Broadway Review: “Morning Sun”

“I’m very scared. I’m very confused it’s very bright here please just tell me whether or not I am safe.” These are among the first words spoken by Charley McBride (an ethereal and impassioned Edie Falco) in Simon Stephens’s “Morning Sun” currently running at Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center - Stage I. Charley is surrounded by her Mother Claudette McBride (a multifaceted and often whimsical Blair Brown) and daughter Tessa McBride (an intuitive and impassioned Marin Ireland) during this exchange. As the conversation immediately shifts time and space, the audience becomes aware “Morning Sun” is not a linear account of Charley McBride’s life, nor is what follows a simple episodic account, or some character driven narrative.

Every inch of dot’s liminal set and every shading of Lap Chi Chu’s palpable lighting becomes a different scene in a different space at a different time in Charley’s life. As often is his custom, Simon Stephens is not bound by any “normal” dimensions when “spinning a tale.” That is certainly true in “Morning Sun.” Both setting and lighting provide space for Charley’s story to be reality, fantasy, memory, or any combination of those parameters. And because this is Charley’s story, only the members of the cast playing Charley’s mother and Charley’s daughter play multiple roles. Under Lila Neugebauer’s nurturing direction, the cast excels at maintaining Simon Stephens’s delicate balance between the surreal and the real, between the remembered and the forgotten, between the accurate and the suspect.

Memories move into and out from Lap Chi Chu’s transcendent lighting and “gyre and gimble” around Charley’s state of mind. Fearful and uncertain, Charley survives her final moments in her hospital room awash in reverie. Earlier in the play, Charley reflects on her time in Nyack, New York, and her love of Edward Hopper’s work. “I like finding Edward Hopper paintings and thinking this is where I came from. “Morning Sun.” I like the strange expression on the woman’s face and wondering what she’s staring at and if she’s thinking about what she’s staring at or if her face is just kind of frozen because she’s gone to somewhere in her head that she can’t ever talk about.”

Throughout, the memory performances given by #1, #2, and #3 are powerful, and crash into one another with a strength that underscores and transcends the text.

Like Charley, the audience members revisit the “scenes” of our lives and evaluate how our nuclear and extended families guided us, supported us, encouraged us, discouraged us, hurt us, or healed us, shamed us, enlightened us, redeemed us, or condemned us. Charley struggled with her childhood, her adolescence, and her adulthood. Her parents, childhood friends, lovers, her child, her relatives, her work. All of these demanded her allegiance to them. All occupied her final moments. None of them could be transformed or reclaimed. None of them could guarantee safety during her life, in her death, or in any life beyond that death. “She’s gone to somewhere in her head that she can’t ever talk about.”

MORNING SUN

“Morning Sun” stars Blair Brown, Edie Falco, Marin Ireland.

The creative team includes dots (scenic design), Kaye Voyce (costume design), Lap Chi Chu (lighting design), Lee Kinney and Daniel Kluger (sound design), Daniel Kluger (original music), and Tom Watson (hair & wig design). Laura Smith is the Production Stage Manager.

“Morning Sun” runs at Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center - Stage I through Sunday December 19, 2021. Tickets for “Morning Sun” can be purchased online at www.nycitycenter.org, by calling 212-581-1212, or by visiting the New York City Center box office (131 West 55th Street). Running time is 1 hour and 40 minutes without intermission.

Photo: Blair Brown and Edie Falco in “Morning Sun” at Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center - Stage I.

Credit: Matthew Murphy.