Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 26, 1995                   TAG: 9508280072
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`SHADOW BOX' WELL DONE BUT HARD TO TAKE

After all, it's a play about dying.

But the Showtimers production of the Tony Award-winning play is well-acted, for the most part, and competently directed.

It's just very, very hard to endure.

The story interweaves the dying experiences of three people and their closest friends or family. The three - an elderly woman and two middle-aged men - are spending their final days in comfortable cottages on the grounds of a hospital in California.

Joe (Michael Newnam) is a factory worker who is receiving a visit from his simple wife, Maggie (Linda Ann Dilehunt), and son, Steve (Kevin Ritz), for the first time in six months. Maggie, stuck in denial, has not mustered the courage to tell Steve his father is dying.

Brian (Michael Mansfield) is a gay man in the care of his longtime companion, Mark (Brian Compton). A surprise visit from Brian's flamboyant ex-wife, Beverly (Linda S. LaPrade), turns Brian and Mark's fragile little world upside down.

Finally there's Felicity (Elsie McCombs), who has lost her sight, most of her vital organs and her wits to whatever disease it is that's consuming her. Her daughter, Agnes (Mary Jean Redon Levin), is apparently bucking for sainthood caring for her cantankerous mother.

These three stories are presented by turns on Showtimers' small stage, and that presents one problem: There's just not enough room between living spaces on stage to allow the audience to focus without distraction on whichever group of characters is in the spotlight - and to give the actors enough room to do what they need to do.

Bad enough that this play creates a feeling of claustrophobia as it alternates between black humor and tearful, confessional monologues and dialogues on death. It also relies too heavily on vulgarity for comic effect.

But the cast does well enough with the material - especially Compton and LaPrade in their first scene together and Levin throughout. And the scenes in which the dying and their companions are being interviewed center stage by an off-stage doctor (the voice of Richard C. Kirkwood) are some of the most effective in the play.

"The Shadow Box" doesn't shed much new light on the process of dying. But it does shed light on the dying themselves, whom we are always so eager to push from our awareness.