‘Dear Master’ makes uneven trip from page to stage
The two authors were avid penpals in real life, and playwright Dorothy Bryant uses both translations of their actual correspondence and her own words that imagine what might lie between and beyond the lines of her source material.
In Joy Carlin’s direction, the actors look at each other, but they never touch nor cross to the other’s side of the stage.
Set designer Annie Smart demarcates whose half of the small stage is whose with a zigzag dividing line in the floor tile.
At times, Bryant’s script bogs down the proceedings, like when the authors spend pages complaining about their physical ailments, troublesome relatives or writer’s block.
“Dear Master” celebrates intellectual, artistic friendship, with a vision of Flaubert and Sand as incisive yet tender in their debates.
Generosity and affection underlie every exchange, but so passionate are these intellectuals about their beliefs that each new rebuke stings afresh.
In a world where political discussions often devolve into nasty name-calling, “Dear Master” offers a refreshing template for argument, for how to vehemently disagree with an idea while still cherishing its promoter.
(To open its 25th anniversary season, the company is returning to the play that motivated its launch.) In 2016, it’s still rare to find stories that allow a man and a woman to maintain a strictly platonic friendship.