Studio’s ‘Moonlight’ a study in broken relationships

Harold Pinter’s “Moonlight” is a study in isolation, where negative communication takes the place of real conversation. In the production at the Studio Theatre, the primary non-communication goes on between a dying dictatorial patriarch, Andy (Ted van Griethuysen) and his wife, Bel (Sybil Lines), who stopped talking to one another years earlier. All that is left are Andy’s insults and admissions of infidelity and Bel’s frosty, barbed replies.

The second sphere of miscommunication is between Bel and her two sons, Jake (Anatol Yusef) and Fred (Tom Story), who won’t come home to see their father. When Bel calls to tell them Andy is very ill, they pretend she has reached a wrong number.

Then there’s Jake’s and Fred’s mode of speech: They don’t converse, they perform. Pinter’s genius shines in this pairing of the aggressive Jake and the passive Fred, their dialogue spinning off into rapid, marginally comprehensible patter, circling vaguely around their hatred of their father. Yusef and Story brilliantly bring to life this energized, articulate poetry.

Van Griethuysen is powerful as the crude, dyspeptic former civil servant who, by his own admission, eschewed love. Lines excels as Bel, restrained toward family and friends Maria (Catherine Flye) and her husband, Ralph (James Slaughter). In her own way, she is as dead as Andy will soon be. The only character who expresses positive emotion is Bel’s and Andy’s dead daughter, Bridget (Libby Woodbridge), who watches over her parents.

Debra Booth’s set captures perfectly the brokenness of the play’s relationships. At the center is Andy’s home, where he is in a hospital bed. A pane of glass in the French doors behind him is cracked, surrounded by flaking paint. Jake’s ratty apartment is off to one side, the glass in his windows also cracked. Only the area above Andy’s bed, where Bridget dwells, is a clean, airy space.

Director Joy Zinoman has directed her ensemble well, making clear distinctions between the various non-communicative exchanges. She has capitalized on Pinter’s techniques of disengagement — vitriol, indifference, manic verbal duets — making credible the isolation Pinter dramatized so well.