Still Questions Love among the Ruins and Roads Not Taken

Mar 10, 2025 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Susie Rosenbluth and Sue Weston, Two Sues on the Aisle

Despite the stereotype that women are more emotionally invested in relationships than men, recent studies now show it is actually males who suffer most from breakups. This finding would not surprise playwright Lia Romeo in the least. Her two-person drama, Still, now showing at The Loreto Theater at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in Manhattan, is all about Helen (Melissa Gilbert, miles and decades from her Little House on the Prairie days) and Mark (Mark Moses, as seductive as “Duck” Phillips on Mad Men ever was), lovers who broke up 30 years ago, went on with their lives but never forgot one another, and, now that both are once more unattached, meet up again—not really by chance.

Still Off-Broadway

Ms. Romeo recognizes that in the era when Helen and Mark first became a couple, unless one was actively involved in politics as a career, party affiliation was rarely a subject of discussion, much less a reason for friendships—or relationships—to end. Not so anymore, she says. She wrote Still while “married to someone I cared deeply about, but we disagreed on some important issues,” and she found herself “wondering what to do when you love someone but hate some of the things that person believes.”

It’s hard to say when political thought became one of those factors, but, for sure, Ms. Romeo knows it is now, mostly because while, in the past, proponents of one view or another were willing to see the opposing view as, at most, “wrong” or “misguided,” today, one or both is likely to see the other as “evil.”

For example, she asks in Still: can someone who believes abortion is wrong be intimate with a person who is convinced it isn’t—and that any reason, even a whim, is sufficient to end a pregnancy?

Still

Raising the Stakes

Ms. Romeo raises the stakes by placing her characters in situations that automatically evoke compassion. Helen, a successful writer, has cancer that is treatable but not curable; Mark, a prominent attorney who adores his grown children, has recently separated from his wife and is being urged to run for political office—as a Republican. A secret only Helen can disclose might destroy his chances.

The playwright says she wrote Still to ask: “Instead of responding with contempt when we disagree, how can we engage?”

Ms. Gilbert put it a little differently: “Can we put our differences aside for love? Is love enough?”

One would hope so. Still, however, is not so optimistic.

Any play that can evoke this kind of after-theater discussion is worth the trip, especially when it is in the hands of two such fine actors as Ms. Gilbert and Mr. Moses.

Two Sues on the Aisle bases its ratings on how many challahs (1-5) it pays to buy (rather than make) to see the play, show, film, book, or exhibit being reviewed.

Still received 4 Challahs from one Sue and 5 Challahs from the other Sue

Running Time 70-minute without intermission