The play takes place over 24 hours in three separate cottages on the grounds of a large hospital in the United States. Within the three cabins are three patients: Joe, Brian and Felicity, who are to live with their respective families as they have reached the end of their treatment. They have agreed to be part of a psychological program where they live within the hospital grounds and have interviews with a psychiatrist.[2][3]
Act One
It is morning, and Joe is sitting in the interview area talking to the interviewer.[3] We are introduced to the idea that he is dying and that his family is about to arrive, whom he hasn’t seen for most of his treatment. The interviewer acts as a tool for each of the patients and their families to relay their feelings about their situation; the characters speak bluntly to the interviewer. Each of the families is introduced in this section of the play. When Joe’s wife Maggie and son Steve arrive, it quickly becomes apparent that Maggie is avoiding dealing with the prospect of her future without Joe. She refuses to enter their cabin,[4] and Steve has no idea of his father’s impending death.
Brian takes an aloof approach to his illness; he wants to live each day until the last. Rather than skirt the issues, he confronts them with a dark humor. His young gay lover Mark is with him at the camp.[5] Beverly, Brian's "trashy but devoted ex-wife," arrives.[6]
The third family is Felicity and her daughter Agnes. Felicity is "an old woman who drifts between senility and combative lucidness." Her daughter Agnes is "a mousy, browbeaten spinster who tries to keep her mother happy with fictional letters from a daughter who in fact is long dead."[5]
It is a normal day for each of these characters; getting to learn their individuality is the heart of the play. The act flows between the serious and the humorous. The first act reveals that each of the three characters is radically different. They are connected by their futures, whether they are terminal or not. As the act ends, Joe and Maggie are beginning to talk, Agnes is struggling to connect to her mother, and Brian and Beverly are dancing.
Act Two
It is nearing evening. Joe is still coaxing Maggie to come into the cabin, Brian and Beverly are reminiscing, Mark is becoming frustrated by his lover's jollity, and Agnes is beginning to talk to the interviewer. As the act continues, cracks are shown in Brian’s brutal forthrightness about his illness and Mark's feelings about his impending death. Beverly provides some raw insight within her seemingly scattered exterior. Joe and Maggie continue to struggle to have a deeper conversation about their future. Agnes reveals a secret about her sister Claire. We learn that she died some years ago in an accident in Louisiana. Over the past two years, Agnes has been writing letters to her mother from her sister, and the interviewer presents her with some hard questions. More is learned about the characters' lives before they became ill, material that makes their current situation more poignant. By the end of the act, no moral conclusions have been drawn, no one has died, and no one is going to live forever. The audience thinks not about each person's impending death but what to do with this "moment" that each has to live.[2]
Productions
The Shadow Box premiered in a production of the Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in the 1975-1976 season, and it was directed by Gordon Davidson (artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum).[3][7]
The play opened on Broadway on March 31, 1977 at the Morosco Theatre[8] and closed on December 31, 1977, after 315 performances.[9][10]
