Lynn Roylance
From left, Suzanne Lederer, Debrianna Mansini and Vanessa Rios y Valles take on multiple roles in playwright Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun, the newest at New Mexico Actors Lab.
New Mexico Actors Lab continues its 2023 season with a lovely, intimate production of the 2021 off-Broadway play Morning Sun. The three-woman show was originally commissioned by the Manhattan Theatre Club and written by Simon Stephens (most famous for the plays Heisenberg and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and maintains a deceptively simple narrative—the story, from birth to death, of a woman in New York City named Charlotte “Charley” McBride.
Here, local veteran actor Debrianna Mansini takes on the Charley role with co-stars Suzanne Lederer and Vanessa Rios y Valles fleshing out the multiple significant figures in her life. Morning Sun sprawls across decades, leading Charley through the significant events of the 20th and 21st centuries—including Beatlemania, John Lennon’s 1980 murder, the AIDS epidemic and 9/11, among others. Against such backdrops, Charley’s own existence is portrayed as relatively small. Yet Stephens’ work is beautiful in its depiction of how even the most seemingly insignificant person can make an indelible impact on the lives of those who love them.
Morning Sun takes its name from the 1952 Edward Hopper painting, which features a woman (modeled after Hopper’s wife, Jo) seated on a bed, lost in thought as she stares out the window at a cityscape, drinking in the warmth and light. The painting itself does have significance within the play by contributing to the origin of Charley’s relationship with a security guard at a museum, possibly the Whitney. The actual finalized painting lives full-time at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, but the Whitney does house some of Hopper’s early studies for the piece, and a play with such stylized storytelling can be forgiven for artistic liberties, after all.
Back in Santa Fe, Morning Sun finds New Mexico Actors Lab Managing Director Robert Benedetti sharing directing duties with stalwart local theater pro Kent Kirkpatrick, who himself was seen onstage at NMAL just two seasons ago in a production of The Cradle Will Rock. To address the potential elephant in the room, it’s true that a play so thoroughly about women might not be an intuitive directorial fit for two men (even if it were also written by a man), but Benedetti and Kirkpatrick’s collaboration proves effectively and sensitively directed. They very much let their three women performers shine alongside interwoven elements of honesty and authenticity, and there is no cause for concern.
Additionally, Benedetti and Kirkpatrick have altered the NMAL space with seating in the round. This choice allows for an engaging, immersive feeling and staging that lets the actors truly use the space. It also means there’s not a bad seat in the house. The close-up nature gives the audience motivation to lean in for moments of intimacy or even combat. You’ll want to be close to fully engage with this level of accessible storytelling, because the story and words become the main focus. Costuming amounts to basic contemporary black clothing, for example, and the various set pieces embrace minimalism through the use of rehearsal cubes (quite literally wooden cubes). By so effectively placing their cast in such sparse environs, Benedetti and Kirkpatrick contribute to the suspension of disbelief required to examine a life in so short a time, particularly through the use of wide ranging roles and meta-theatrical moments.
As Charley, Mansini (last seen in Stephens’ Heisenberg at NMAL in 2017) impresses, particularly as the character moves into young adulthood and beyond. An early sequence featuring the actors playing young school children is a difficult ask of an audience watching adults, and it doesn’t entirely land. But Mansini skillfully moves past that challenge to discover a woman whose challenges, hopes and dreams are somehow both rooted in New York City-specific experiences, yet fully universal.
The notable performances don’t stop there. NMAL mainstay Lederer portrays several characters, including more than one romantic interest of Charley’s, as well as her mother, Claudette. Lederer brings both gravitas and nuance to each of her characters and masterfully employs subtle shifts in physicality to demonstrate transitions between them. Rios y Valles (last seen in God of Carnage from NMAL’s 2022 season) also contends with multiple roles, including the charismatic delight Tessa, Charley’s daughter conceived from a one night stand. The chemistry between Mansini, Lederer and Rios y Valles resonates throughout the show, whichever role each inhabits, and particularly so when the text allows space for moments of palpable connection.
Lighting and sound design from Skip Rapoport and Benedetti respectively prove immensely effective as well, and particularly so given the minimalist nature of Morning Sun’s staging. This is how we sense shifts in time and place throughout the production, and when a script asks that the set is “defined more by light and sound than by objects,” as Stephens’ does, it becomes as vital as the actors onstage. Luckily, Rapoport and Benedetti’s design work excels. As such, a piece of theatre like Morning Sun defies easy categorization. But New Mexico Actors Lab has shown consistently throughout the past two seasons that its artistic staff and core company of actors are more than capable of excelling in productions, both on the most complicated and simplified scales. Morning Sun, though stripped down to the plainest elements of theater, is a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant and always heartfelt production. And that is no small fea
Morning Sun: 7:30 pm Thursday, June 15-Saturday, June 17; 2 pm Sunday, June 18. $15-$35. New Mexico Actors Lab, 1213 Parkway Drive, (505) 395-6576
