Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Shows themselves are so fleeting that we enter a theater ready to think in terms of ephemerality.
And so theres something beautifully appropriate about the form of both Celine SongsEndlingsand the new musicalUnknown Soldier.
wonders Sook Ja (Jo Yang), and the answer is no one.
InEndlings,Song isnt talking about continuation: Theres no ebb and flow, hereonly ebb.
The play, wildly uneven though it is, is clear-eyed about the way things disappear.
When they go, they go.
Theyre strong and vital and so poor, Sook Ja says, that theyre the dirt eaters.
Some are coming slowly to light.
Outside Playwrights Horizons, theres a picture of Friedman with his arms around his collaborators, laughing hugely.
Going into the Playwrights lobby past Michaels picture, I thought of that.
Ellen and Andrew email back and forth, reconstructing what they think happened.
For those keen to hear Friedmans voice again,Unknown Soldierseems to offer only quick moments of it.
Now, that cant actually be true.
According to Goldsteins painful program note, all the music is Friedmans.
There are a few hints here and there.
But the music eventually settles into a kind of placeholder recitative sound, even at moments of apparent climax.
Where are those Friedmansongs?
And what Lucy does to Francisa man terribly lost in mental sufferingis assault.
(How such an uncanny creature grows up to be the extremely cool Estelle Parsons is never clear.)
Director Trip Cullman and the actors smooth over as much of this as they can.
Is all romance just … misremembering?
Endlingsis at New York Theatre Workshop through March 29.Unknown Soldieris at Playwrights Horizons through March 29.
