Theatre in Review: Be a Good Little Widow (Ars Nova) If you haven't gotten to know Bekah Brunstetter, it's time you did. I missed OORAH!, her New York debut, but from now on, I'll be keeping an eye out for her. Be a Good Little Widow is by no means a perfect work, but it shows a fresh sensibility, a way of looking at characters that is both sympathetic and a little bit clinical. And, when dealing with material that might invite a certain amount of sentimentality or hand-wringing, she's a pretty tough cookie. Meet Craig and Melody, young marrieds who've just moved into their starter home in suburban Connecticut. On the surface, their manner is as romantic as you would expect, but underneath there's a gnawing dissatisfaction. Craig is a corporate lawyer whose job requires him to be on the road a couple of weeks each month. Melody, at 26, has been stuck in neutral since graduating from college; now, she's living in a strange town with no career, no friends, and, most of the time, no husband. Her two acquaintances are Hope, Craig's mother, and Brad, his administrative assistant. Hope is a world-class underminer, a longtime widow who is fiercely devoted to her son and sees Melody as some kind of inferior caretaker. The sight of Jill Eikenberry as Hope, perfectly coiffed, casting a politely sorrowful eye on Melody's casual choices in furnishings, her mouth famed in a Mona Lisa smile that sends all-too-easily decoded messages of disapproval, provides some of the play's most delectable moments. ("I really think she may not have a soul," muses Melody.) Brad is Melody's opposite number, a slacker killing time in a meaningless job until he decides what he wants to do when he grows up. (His father owns the law firm.) In fact, Brad may be a little too simpatico with Melody; when he drops by to pick up some files from Craig's home computer, their conversation strikes some disconcerting sparks. Then the unthinkable happens; on the way home from a business trip, Craig's commuter jet crashes, leaving no survivors. If Melody was underprepared for marriage, she's absolutely at sea when it comes to widowhood. As Hope, who has rules for every occasion, seizes control of the funeral, Melody unravels -- drinking too much, acting out, taking part in imaginary conversations with Craig, and finding herself in inappropriate, emotionally charged situations with Brad. Brunstetter isn't unsympathetic to Melody's plight, but she's also painfully clear about her lack of maturity, and she lets her stumble toward some kind growth without offering any artificially contrived support. Even as Hope's disapproval chills the atmosphere -- "Mourning is a private affair," she asserts -- it's hard not to sympathize with her disdain for her daughter-in-law's cluelessness. Melody's friendship with Brad is at best useless and at worst dangerous, since he turns out to even be needier than her. At its best, Be a Good Little Widow has the qualities of a good short story, informed by Brunstetter's keen awareness of how people often act out their grief in peculiar ways. But she needs to pay more attention to surface details; the play is full of nagging little irregularities that prove distracting. In one scene, Melody gets up at 5am to send Craig off on an early morning flight, then makes a phone call to her father -- but he lives in Colorado; is she really calling him at three in the morning his time? Hope announces that the funeral will take place on a Sunday, because that's the only day she can book the church. I have never heard of a Christian church holding a funeral on a Sunday. In a key scene, Hope has to retrieve Melody, who has gone to the scene of the crash. However, we were previously told that the plane crashed in Albany; did Melody really drive 250-plus miles in her distressed state? These questions matter less than they might, thanks to Stephen Brackett's beautifully modulated production, which captures all sorts of telling moments -- an unexpected rush of feeling between two people, a break in the conversation that speaks volumes. Wrenn Schmidt puts all of Melody's immaturities on display, yet keeps us intrigued with hints at a nascent bit of steel in her spine. Chad Hoeppner reveals the essential decency and kindness at Craig's core, without pretending that he is, in any way, an exceptional person. Johnny Orsini stops just short of spoofing Brad's most adolescent qualities, especially his inability to see that his suffering isn't more important anyone else's. Best of all is Eikenberrry, a chilly, Mandarin presence who finally learns to relax a bit and offer Melody a bit of frosty comfort. The long, narrow, low-ceilinged space at Ars Nova is a challenge for designers, but Daniel Zimmerman, working in forced perspective, has created a perfectly inviting living room setting, and Burke Brown, making interesting use of side angles, provides fine lighting for both the quotidian scenes and the fantasy sequences in which Melody asks Craig the questions she never got around to when he was alive. Jessica Pabst's costumes are extremely observant of the differences between the four characters, contrasting Craig's uniform like use of blue shirts and sweaters with Brad's studiedly casual look, and Hope's thoroughly put-together ensembles with Melody's just-out-of-college wardrobe. Bart Fasbender's fluent sound design blends airplane effects and voices from an offstage television with several well-chosen musical selections for scenic transitions. I don't want to over-praise Be a Good Little Widow; it's a small thing, and its rough edges could use a little sanding down. But it shows that Bekah Brunstetter has good theatrical instincts and a point of view that is all her own. That's reason enough to look forward to more from her. --David Barbour 
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