We’re so conditioned to be cynical nowadays that dark is considered edgy and romance dopey. But the Roundabout revival of “Talley’s Folly” that opened last night is proud to believe in love. It’s shocking precisely because it’s not shocking.
Maybe because it was written at the tail end of the less misanthropic 1970s — it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 — but Lanford Wilson’s play brims with a sense of possibility.
The show consists of just two characters, who must overcome caution, prejudices and the obligatory secrets to come to terms with their feelings for each other. They are so bruised, so tender that it’s practically impossible not to root for them. Doubly so, since they’re portrayed with keen empathy by Danny Burstein and Sarah Paulson — for whom the show must be a breezy vacation after her grueling stint on “American Horror Story: Asylum.”
Burstein has established himself as a go-to character actor in roles as diverse as a Latin Lothario in “The Drowsy Chaperone” and a boxing trainer in the recent “Golden Boy.” Here he handles most of the play’s heavy lifting as Matt Friedman, an immigrant Jewish accountant who drove from his home in St. Louis to Lebanon, Mo., to court Sally Talley. The 97-minute negotiation — Matt keeps track, in asides to the audience — takes place in a vast, dilapidated Victorian boathouse belonging to Sally’s family.
We’re in 1944, and, at first glance, Matt doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in the South to win over his girl, whom he met the previous year.
“Between being what they consider out-and-out anti-American and being over 40 years old, and having a beard, you made a grand hit with Mom and Dad,” she dryly tells her stubborn suitor.
But though she looks like a typical belle, the blond, refined Sally is the black sheep of her wealthy family, having become, in Matt’s words, “a radical old maid who is fired from teaching Sunday school” — mind you, she’s a ripe 31.
The reason behind that estrangement is one of the revelations burdening the end of the show. Of course, Matt has a troubled past, too.
Burstein certainly has the flashier role as a chatterbox wooing a seemingly unattainable woman. But Paulson makes Sally much more than just a reactive foil. Under the attentive watch of director Michael Wilson (“The Orphans’ Home Cycle”), the actors give us a sense of loners desperately looking for someone who’ll understand them.
Eventually, Matt and Sally reach a point where they feel comfortable enough to be honest with each other. The confession and overcoming of obstacles seems rushed, but it’s all redeemed by an exquisite final scene. Old-fashioned? Yes, and we’ll take it.