An Astounding WHAT WE DID BEFORE OUR MOTH DAYS? Downtown — Review

In an expansive profile of playwright and actor Wallace Shawn published by the New York Times Magazine last month, one could sense the avant-garde master’s resistance to—and even, perhaps, mild annoyance at—his new work What We Did Before Our Moth Days? being too-tidily categorized as autobiographical. 

Not that Shawn attempted to dismiss the notion—and indeed, how could he? 

Structured as four continuous monologues tracing their own part of a shared story, Moth Days centers on a celebrated novelist, Dick (Josh Hamilton), as he embarks on a years-long affair with Elaine (Hope Davis), a fellow writer, while married to Elle (Maria Dizzia), a schoolteacher. The affair continues, even after Elle becomes aware of it, until Dick’s premature death at 45. Alongside this, we also follow Tim (John Early), Dick and Elle’s only child, as he navigates the impact of the affair upon his adult life.

It may seem absurd for Shawn to chafe at this tale being perceived as biography, given that his own father, the editor William Shawn, conducted a decades-long affair—closer, perhaps, to a second marriage–with the writer Lillian Ross. A stirring early scene from Moth Days even draws directly from how Mr. Shawn’s death played out: a phone call from the mistress is answered by the wife, who, in the two’s first ever conversation, breaks the news. He’s gone. 

Yet for anyone who has seen the astounding Moth Days, or anyone who appreciates Shawn’s skill in excavating the darkest recesses of the human soul, the author’s resistance will make sense. His pushback is not merely because multiple details here diverge from real life—though indeed they do. (Dick is a novelist, not an editor; Ross adopted a son with Shawn, while Elaine is childless; Shawn died at 85, while Dick is struck down by a heart attack in his 40s.) Rather, a non-fiction frame simply reduces Moth Days to something it’s not. Shawn’s own life is here merely container, or vessel, for an expert dissection of mortality, intimacy and the exquisite agonies of love. The biography is a feint, a trick almost—the wild tale of Shawn’s family becomes something devastatingly ordinary, and all too familiar. 

As Moth Days begins, the four actors saunter casually onto stage, still seeping mugs of tea. They even nod a polite greeting to us, the listeners, who will remain in a half-light for the first two acts (of three total). It feels, for a time, like we’re sitting across from each speaker at a dimly lit and vaguely purgatorial cafe, as they off-handedly share intimate wonderings at what it might feel like to touch their mother’s breasts (that’s Early), or confess they’ve “never enjoyed” acknowledging someone else’s pain (that one is Davis, actually). 

The staging, the lighting, even the set—all feel almost illegal in their unadornment. Spotlights shift from one actor to another, in Jennifer Tipton’s designs, with a gradualness that’s borderline comical at first, like a millennial pause taken theatrical form. The set, by Riccardo Hernández, pretends to be the decaying back wall of the theater (it’s not). Shawn’s longtime collaborator André Gregory offers us so little in the way of theatricality, it makes you want to point and yell, Vine-style: “Is this allowed?" 

But of course, Gregory knows exactly what he is doing. All of this controlled simplicity pushes us to listen, listen, listen. And the magic here is entirely in Shawn’s transporting language, language that keeps Moth Days wholly engrossing for every moment of its 3 hour plus runtime. The smaller Gregory’s choices, the bigger these stories feel. They are not, in truth, epic tales—at times, they are almost rote. But in this carefully crafted space, they feel giant. 

It’s difficult to pick out or highlight one section from such a rich text. Dick and Elle’s courtship is wrenching, their differing understandings of love tragic (he thinks it is eternal; she knows, even in its thrall, that love will come and go). Dick’s account of his own death is viscerally upsetting. Elaine’s unbothered accounting of herself as “underhanded” and “trashy” is brutally funny. 

The only stumble, for me at least, comes in Elle recounting her own potential affair—an opportunity she declines to take up. This monologue is, like all the others, beautifully written. But it feels just a little too obvious, a bit expected. The dutiful wife suppresses her desires, just as the husband is indulging his every urge without guilt. (Well, without enough guilt.) 

All the same, Dizzia’s delivery of this section is simply extraordinary. A fierce rage simmers just under Elle’s placid surface in Dizzia’s viscerally powerful portrayal. Hamilton is a recognizably pitiable figure as Dick, if not wholly convincing as a celebrated novelist. And Davis is a thrilling presence, wholly accepting of her own dark cynicism in a manner that clashes delightfully with the other self-doubting trio.

But the biggest revelation of the evening is Early, a gifted comic actor who here displays remarkable new range. Early strikes upon a half-impersonation of Shawn that is, like Shawn’s work (and sometimes the man himself) both deeply grotesque and oddly alluring. And Moth Days finds full-on transcendence in Tim’s climactic sit-down with Elaine, the first time Gregory breaks form and allows the actors to address one another.  

As Elaine unfolds her worldview to Tim, Shawn’s essential themes of tenderness and cruelty find a brutal clarity. Elaine embraces the grotesque that lives under it all, as Shawn does. But for her, and perhaps now for the playwright, there is no inherent condemnation—just a different kind of beauty. 

What We Did Before Our Moth Days? Is now in performance at the Greenwich House Theater downtown. For tickets and more information, visit here.