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"The Peak" Climbs Emotional Everest

Steven Barnett





In The Peak, a new play written by Claude Solnik and directed by Robert Liebowitz, there are many lines that resonate with me and seemed to resonate with others in the audience. In one of those, we hear that sometimes you have to close your eyes to truly open them. That, to me, means that in order to see one another, we need to block out the distractions, disregard the noise. We need to truly hear one another to see. And even more important, we need to close our eyes, just so we can really “open” them again.


The Peak, fluidly, realistically and artistically directed by Liebowitz, is a show meant to be experienced, rather than one to entertain. Mackenzie Finley gives a moving performance as Susan, who loses her husband, while John DeFilippo gives a smoothly contoured performance as Henry, much more than a ghost, who has passed away. He balances between comic and tragic in a masterful way. And Mary Rising provides not exactly comic relief but more than a ray of sunlight in a shadowy world. Together, they create a truly moving world in which we can see three people who care and where we care as well.




The Peak is about many things, including its plot, but like all good plays, in the end the people, or the characters, matter as much or more than the plot. In the end The Peak is about intimacy, human beings and emotions closely observed, and how easily we become invisible to one another. Couples so easily can go from love to casualties of the routine. In The Peak, we hear about a couple who stopped seeing each other. DeFilppo says Susan became invisible to him. And Finley talks about how they found each other. DeFilippo says they had five more good years. “We could have had so many more,” Finley says with a passion that seems to come from a broken heart by loss. During a particularly moving speech, and a kind of eulogy or elegy that Finley delivers, we’re told that couples need to treat every day like the “first date.” Relationships may not come with a shelf life. But if we don’t keep them fresh, they can lose their excitement and become as routine as a trip to the gas station and store, rather than the center of a life.




The plot of The Peak, on its surface, could easily be that of a comedy. Susan goes on a hike with her friend Maya to distribute her husband’s ashes. Mary Rising is a wing woman, Susan’s friend, here to provide support. Susan misplaces the container with the ashes, presumably losing it on the hike. Finely's shriek when she realizes they're gone is that of someone who has betrayed herself and others, the sheer horror of the cosnequences of carelessnes. It's as if after making a careless mistake earlier that could have led to the loss of her husband, she has done it yet again. Meanwhile, Rising's Maya, a good person, here to help, tries to restore order. But if she is here to try to calm her friend, she is also someone who has lost and found life, or happiness, of her own. She married someone who is divorced, and says he told her that, once you lose it all, you appreciate everything. In other words, divorce is the death of a marriage, but can be a second chance as well, if we learn from our mistakes. We can learn from loss, whether we want to or not. Disposing of ashes has become a ritual for many. But when Susan loses the ashes, she suddenly experiences all the sense of loss all over again. We see her look at and decide what to do with other objects from their life together, such as tickets from their first date. It is not the physical, the tickets, the physical person, that is the only thing. It is the spirit, the memory, the moment. Finley is passionate when she says she has lost her husband. We feel for her – and for ourselves, because of all we have lost. And yet that shriek, it seems, is the pure passion that summons him from memory to the present.



When Defilippo as her husband Henry appears, in her thoughts, but something more, we see them relive and reappraise their relationship. Deflippo as Henry tells us it’s been a difficult year for him. After all, he died. His deadpan humor is just the right mix with pathos. Finlery as Susan says he’s become kind of domineering since he passed. And there are comic moments. But for the most part, we get a heartfelt meditation on life, loss, death and, most important, love. In life, we never know when we will do something for the last time. That sense that whatever we do could be a final time, and not simply due to death, can teach us to value everything and each other more. And then there is the idea of beginning again, that within our life, we live so man lives. And sometimes we lose track. If we can reset, begin again, we can get a second chance or a second chance at life or love as this couple does. If we don't begin again, whatever we are doing will likely end. If you don't argue, you end in divorce, Mary Rising proclaims. She might as well have said, if you don't communicate, you can't last, because problems will win over people.




The play was written after its author saw a production by Grief Dialogues, a kind of movement that includes plays about love and death, in particular where the loved one comes alive. We get one more chance to talk with a loved one, find closure, find feeling and make peace with ourselves. In The Peak, we find out later that Henry died riding his bicycle. Then we find out the motorist was talking on a cell phone. What happened to the driver? Nothing. He was a bad driver with a good lawyer. Our deaths do not define us or truly end us, just ending the story of our life, but not erasing what went before.


The set by Ulric O’Flaherty is truly beautiful and, as lit by Marsh Shugart, mystical, existing in a perpetual twilight blending fantasy and fact. There is one rock at the center, like a single solid point in a sea where waves break around us. A green forest backdrop shows us a world devoid of human beings. The lighting has a magical feel. And when we hear the sound effects as an ambulance arrives, too late, after an accident, it’s as if the past has taken over the past. This play is heavy on atmosphere, removed from the boring world of walls in which most of us live. When a tent goes up, it feels very much a part of this world. And when we hear a bear, there is at once a sense of fear and the ability to live on side by side with danger. We have lost so much, nothing more can be taken from us. A certain courage comes from that.





In the end, The Peak is not so much about loss, but the imperative to value our relationships today, to find romance, to build romance, to enjoy each other and life right now. If we don’t, we lose our relationships and ourselves. And, of course, everything can be taken away at any moment by a car accident, a disease or any form of death. We are reminded repeatedly that the lost ashes are not the issue. It’s the lost time, the lost love, the way we lose each other while we’re alive. The couple here says they found each other again only to lose each other. Liebowitz’s direction lets the two lovers almost touch, but not quite, because they don’t exist on the same plane. And that need to stay close, or let distance become a death, really, seems to be the message. Love each other or we will lose each other.


This is a moving play that got a standing ovation when I saw it on its last day of the run. Entertainment has its place, but this is about emotion. The Peak is a moving, emotional play. Is it sad? It is in that it’s about a relationship cut short when someone dies in a car accident. And it’s about the pain that comes when a relationship ends too soon, whether through death or even divorce. But Henry returns, as if the emotions are so strong that they can summon the dead. Susan The couple clearly cares and speaks to one another from the heart with noting to lose. It was presented without intermission.


Theater at its best is an intimate presentation in a public place. And it too rarely is that, but often instead a public performance. We get a “peek” here at these people’s lives, their hearts, their souls. Life is full of loss. The thing is once we become aware of that, we can value what we have. We need to learn to let go of sorrow, as we’re told here, in order to embrace joy. When at the end, Susan remembers where she left Henry’s ashes, we realize that she never wanted to distribute them here, tossing them int the wind. Their story in the world is done, but their relationship is not. Love doesn’t die, because it’s not something that’s alive. It lives on within us in the memories, the moments and the emotions.



As such, I found The Peak to be, ultimately, an uplifting play in which love and death wrestle with one another and, at least on this stage, if not necessarily in life, love ones. Henry says things always work out, before Susan reminds us that, “No, they don’t.” Thing do not always work out. All endings are not happy. But as long as we value life and love, we have a better chance of living out life and enjoying love. It takes work, time and caring. An I suppose one of the points here is that we should be careful before we let it go. The couple in The Peak lose sight of each other and find each other, falling in love a second time. I suppose when you’re in love, you fall in love again and again and again. If you only fall in love once, you will fall out. But if you let yourself fall in love again and again, you just might be able to be in this for the long hall. Or at least, I believe, that’s the take away of The Peak, a beautiful play about a painful subject and possible the most important topic in the world.





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Guest
Jan 27
Rated 5 out of 5 stars.

Very moving, emotional show and performances!

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