As the lights come up on set designer Dunsi Dai’s kitchen-eating area-sitting area in a generic apartment of an independent living community for retirees called Grand Horizons, wife Nancy and husband Bill are repeating a routine they have performed for most of the fifty-some years they’ve been married, silently setting the table for dinner and dishing up food on the plates. They sit down, prepare to eat, and she says, “I want a divorce.” He replies, “All right.”
End of the first scene of playwright Bess Wohl’s Grand Horizons in the current production from Moonstone Theatre Company at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center.
In the second scene, the two shocked sons plus the wife of the older son have descended on Grand Horizons. How is this possible? We thought we were a happy family, that you were happily married. Are all those photos of joyful birthday celebrations and holiday cheer really just lies?
Though the sons are bewildered about what their family has been and is, daughter-in-law Jess, obviously pregnant and obviously a feminist, defends her mother-in-law’s right to have her own life, her own name on her bank account, as she says, to be an independent person and not just her functions as a wife and mother. Suddenly we have gone back a century-and-a-half and are with Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House, making many of the same arguments.
Then Nancy admits that she has always had a little life of her own, sneaking off to spend time with her high school boyfriend and great love.
And Bill confesses that he too has a little something on the side with a woman in the Grand Horizons apartments that he can go to after a divorce.
This leads to a delightful scene between Nancy and Bill’s girlfriend about the difficulties of living with an elderly man.
So again a door closes, though not behind the wife. And I think it is not too much of a spoiler to say that a satisfactory resolution is reached, because the pleasure for the audience comes in watching the way that Nancy and Bill reach that resolution.
That pleasure is heightened by the performances of the Moonstone cast, guided with a sure hand in the many funny and occasionally serious moments by Moonstone’s founder and Artistic Director-Producer Sharon Hunter. And an extra burst of pleasure is added by having on stage together again after too long a time father and son Joneal and Jared Joplin, here playing father and son, Joneal as Bill and Jared as elder son Ben. Those histrionic genes work in both.
As they do, though not genetically connected, in all the cast. Sarah Burke’s Nancy stays gracious through all the turmoil. As daughter-in-law Jess, Bridgette Bassa energizes Jess’s determination to find a way for her soon-to-be-baby’s soon-to-be grandparents to find a way. Cassidy Flynn’s younger son Brian takes a significant role in the situation. He also shows up late in the evening with William Humphrey as his eager if unsatisfied date. Ever a pleasure is a performance by Carmen Garcia, here as Bill’s girlfriend Carla, with growing doubts.
The work of Lighting Designer Michael Sullivan, Costume Designer Renee Garcia, Sound Designer Amanda Werre, Technical Director Jim Mozley Robert, and Stage Mana
ger Patrick Siler is unobtrusive and accurate as it should be.
And Moonstone’s Grand Horizons provides its own special kind of pleasure.
—Bob Wilcox
Photo by Jon Gitchoff
From the left, Jared Joplin (Ben), Bridgee Bassa (Jess), Sarah Burke (Nancy), Cassidy Flynn (Brian), and Joneal Joplin (Bill) in Grand Horizons.
