A student applies to enrol on a playwriting workshop saying he is a poet and a comedian. The professor states on meeting him, ‘It was though an ancient light bulb hovered over his head’. This introduces us to Max and Sarah, in a two-hander based on letters written between Max Ritvo and Sarah Ruhl.
Quite soon it is revealed he has a recurrence of a childhood cancer, which will eventually kill him. In those short years of his life, Sarah became Max’s teacher, his friend, and, ultimately, feels their roles reverse as he becomes the teacher and she the student. A close relationship of letters develops between these two articulate people who live on opposite sides of the United States with occasional visits of him to her family, and her to his hospital bed. It is a piercingly realistic piece, very much grounded in the physical so we are not spared Max’s lungs filling with blood or his tumour wrapped around his aorta. Though the script is verbally dextrous, this play is not for the faint-hearted.
Sarah is movingly portrayed by Sirine Saba as a woman who progresses from a guarded pedagogic stance to affection and then depression as his disease takes Max. The ‘funny poet’ is played with good humour and energy by Erik Sirakian, portraying a character who commands the stage as the original Max surely did.
The problem with two hours of letters is the lack of dramatic tension – the end is inevitable and there is never a different path to take. It isn’t that there are no issues to resolve, the question ‘what is after death?’ is an ever present one asked by Max who is a Jew and Sarah who is a Buddhist raised as a Christian. ‘There is No God’, Max writes on the mirror. Unsurprisingly, the play comes to no definite conclusion. No issue is resolved: there is no division which is healed by Max’s death, no great realisation except that dying people can be capable of love and poetry.
This is a well produced, directed, and acted play. The only props are a couple of chairs and a screen of transparent and reflective glass put to good use with the actors often seen twice, reflecting the progress of a letter: when it is written and when it is received. It also acts as a divide between the letter-writers themselves, reflecting the physical space between them. Laura Moody’s cello accompanies the readings and is entirely apposite.
Max is vital, amusing in a quirky way and obviously someone who was enjoyable to know. His claim to be remembered in the minds of those other than his family and friends, however, would be his verse and this is where the play comes adrift. His work is OK amateur stuff, but a continuation of the life of the writer of ‘The colour of death is purple’ or ‘I ardently desire a hot dog’ was not going to change the course of English literature.
Playwright: Sarah Ruhl
Director: Blanche McIntyre
Cast: Sirine Saba, Eric Sirakian
Duration: 2 hours 5 minutes including 20 minute intermission
Until: 28 June 2025