'Time Stands Still': A Modern Conflict In Quogue

“Time Stands Still” is a modern love story and an age-old parable about women’s choices today—love and babies, or career. “You can’t have it all” could be read as the sneaky message of the compelling drama currently staging at Quogue Community Hall, courtesy of the Hampton Theatre Company.

Certainly Sarah Goodwin, the banged-up photojournalist at the heart of the story portrayed by Sandy York, isn’t going to have it “all” in the conditions playwright Donald Margulies lays out for her. The drama is set during war in Iraq, where Sarah narrowly misses being killed by a roadside bomb, and opens as her longtime live-in companion, journalist James Dodd—acted by John Carlin—brings her home from a hospital in Germany, where she had been in a coma for weeks. Now, she’s hobbling around on crutches, her face left scarred.

James had left the war zone earlier, following a meltdown after witnessing the bloodshed there, and feels somewhat guilty about having done so. He is caring and worried. Sarah is diffident, but physically needy. Their relationship is that of many modern ones where each of the two halves have satisfying careers, but the demands and rewards of those careers get in the way of an uncomplicated life—that of man, woman and babies.

In walks Sarah’s boss and old friend, Richard Ehrlich, acted by John L. Payne, the photo editor of the news magazine she works for, with his guileless girlfriend, Mandy Bloom, portrayed by Kate Kenney, who’s decades younger. Life is simple for the pair. They are giddily in love and headed toward marriage—can a baby be far behind? The juxtaposition poses a bigger question: can these four be friends, with Mandy arriving with silly balloons at the Brooklyn apartment of older—but perhaps not wiser—Sarah and James?

Mr. Margulies’s intelligent, crackling dialogue between the four is spiked with both pathos and wit, while never losing sight of the emotional putty at the heart of the drama. Under the smart direction of Sarah Hunnewell, the cast does a superb job carrying the audience from deep emotional pitch to quick laughter. All four actors are new to Hampton Theatre Company and, not surprisingly, arrived with multiple credits on the Manhattan stage and beyond. Play and cast have produced a sharp and absorbing drama.

Ms. York, as the conflicted photojournalist, gives a finely nuanced performance. Her character is at turns troubled, strong, confused, sarcastic, amenable and driven. Mr. Carlin, as her lover, transforms from supportive helpmate to a man who wants his own, much simpler career and relationship. He does not want to cover the next new war.

In three taut acts, traversing January to September in a single year, the play hones in on the various types of relationships people today build, together and apart. Like a camera lens coming into focus, the drama pinpoints the high contrast between people who choose demanding careers, and those who opt for domestic life and babies. Mr. Margulies does it so well I found myself thinking, admiringly, “This could have been written by a woman.”

Along the way, the play poses questions about the role of journalists who get up-close to human tragedy, and their job to simply record, not participate. Would it be better to put down the camera and help? Does telling the world about the latest tragedy in Darfur, or the Sudan, or name any war-torn part of the world, actually do any good? How many stories that make us feel bad should be in any single issue of a magazine read by people halfway around the world who can do nothing but feel bad?

As a former newspaper reporter and magazine editor myself, I have dealt with some of the same kinds of decisions, and the play touched close to home. Though I never covered a war zone, I did stories about the lives of men and women changed forever by Vietnam, and know many of the reporters and photographers who came back different from the people they were before they went. Journalists are often thrown into situations of the kind “Time Stands Still” so deftly demonstrates that I found it triggering memories of stories and situations from decades ago.

The only question I had when leaving the hall was, where did the title come from? It seemed not to suit the movement of the drama. Later, I found the lines from when Sarah is talking about what it is like to photograph carnage: “When I look through that little rectangle ... time stops. It just ... all the noise around me ... it just cuts out. And all I see is the picture.” And when you only see the picture in the frame, you can’t be aware of the meaning of what is actually happening, or the rest of your life.

“Time Stands Still” was first produced in Los Angeles and staged on Broadway in 2010. It lasted less than a year there, but did garner two Tony awards for the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, one for the play, the other for acting.

It’s a boon that Hampton Theatre Company has brought it to life for us.

Hampton Theatre Company will stage “Time Stands Still” on Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m., through January 25, at Quogue Community Hall. 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.