Steppenwolf Theater’s Another Marriage started quietly: The theater was still bright, as if the show had yet to begin, and the stage was bare save for a park bench. Red-haired Jo (Nicole Scimeca) sat on it, typing away at something on her iPad, as she began to narrate the story of her parents’ marriage—and eventual divorce.
Another Marriage, written by Steppenwolf ensemble member Kate Arrington, follows Sunny (Judy Greer) and Nick (Tim Hopper) and their lives as young lovers, a married couple, parents, and eventually divorced co-parents. The play maintains the tone that it sets at the beginning throughout. That isn’t to say that it is boring—but it’s certainly not flashy. In fact, it benefits most strongly from quintessential rawness and the central, very human question: What does it mean to have a successful marriage? And perhaps, by extension, a successful life?
Sunny’s journey through her career, marriage, and motherhood seems to provide one way to answer that question. She meets Nick in college, and the two are bound by their shared dream of achieving authorial stardom. Reality hits when Nick’s career takes off instantly, in part due to his famous name (he comes from a family of authors) and the advantages afforded to him as a man in the industry. But when Sunny becomes a mother, she realizes that motherhood is instead her life’s true calling. In the aftermath of Nick’s infidelity and her ensuing divorce, Jo keeps her mother afloat—which allows Sunny to find the passion for a new career path.
Stories like Sunny’s are seldom represented in the media. An empowered woman, audiences are often told, is one who follows through on her dream childhood career and lives to work. But Sunny’s story is true to a different definition of success: to be a present, reliable mother for one’s child, in the way that Sunny’s own mother (who passed away giving birth) wasn’t able to be. Ultimately, Sunny finds herself much happier than her ex-husband Nick, whose career as a successful author is cut short.
Throughout Another Marriage, the audience is kept on the edge of their seats as to whether Nick and Sunny may rekindle their romance. There’s a lingering gaze here and there, a longing reach of hands, and, eventually, a short kiss. But by the end of the show, it’s made clear that Nick and Sunny, though they may still have chemistry, will never get back together. In the play’s last scene, Sunny, Nick, and their now college-aged daughter sit around a table, laughing over late-night Italian. Their marriage may have ended in divorce, but that doesn’t necessarily make the marriage unsuccessful. At the dinner table, Jo pokes lighthearted fun at Nick for his two failed marriages, to which all three erupt in laughter. Though short-lived, it is Sunny and Nick’s marriage that has given life to their daughter, who now tells their story—and who chooses to end the tale in a scene of happy laughter.
Kate Arrington’s “Another Marriage” was at Steppenwolf Theater from June 15 to July 30.
