REVIEW: "LONELY PLANET," POIGNANT RUMINATION ON LONELINESS AND AIDS, ILLUMINATES LUNA STAGE

By Ruth Ross

With a nod to Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist one-act comedy, The Chairs, and Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple—albeit a queer version—playwright Steven Deitz’s Lonely Planet, now onstage at Luna Theatre in West Orange, is a bittersweet dramedy ruminating on mourning, remembrance, and the need to pay attention to the world around us and confront its problems rather than ignore them.

Written in 1993 at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the play tells the story of two gay friends: Jody, a quiet, worldly and knowledgeable guy who owns a small map store on the oldest street in an American city, and the flamboyant Carl (with “the energy of eight, the passion of nine”), a frequent visitor to the store, who apparently lies constantly about his life and occupation. Despite their long friendship, the two seem to know very little about each other. Indeed, every time Jody asks Carl to play a game where they tell each other the truth, Carl deflects and declines to participate.

The crux of the play involves chairs, many of them, so many that, by the second act, they pile up and even hang from the ceiling of the small map store! Initially, their significance is mysterious, unrevealed until quite late in the second half (no spoilers) and even more heartbreaking than one might expect.

Under Melissa Firlit’s taut direction, the two-hour running time unspools without feeling rushed, and John Keller and Dustin Ballard turn in superb performances as Jody and Carl, respectively. Several times each man breaks the fourth wall to reveal his inner self, dreams and opinion of his companion, drawing the audience into his thought processes and laying bare his feelings.

Keller beautifully conveys Jody’s quiet, more reserved personality; the wall he’s built around him to hold uncomfortable possibilities at bay is evident in his contained gestures, soft voice and often reticent speech, and love of maps as “fixed objects,” “a picture of what’s known.” He doesn’t like uncertainty and often avoids it.

In contrast, Ballard’s Carl (below, left) is a force of nature, from the moment he bursts through the door ranting about how boring people are to his inspired duel with Jody using rolled up maps and spouting what sounds Shakespearean but is actually nonsense; Keller matches him well in this joyous scene. It is a bright spot in what is otherwise a profoundly serious play. He is also a big-time shapeshifter, claiming to be a journalist, an art restorer, a plant waterer, a worker in a shop replacing shattered auto glass. It is Carl who announces that people are dying; because the two men are gay, we know he’s talking about AIDS, even if he doesn’t reveal the cause of their demise. (Above, right: Dustin Ballard and John Keller in Jody's map shop with chairs)

Deitz’s script reveals information about each man’s past and present in a steady trickle. Where do these chairs come from and what do they represent? Why does Jody retreat even more inwardly, literally and figuratively? Why does Carl lie so much about his life? The effect of AIDS on both men’s lives is devastating.

Al always, Luna Stage’s production values are superb and enhanced by the intimacy of the little black box theater. Lucas Pinner has designed the quintessential map shop, with globes galore, maps on the walls, a large table to unroll maps, and a wall of bookcases filled with atlases and other books. Sarah Wood’s lighting firmly delineates the movement from exterior to interior as each man gets to recite a monologue and break the fourth wall. Greg Scalera’s sound design adds to the quiet mood (!) without being intrusive, and Deborah Caney has attired the two men in clothing suited to their natures: brown sweater vest, pants, and shirt for Jody convey the “dusty” and low-key aspects of his life, while Carl’s denim duds show off his physique and more open, casual attitude toward life—until they don’t.

While the AIDS epidemic of the 1990s seems to have fallen off our collective radar (given those commercials for drugs that can control it), it nevertheless remains a scourge of the late 20^th century, often likened to the devastating global flu epidemic in 1918-1920 and the more recent COVID pandemic of 2020-2021. Lonely Planet shows us how AIDS personally affected two gay men who struggle to maintain their dignity and hope and, ultimately, their lives in the face of such devastation.

Quietly, it poignantly reveals what it means to be human when faced with possible annihilation. Does one quietly submit, hoping to be overlooked, passed by, or does one rage with “the dying of the light,” and attempt to assign meaning to the lives lost? Lonely Planet may not offer answers to these seminal questions, but it does give us a glimpse of eternity.

Lonely Planet will be performed at Luna Stage, 555, Valley Road, West Orange, through December 8. For information and tickets, call the box office at 973.395.5551 or visit www.lunastage.org online.