not as deadly as you think."
By making us a fly on the wall in the Stotts' humble home and showing us how the family adapts to the changed landscape that war brings, C.P. Taylor reminds us that people can be at their best when everything around them is at its worst, and that love enables us to transcend our petty human limitations.
If you can't get to "And a Nightingale Sang" tonight, be sure to check out the rest of the Playhouse's exciting 2015 season. Up next, the world premiere of "Love and Money," a new play by renowned playwright and WCP regular, A.R. Gurney.