Jessica Hecht (left) as the playwright Sarah Ruhl, with Ben Edelman as Max Ritvo, Ruhl’s student and friend, in Letters from Max at Signature Theatre.
Sarah Ruhl’s Letters from Max, a ritual, is an adaptation of her 2018 epistolary book Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship, which included letters between Ruhl and Max Ritvo, her playwriting student and, shortly thereafter, friend. Ritvo died at age 25, of a recurrence of Ewing’s sarcoma, a pediatric cancer first diagnosed when he was 16. He graduated from college while undergoing chemotherapy and surgeries, producing poetry and plays and music along the way, becoming a teacher to Ruhl as much as she was to him.
Max with a tattoo-artist angel (Zane Pais, right) from his own play. Pais portrays Max in alternating performances.
The theatrical version of their story includes readings of the letters, dialogue, poems, text exchanges, and music, as Sarah (Jessica Hecht) and Max (Ben Edelman at the performance I attended) meet and eventually form a deep, platonic love. They discuss writing, Tibetan Buddhism, soup, the metaphysics of the Amtrak “quiet car,” and much else. Ruhl and director Kate Whoriskey showcase Max’s blazing uniqueness, what Ruhl describes as his “luminous quicksilver mind,” “rare and unmistakable poetic gift,” and “wild sense of humor,” as well as creating a ritualistic space for “mediation and mourning” for the audience. Marsha Ginsberg’s outstanding scenic design includes a hospital bed enclosed in a small rotating room that often obscures the bed from sight, much as we hope in vain that Max’s illness is vanquished.
The opening of Ruhl’s script notes that “the actors should imagine that they are inhabiting the voices of Sarah and Max. . . . But the actors don’t have to pretend to be Sarah and Max—no need for imitation.” This emphasis on voice and language rather than imitation seems to have contributed to the decision to have two actors, Ben Edelman and Zane Pais, play Max in alternating performances. The intent was always to have a “third body in the theatrical space,” a tattoo-artist angel who derives from one of Max’s plays. The actor not playing Max at a given performance portrays the tattoo-artist angel, and each actor, working with sound designer Sinan Refik Zafar, composed original music (Edelman on piano and Pais on guitar) to complement the other’s performance.
Hecht and Edelman—who appeared together in Joshua Harmon’s Admissions in 2018—have an easy rapport as Sarah and Max, one that conveys affection and mutual admiration, despite contrasting personalities. It doesn’t turn melodramatic and overwrought, even with the devastating arc of the story. Max was a joyous presence: at his poetry reading at the 13th Street Rep, Ruhl describes him as “a magnificent, rabbinical, pink-kimono-wearing Orpheus.” Focusing on his extraordinary life energy prevents the piece from becoming excessively morbid; at the same time, Ruhl’s somewhat consoling narrative about death means that grief is never fully laid bare. There are, though, some jolting moments, such as when Max, from the hospital bed narrating a letter, notes plaintively, “I’m bitter, Sarah. I’m bitter and love the world, and it won’t love me back.”
Throughout the play Ruhl and Ritvo alternate at the microphone when reading poetry.
Projections, designed by S Katy Tucker, are effectively used, and a scene rendered in text messages as Sarah rides Amtrak and Max receives painful infusions as part of a clinical trial brilliantly conveys the characters’ intelligence and quirky humor and ability to find cosmic meaning in the seemingly mundane.
The play runs two hours including an unneeded 15-minute intermission: no elaborate set change or major jump in time or focus requires an intermission, which blunts the momentum and takes the audience out of the ritualistic trance created by the poems and letters. Despite this hiccup, the piece succeeds in conveying what was special, strange, and wonderful about Max, in a life too short but suffused with a transcendent love of language and a joy in profound human connection.
Letters from Max, a ritual runs through March 19 at Signature Theatre (480 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday–Friday and on Sunday, and at 8 p.m. on Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. For tickets, call (212) 244-7529 or visit signaturetheatre.org.
