Brittle Beauty Can Be Picture Perfect Until, of Course, It Cracks: ‘Stockholm,’ by Bryony Lavery, Dissects a Marriage
Ben BrantleyMarch 12, 2014: Couples in toxic relationships aren’t usually people you would choose to hang out with. Who wants to be caught in the crossfire of flying recriminations and possibly family china? Safely quarantined in a play, though, bad couples can be fun couples, their car-crash marriages the stuff of riveting theater. Just consider the hours of prickly pleasure provided by those nasty Macbeths, or Edward Albee’s George and Martha, or the squabbling spouses in Strindberg, Ibsen and O’Neill. Now allow me to introduce you to Kali and Todd, the attractive young couple in Bryony Lavery’s Stockholm, which opened on Wednesday night at 59E59 Theaters. Portrayed by Christina Bennett Lind and Richard Saudek, Kali and Todd at first register as merely annoying. They’re one of those cute, chic twosomes who are so into each other’s fabulousness that you wish they’d just get a room — and stay there.
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