Love Story Cloaked By War Drama Opens At Quogue

To anyone who asked, Sarah Hunnewell would find herself explaining her latest directorial undertaking, “Time Stands Still” by Donald Margulies, as a wartime drama about a photojournalist coping with her experiences in Iraq upon returning home.

She was, in a sense, misleading them. Mr. Margulies himself sees the play as a love story, he said in an interview with Intelligent Life magazine. And after working with the play over the last five weeks during rehearsal—leading up to opening night on Thursday at Quogue Community Hall—Ms. Hunnewell wholeheartedly agrees.

“It ends up being a relationship drama,” Ms. Hunnewell—executive director of the Hampton Theatre Company, now in its 30th season—explained last week during a telephone interview. “And the war in Iraq is really just a backdrop. You don’t hear anything more about it. By putting the characters in a situation like that, it ups the stakes. Conflicts and issues are magnified that much more by a high-octane environment.”

With two Broadway runs and a pair of Tony nominations in its cap, Mr. Margulies’s Brooklyn-based play centers on Sarah Goodwin, a photojournalist recovering, both physically and emotionally, from her time spent in Iraq. She is a strong, hardened, intense woman—the perfect foil to her photo editor’s new, young girlfriend, Mandy Bloom, who is sweet, innocent and sees the joy in life.

The male counterparts—James Dodd is Sarah’s boyfriend, and Richard Ehrlich is Mandy’s—are not as strikingly opposite as the women, Ms. Hunnewell explained. They are drawn in relation to Sarah, as is Mandy. They all pivot around her.

“The characters are very real and complicated people, and to try to get all the different dimensions of those characters is tricky,” Ms. Hunnewell said. “They always say, ‘90 percent of it is casting.’ If you can get the right cast, your work is easy. It’s very unusual that, for the first time, it turns out the people who were best for these roles are all from the city.”

Sandy York and John Carlin will star as Sarah and James, opposite John L. Payne and Kate Kenney as Richard and Mandy. During the first run on Broadway in 2010, Laura Linney, Brian d’Arcy James, Eric Bogosian and Alicia Silverstone portrayed the four characters, respectively, though Christina Ricci replaced Ms. Silverstone when the play opened again nine months later. It closed on January 30, 2011.

With less than a year-long window to catch the play in Manhattan, Ms. Hunnewell missed it—and, in retrospect, she prefers it that way.

“I partly like that because it keeps me from having preconceived ideas when I’m envisioning it myself,” she said. “The piece is pretty dark, but it’s not relentlessly dark. There’s a great deal of humor. Those things need to balance to find the truth of these characters, because it’s very much not one-dimensional.”

Hampton Theatre Company will continue its 30th season with “Time Stands Still” on Thursday, January 8, at 7 p.m. at Quogue Community Hall. Additional performances will be held through Sunday, January 25, on Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $25, $23 for seniors (except Saturdays) and $10 for students under age 21. For more information, call (631) 653-8955, or visit hamptontheatre.org.