DEVELOPING CONFLICTS: Some quick thoughts about Time Stands Still, at the Studio Theater through 2/12.

The play is about a war photographer and her reporter boyfriend; when she’s almost killed on the job, they retreat to their Brooklyn apartment and try to figure out how to move forward with their lives. There are only two supporting characters, Richard the somewhat plastic editor and his new fiancee Mandy the cliched, saccharine Americaness. (After one scene with Mandy I found myself thinking, “Wait, but I thought this play was written by a woman?” It wasn’t.)

There are a lot of problems with this play. It can be cheap and predictable (of course the photographer’s much-divorced, horrible father is a conservative Christian! of course Mandy is much younger than Richard!) and the big-idea lines are often pat. The shifts in audience identification are what you might expect: Mandy gets her moments, etc. The actual war-zone descriptions are a bit tinny–I wasn’t super surprised to find out after the show, from the playwright bio in the program, that David Margulies wrote it because he was troubled by his life in Connecticut rather than because he was troubled by his many trips to Iraq, you know?

That said, the play’s heart is clearly in its portrayal of “emerging adulthood,” anchorless people who are no longer as young as they act, people to whom life is starting to catch up.

I think one contrast between Sarah the photographer and Jamie the reporter/boyfriend is that he’s trying to be a man, and she’s trying to be an adult. Her task is more straightforward, and she’s a more straightforward character in general. The way longing for connection and stability shapes a man is portrayed very keenly and subtly here. (I initially thought that Sarah had been captured, and that the suppressed aggression in Jamie’s haunted eyes would come forward more directly. That didn’t happen, and I think the play is better for it. Holly Twyford is pretty terrific as Sarah, but on the basis of those sunken eyes I’m giving the award here to Greg McFadden as Jamie.)

There are also some hints about the ways in which disaster-journalism requires the complicity of the suffering locals; the ethical dilemmas inherent in the practice are sharpened when the locals don’t hand themselves over to the camera.

I’m glad I saw this and I’d generally recommend it, despite its flaws.