In Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, the two characters delve into a bitter argument at a bar. Roberta is a single mother of a teenage son who spends her evenings partying, hoping to boost her self-esteem. Danny is a misunderstood loner who lives with his mother. The two strangers share their self-destructive habits and battles with addiction. As the characters excavate their deep darknesses, they make room for empathy.
Academy Award winner John Patrick Shanley wrote Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, his second play, in 1984. Shanley is known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt: A Parable, and writes searing dramas that explore complex, human topics. Danny and the Deep Blue Sea premiered at the Humana Festival of New Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville before debuting in downtown New York with the Circle in the Square Theatre.
What writer, director, and actors all get right in the end, though, is uncertainty. They may change each other in the course of one night, but it seems just as likely that Roberta and Danny will keep clinging to each other as they will end right back up at that dive bar, picking new fights with new people over beer and pretzels, as though their one night of hope really was just a hazy dream.
Despite the raw banter and the actors’ solid performances (especially Abbott), “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” isn’t exactly riveting. Instead, it feels like a somber, overly long vignette of two deeply tortured people without the means or wherewithal to address the horrors of their circumstances and personal choices. If only for a moment, the duo cling to one another, conceiving of a plan where they might for once grasp onto some semblance of happiness. Though the play should center on the vulnerability of two emotionally troubled souls desperate for connection, it feels instead like an endless and exhausting screaming match that the audience is forced to endure without any hope for respite.
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