By no means does that diminish its entertainment value or artistic value. It just makes it a little uncomfortable. Sort of like watching the visual art piece at the Milwaukee Art Museum of open heart surgery: it quickens your own heartbeat as you watch. For “The Retreat of Moscow,” it makes you squirm in your seat…a little. But you’ll stay seated. Maybe it is because we can all relate having seen our own parents argue once or twice before.

If I had to give one of those quotes that would perfectly describe “The Retreat from Moscow,” it would be as follows: painfully unendurable, but intrinsically human, especially in our modern times where we keep busy to avoid the heartache of humanity.

THE PLOT

“The Retreat from Moscow,” a 2004 Tony Award winner, takes place in modern times in England. Edward and Alice have been married for 33 years. Their son Jamie comes up from London for the weekend to visit his parents, and his father informs him that he is planning on leaving his mother. Jamie is caught in the middle of his arguing, bickering parents no matter what he does. He is left with the emotional burden of comforting his mother, while understanding why his father left her.

Alice maintains that love, a life together for 33 years and a child is a good enough reason to stay together. Edward doesn’t think love is a good enough reason to stay together, especially once he stops loving his wife.

“The Retreat from Moscow” is a depiction of how people behave in extremes, which is the tie in to its title. At the beginning of the play, Edward reads aloud from a book he is reading about Napoleon’s Russian withdrawal in 1812. The retreat was each man for himself, the strongest surviving. Once again, a depiction of how people behave in extremes. Additionally, the play becomes a picture of how people behave when one person is struggling to hold onto something that they are loosing.

As I said before, this doesn’t put the audience in the most comfortable of seats. But I don’t think life should be all sunshine and applesauce; life (and the literature, the plays, the music, the films, etc.) should be depicted as truth rather than lies. Yes, it is nice to be entertained by humor and song and dance numbers, but life can be hard and “The Retreat from Moscow” does a good job showing the audience reality instead of the sunny side.

MY FAVORITE QUOTES

Just a short listing of some of the memorable lines, but certainly not an all-inclusive listing:

Alice: “Every time a marriage breaks down, there are more cars on the road.”

Edward: “Whoever I am now is partly you and always will be.”

Alice: “When you feel powerless, you feel strongly attracted to violence.”

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