Time Stands Still

The Darlinghurst’s small wedge of stage is a convincing Brooklyn flat in Time Stands Still, an apartment-bound four-hander that wears its topicality on its sleeve. Written by Pulitzer-winning American Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends), Still is the story of war photographer Sarah’s return home from Iraq – via a German hospital bed – after being almost killed in a roadside bomb. In Brooklyn, she must contend with too-caring longterm boyfriend Richard, a journalist who left the Middle East after a breakdown, her photo editor, (also) Richard, from a magazine we presume to be Time, Newsweek or the New York Times magazine, and his new young girlfriend, Mandy, a 'lightweight' among these articulate, serious-minded media folk.

In a sense, Still plays out like the other side of the God of Carnage coin: four people trapped in a Brooklyn apartment (though Still is not in real-time), tearing their way through each other and each other’s issues, treating the audience to rising, swelling tension along the way: except, here, the central issue – the role of the war photographer and the danger the war photographer invites – is truly meaty in itself, not simply a tool with which to dissect urban neuroses and paranoia.

If only Still were as entertaining a piece of theatre as Carnage.

Still debuted in the US in 2009, just before a number of incidents that would go on to highlight its relevance, notably the death of Restrepo helmer and Vanity Fair photographer Tim Hetherington in Libya and the injury of the Bang-Bang Club’s Joåo Silva, who stepped on a landmine in Kandahar and lost both legs below the knee. It’s a serious, worthy topic. Margulies is a keen writer, and as Richard (the boyfriend) begins to enjoy the comforts of home, manages to stir some fine debates about the value of going into the conflict zone versus staying home and starting a life: “what difference does taking a photo make?” He also raises the spectre of Kevin Carter, also of Bang-Bang, who killed himself in 1994 after a life witnessing death and famine – Carter won a Pulitzer for his picture of a starving child being stalked by a vulture in the Sudan, and was criticised for not stepping in to help the child who would die soon after the camera clicked. At one point in the play, a horrified Mandy asks Sarah how she just stands there and takes photos when people are dying in front of her.

The discussions can be invigorating, but the characters feel like ideas put in place to facilitate debate more than characters with any flesh or heart. And the debates are pretty unfairly weighted. Sure, I’d agree with Sarah that photography plays a part as witness to atrocity, and that the photographer need keep out of the frame – but the argument for stepping in is presented by Mandy, who, as written Margulies, is ditzy and weightless. Sarah has no match. And when talk turns to whether she should risk her life again to go back in the field, the case for staying home is presented by a guy who’s spent much of the play sitting on a couch watching schlocky films for a sprawling magazine piece on catharsis and political allegory in horror that could have come from a first year. It feels at times like a journalism ethics class – and I’ve sat through a few – with one brilliant, adamant student, and a room full of duds.

None of this is the fault of director Kim Hardwick. The staging is dynamic, especially given the confined setting, and everything moves along at a clip. The subtle piano score is a nice touch, though at times one expects it to lift off to the Charlie Brown dance theme. And the performances are all very good: Rebecca Rocheford Davies is a dark treat as the snarling, brilliant Sarah; Harriet Dyer as event planner Mandy (“it’s not PR!”) brings some over-the-top comic relief. The play is staged with American accents – which feels off, but given the industry at the centre of the story, and New York’s place in it, it is also unavoidable – and the cast manages well.

It’s a good piece, and a thoughtful night at the theatre. One just wishes it was delivered a bit more story with its debate.