Sea Wall / A Life

In "Sea Wall / A Life," now playing at the Public Theater, two one-act, one-man plays are featured back-to-back. Written by British playwrights Simon Stephens and Nick Payne, respectively, the first stars Tom Sturridge and the second features Jake Gyllenhaal. Stirring and memorable, both plays are about men grappling with their roles as father and son amidst tragic circumstances.

Sturridge, as a young man named Alex, enters the stage several minutes before the show actually starts, sitting and looking through photographs before the lights finally go down and he begins talking to the audience. He tells us about his father, but then wanders in his musings, mentioning other people and incidents without always giving clear context. Stephens is a wonderful writer, and even as you are initially trying to get your bearings in figuring out who's who in Alex's meandering monologue, the writing is entertaining and the character is compelling – a sweet father and husband who is building a relationship with his aging father.

"Sea Wall" starts as a series of vignettes and reminiscences, mostly about Alex's simple and lovely life with his wife and little girl, and about spending quality time with his father in his home in the south of France. But the narrative becomes suddenly gripping and frightening as Alex draws us closer into his point of view in telling us about a picturesque day at the beach gone horribly wrong.

In the second play, "A Life," Gyllenhaal plays Abe, a genial, slightly neurotic man who alternates between the telling of two different stories. In one, he details the trajectory of his dad's worsening heart disease, while the other is about Abe's often amusing journey to becoming a parent. At first, these tales are clearly defined, but as Abe's panic in dealing with each of these stressful situations increases, he rapidly shifts back and forth between the two narratives. The comic terror of his reaction to his wife going into labor melds into his tragic terror as he's losing his father.

Losing parents and having babies are common rites of passage, and a typical dramatic approach is to pat the audience on the head and go 'Yes, a parent dying is sad, but now there's new life to be happy about!' But writer Nick Payne goes deeper. It is powerful and painful to hear Abe's admission that he worries he won't be able to love this little creature that does nothing but sleep and shit and scream. If anything, the baby only makes him feel the grief and loss of his father more acutely. Being a daddy makes him feel all the more helpless and desperate to have his own there to comfort him.

Under Carrie Cracknell's direction, Sturridge and Gyllenhaal both give magnetic, touching performances with a number of humorous notes. They are regular men who you might pass by on the street without a thought, and the suffering they feel from their losses is not so unique. Yet playwrights Stephens and Payne make Alex and Abe's experiences so specific and engaging that your heart truly breaks for them.

"Sea Wall / A Life" make for a poignant, sometimes harrowing couple of hours in the theater. While these powerful plays are ultimately life-affirming, they have the courage to dwell in the heartache.

"Sea Wall / A Life" runs through March 31 at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC. For information or tickets, call 212-967-7555 or visit www.publictheater.org.