Triptych

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As long as you come to John Yearley’s Triptych with the understanding that grief is a deeply personal and complex emotion and that just because two people are married doesn’t mean they will experience a traumatic event exactly the same way, then you will understand the plight of Joe and Blanche. It goes without saying, although it’s always said, nothing is sadder than the loss of a child; the parent is “supposed to go first” and the children are expected to grow older and have children of their own but life and unexpected tragedies have a way of getting in the way.

In the first part, it’s November 3, 2013 as we meet Joe (Michael Giese) alone in a cemetery. Dressed perhaps for a game in his wool hat, denim jacket over a New York Islanders t-shirt, and khaki pants, he stands in front of his son Denny’s grave astride the pathway to other plots in an effort to speak to visiting mourners. He hasn’t been speaking much with his wife Blanche and is desperate to connect with anyone who comes his way. An oversized camo backpack sits conspicuously nearby, loaded with a sleeping bag, a cereal six-pack, journals to write in, and a late 70s forest green model 228H Coleman lantern. Denny’s brown corduroy slacks, Joe’s “security blanket,” are also in the bag.

From Joe’s conversations with people he meets in the cemetery we sense that he lacks typical social skills and conversational filters. He meets Esmeralda, a woman visiting her mother Lourdes’ gravesite, and notes down their names in a journal to add Lourdes to his prayer list. He hails down another mourner he spots through his binoculars. That man is visiting the grave of his close friend Sidney. When the man complains of having to walk all the way over just to talk, Joe confides he would have come over himself but had just arrived and didn’t want to leave Denny’s grave yet. He casually adds “Sidney” is a terrible name. After the man leaves, Joe realizes his blunder and berates himself over the indiscretion.

In his encounter with Marty, the cemetery’s security guard, he manages to come off pitiable and harmless enough to be allowed to spend the night by his son’s grave. “Does anyone really care if I do something that’s not, like, strictly within the rules?…I’m going to be honest here, Marty…I can’t sleep! At first, right after it happened, I slept all the time. But now…I know I could sleep if I could stay here. Just one night. What do you say, Marty? Who would know? Who would care? Honestly, Marty, who would care?”

When Blanche (Tricia Alexandro) appears, after a marathon run, we watch two people talking “at each other.” They don’t understand each other’s path to grieving. She can’t begin to rationalize his wanting to sleep in the cemetery. They have a tug of war over Denny’s slacks, a tug that Joe wins, but most pitifully. With Blanche feeling it’s healthier to move on, it’s easy to envision that everything else that belonged to their son has already made its way to Goodwill.  She tells Joe he wouldn’t understand why she has taken up marathon running since Denny died. She explains that when she has become exhausted, “some jackass, some guy you’d hate if you saw him in any other time or place yells ‘Keep going! You’re doing great!’ and…you do. You keep going. Because of that stupid guy.” Now evening, she reminds Joe that he is afraid of the dark. When he attempts to light his lantern, he finds he has no matches. She throws him a lighter. As she leaves she wordlessly drops a bag next to him. It contains the milk he didn’t bring for his cereal.

The next part finds Blanche two years later in the parking lot of the church that is celebrating her father’s funeral mass. Some friends she hasn’t seen in years show up to pay their respects but Blanche is distracted. The priest has asked her to speak at the mass and has suggested that she recite a poem. Unprepared, she is scrolling pages of poems on her phone. The Monsignor who she thinks has driven in to pay his respects is in fact returning to the church to pick up his tennis racket. He mouths flat platitudes on his way into the rectory while she is still speaking to him. Hot on the heels of the Monsignor ignoring her, Joe appears all cleaned up in a suit.

Blanche, who hadn’t seen Joe in the year since he had a nervous breakdown and left home, tells him she was relieved once he was gone. Joe, who genuinely believes he has come today to be of service, is oblivious to her barbs. He thanks Blanche for loving him, professes his own love for her and only her, and offers her a gift that has helped him get to where he is now, a book titled “The Third Eye.” She destroys the book, hurling the pieces at him. He still doesn’t leave. On learning that Joe has a funeral-appropriate poem committed to memory she throws in the towel and agrees to Joe speaking for her…but doesn’t agree to their entering the church together.

The third part is eight years later, still. They are together at home, and Blanche is dying of cancer. Joe shares caretaking duties with a nurse who stays with her when he goes off to work at Staples. Blanche and Joe now share the connection of a longtime couple that can read each other’s thoughts. Their love for each other is unquestioned. Joe gives Blanche a triptych of the Jesus story and she gives him a quilt made of Denny’s and her clothes. Blanche intentionally spills the contents of a morphine vial that Joe has been squirreling away to take his own life once Blanche is dead. She makes him promise he will live on at least a year afterward.

While we know grief is an intense sorrow and emotional pain, Tricia Alexandro as Blanche and Michael Giese as Joe show us how grief manifests itself not just in sadness, but in anger, guilt, numbness and even confusion. Their grief doesn’t  follow a set timeline, and it ebbs and flows over time. Giese imbues Joe with very natural humor, and kind-hearted gentleness even when Joe says the wrong things. He embodies perseverance throughout the performance as his humility and worldview are tested so many times as in picking up the pieces of the shredded book and in bowing akin to a downward dog pose in yoga.

Alexandro comes off as the heavy in her first scene as it is mostly impatience fueled by what she perceives to be Joe’s “ridiculousness.” Her love peeks through when she throws him the lighter for his lantern and when she leaves him the milk. Alexandro has a tour de force performance in the second part. Her ability to pivot her emotions and reactions is striking, balancing silences and storms in her section with Giese and quietly contained while obviously upset with the Monsignor. Giese and Alexandro have a lovely tenderness in their closing scene together matching each other’s sensitivity in what is ultimately a tearjerker.

Director Eric Paeper creates delicate moments with his sentient actors. Choosing to minimize scenic elements, the focus is on the actors and the words and a story that engages us throughout all its sorrow. Daisy Long’s lighting and Kasey Price’s sound are sensitive to the changing moods of the piece.

Playwright John Yearley doesn’t ever let us move away from the point here – there are no laws governing grieving. In the final part where we have Joe alone speaking at his support group we have the ultimate takeaway – “It’s literally everyone. They’re either grieving, or about to be. They pretend that they aren’t because they think it makes them happy. But, really, it just makes them crazy. So we spend our whole lives fussing over stupid shit when in a snap of your fingers—”

Triptych (through November 24, 2024)

The Barrow Group

The Studio Theater at The Barrow Group Performing Arts Center, 520 8th Avenue, 9th floor, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.barrowgroup.org

Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission