Ages of the Moon review – Sam Shepard bromance laughs in the face of death
almost 6 years in The guardian
Vaults, LondonShepard picks apart the frailties of two men tormented by unspoken emotions, from marital meltdown and armchair priapism to the existential crisis of mortality
The men in Sam Shepard’s dramas often find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere and tortured by a maelstrom of unspoken emotions in their inescapable solitude. Shepard spoke of his interest in “aloneness” and referred to it as a Beckettian state of “banishment, exile, being cut away”. Ages of the Moon, first staged in 2009 and now premiering in the UK, is a tightly focused study of this existential aloneness – even if it parades as a grumpy bromance between two ageing men. Ames (Christopher Fairbank) and Byron (Joseph Marcell) are friends of 50 years who have reunited to appraise their lives. They do so over a bottle of bourbon on a front porch (designed by Holly Pigott) that is filled with dust and gloom, and looks out on an imagined expanse of empty sky.
Ames is seemingly the needier of the two: an infidelity that he describes as a “minor blow job” from a woman whose name he can’t remember has cost him his marriage. Byron has been summoned for emotional support but sits in judgement, withholding his own story … or so it appears at first. Continue reading...
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