A man must burrow himself into a pretty unreachable place of darkness and despair before he hurls himself in front of an oncoming train.
But where has the suicidal man in Cormac McCarthy’s existential thinker “The Sunset Limited” now found himself, moments after a black angel has swooped down and snatched him from a subway platform to a place of (relative) safety?
We’re ostensibly in the rescuer’s apartment, where he’s offering this involuntary survivor coffee and counsel. But the angle of the room, the stretched checkerboard floor, the morphing light pattern against the wall, all argue this is no ordinary apartment.
These men — one simply called Black, the other White — are in a kind of limbo. And so are we, trying to figure out what the heck is going on here.
This play is being made into an HBO film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. The playwright is best known for writing the “No Country for Old Men” novel.
On a literal level, White is a despondent atheist professor. His guardian angel is an ex-con turned proselytizing Samaritan.
Both are caught between worlds. Life and death; heaven and hell: Take your pick. In McCarthy’s unapologetically nonsecular paradigm, Black has been charged by God himself to make White both see value in his life and to admit God’s existence.
Think “It’s a Wonderful Life” meets “No Exit.” Problem is, White’s not budging.
While one actor is, indeed, black, and the other white, the character names aren’t a comment on race. They signify two sides of an irresolvable argument — and this one’s a stalemate.
It’s a promising premise, but the play stays intentionally murky, and never moves far from its starting point. The first hour is debate, not drama. It’s a smart and probing debate, but also elliptical and redundant, and nothing propels the action forward.
Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s staging features proven actors in Josh Hartwell as a reticent White and Alphonse Keasley as a genial Black. But whether by script or direction, the relationship never clicks.
Why is a man who just tried to kill himself so utterly rational, contained and void of passion? Suicide isn’t about feeling nothing; it’s about feeling too much. Hartwell plays it as if he’s resisting a pitch for life insurance (which, in a very real way, he is).
And what to make of the gentle but resolute Black? If the emotionless killing machine who stalks “No Country for Old Men” is McCarthy’s embodiment of evil, Black is his moral antithesis — but much further down the power chain.
Then again, everything is left so open to interpretation that Black may just be a voice inside White’s head.
The play asks many questions, but what it really needs is a point of view. Without one, will you care why the lights on the wall intermittently stretch and morph? Maybe it indicates the presence of Jesus in the room. Maybe it indicates accelerated sunsets and the rapid passage of time. But does any of it matter?
If you believe in self-determination, “The Sunset Limited” starts to feel like interference. If White doesn’t believe in God, and he’s ultimately unmoved by the celestial intrusion into his life (and death), maybe Black should butt out.
After any long debate, if no one ever concedes, and no one ever learns anything . . . what was the point again?
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“The Sunset Limited” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Deity debate. Presented by the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company at the Dairy Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Written by Cormac McCarthy. Directed by Stepehn Weitz. Through Oct. 24. 1 hour, 40 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays. $20 ($11 Thursdays). 303-444- 7328 or
Focus on Alphonse Keasley
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“I like that the two characters are ‘just talkin’,’ as Black would put it — and man, they talk about real stuff in today’s dizzying world, especially as related to the vacant and spiritually disconnected among us.” — Keasley, who plays Black; he’s best known as Othello for Boulder’s Shakespeare Oratorio Society.
The story: In a run-down tenement, two men without names — one black, one white — battle over the nature of existence, using only words as their weapons.
The intrigue: Playwright Cormac McCarthy is the novelist who penned “No Country For Old Men.” “McCarthy seems to be asking: Are we in, or heading toward, a period similar to the so-called Dark Ages — stagnation in thought in the midst of religious turmoil)” Keasley asks.
Info: Oct. 8-24 at the Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440-7826 or
