Now: Sea, Hear

Over a year ago, when Broadway theater was still a thing actually happening, there was a short run of a production called Sea Wall / A Life. It was a pair of long-form monologues by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne, performed by actors Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal. Only so many people were able to see the show during its two-month engagement, but it now lives on in a new format: an Audible Original audiobook starring the same two performers.

I'd try to summarize the plots of the two stories, but they're collectively brief enough that I feel even a summary would give too much away. I'll simply say that the two stories aren't deeply connected to one another beyond theme and tone. Each is a tragic tale laced with humor (often of the gallows variety). Each is a bald and brutal meditation on death. They feel crafted to evoke melancholy at the least, to make you cry if they're working at their best.

I can't say how these pieces might have played in person, on a stage, but in this audiobook format, I'd say they're not really working at their best. There are sections that play well. Indeed, this feels like audition material, ripe to be mined by any actor needing a new piece in the repertoire. Collectively, though, this chain of audition pieces can almost lead you to think, "alright, you've got the part; now can we start the show?"

There are one or two odd mysteries in the first piece, Sea Wall, that led me at least to think that the two plays would be slyly connected, that some link between characters or narrative would be revealed in the second piece, A Life. No such luck. So being left with that sense of incompleteness had me feeling that the second half was the stronger piece.

That's probably also true of the performances. Neither Sturridge nor Gyllenhaal gives a bad one, but in Sturridge's reading of Sea Wall, the delivery felt overly calibrated to me. Pauses were placed unnaturally at times, for an effect more than to lend to any sense of authenticity. Then again, perhaps it's that the Sea Wall monologue is written in more naturalistic fashion, where A Life makes extensive use of a narrative gimmick, whiplashing between two time frames without clearly demarcated transitions.

I'd probably grade Sea Wall / A Life a B-. The right person might really enjoy it. However, these are not times where the typical person I know is looking for something else to feel depressed about. So I think I'll stop short of actively recommending it.