When they were schoolboys Thomas Weaver and Alvin Kelly made a pact, each promising to deliver the eulogy at the other one’s funeral, in practice the one who survived the other’s demise. Thomas (Markus Sondergren), now a best-selling author, has returned to the town in the sticks where they grew up to do that at the funeral of Alvin (Tim Edwards), and is unsuccessfully trying to draft what to say.
As successive drafts are screwed up and thrown in the waste bin, Alvin appears and Tom is prompted to recall events at various point in their friendship from their first meeting at schools in Grade 1 (especially their partings) up to their very last meeting when Tom was supposed to give the eulogy at Alvin’s father’s funeral, but didn’t. Is this all in Tom’s head or is this a ghost? Though these are moments they shared, he mentions things that perhaps Tom wouldn’t know, and in a pale beige suit set against Tom’s blue one and in David Shield’s all-white set (including props) does look less worldly. Songs that recount incidents become a natural part of the dialogue; carrying an undercurrent of emotion, they are melodic and smoothly interwoven rather than standalone numbers.
Alvin’s dad had a bookshop (jokily called The Writer’s Block because it took up the whole side of one) and books became Alvin’s life. It was his giving Tom The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for his birthday that got Tom writing stories. Though Tom vehement claims his stories were entirely his own invention, it is clear that many had roots in things Alvin shared with him.
As Tom’s debt to Alvin is slowly revealed, there is another underlying story hinted at by a moment at one of their partings when Alvin gives him a hug and a kiss on the neck, though a chaste one.
Is Tom as oblivious as his behaviour suggests or is his increasing distance intentional? Tim Edwards makes Alvin touchingly animated, excited by Tom but, beneath the rushing around, there’s a growing distress that he is hiding. It is sensitive playing—and shows no sign of the fact he took on the role after another actor had to withdraw and had only one week of rehearsal. With Markus Sodergren’s rather edgy Thomas, this is a good pairing.
After productions in Toronto and Connecticut, The Story of My Life opened on Broadway in 2009. After previews, it lasted only a week, despite getting several nominations for Drama Desk Awards. Perhaps it was too large a theatre, for this is an intimate chamber piece and Robert McWhir’s production is well matched to the studio space.
It is largely played on an end-stage, but makes use of the whole room, and its performances stand up to close-up scrutiny. The formality of the pair’s three-piece suits suggests the propriety that frames their relationship, though Alvin’s lack of a tie hints at more freedom, but though as a boy he was a bit of an oddball (dressing up in his mother’s dressing gown as her ghost for one classroom presentation), it is left to the audience to conjure the rest of the story.