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Mostly, they love each other, truly and entirely.
Except … Madeleine is dead.
Or is Andre dead?
Or is the nearness of death for either or both just looming in the air?
Zeller approaches his play like someone fiddling with the dial on an old radio.
He hops between frequencies, creating not so much a narrative as a meditative haze.
InThe Height of the Storm, though Madeleine remains tack-sharp, Andre shows signs of disintegration.
Zellers territory is fragmentation, pointillism with half the dots missing.
But this gauziness of tone also keeps the play from feeling intellectually or emotionally filling.
On the night before the play begins, theres a big storm.
It woke me up, Anne says to her father in the first scene.
Its a long time since Ive seen such a violent storm.
Theres a mysterious bunch of flowers sent without a card.
Instead, it banks on titillation through ambiguity, which can make it feel coy.
The productions saving grace is the absolutely wonderful Eileen Atkins.
She, at any rate, is an artist at the height of her particular storm.
The Height of the Stormis at theSamuel J. Friedman Theatre.
