‘Lonely Chair’ is a poignant perspective of the AIDS crisis on N.J. stage | Review

A chair has arrived mysteriously in Jody’s map store. Jody says it’s “just a chair, nothing else.” But in Steven Dietz’s excellent play, “Lonely Planet,” now enjoying a warm and moving production at Luna Stage in West Orange, an empty chair is everything.
The play is a lyrical, tender contemplation of the AIDS crisis. As more and more empty chairs fill the stage over the course of the show, Jody and his friend Carl labor to manage friendship and joy in a world that seems to be crumbling around them.
Jody (John Keller) owns and operates a small map store in some typical but nameless American city. Carl (Dustin Ballard) is a local who drops in regularly to chat with Jody, lament the bore of his social life and seemingly just to pass the time. Carl likes to hear about Jody’s dreams. Jody likes to hear Carl’s stories of his job as an art restorer, an auto glass repairer, and a journalist at a disreputable tabloid. Carl is lying about all of it. Jody knows that. But neither man seems at all concerned that their conversations are almost exclusively dreams and lies.
Because the alternative is a frightening reality that only creeps occasionally to the surface of the play’s dialogue: They are gay men and their friends are dying. It is the early 1990s, and AIDS is sweeping through the queer community like wildfire. So maybe it is better to hole up in a quiet map store among lies and dreams than it is to face a heart-wrenching reality.
Jody and Carl’s peculiar and intriguing friendship captures the heart of this play, for all that their friendship is and is not. As much as the two need each other and value the emotional labor they share, neither is prepared to open himself fully to the other. That would be too risky. Too vulnerable. They feel it’s safer to live in a world where human connection can always be fleeting and ephemeral.
But those chairs. They just keep coming. Their emptiness and uniqueness serve as a constant reminder that real danger lurks in the world outside Jody’s map store.
Dietz’s writing is Beckettian in the way it dwells in space and plays with language. His dialogue is simultaneously conversational and poetic, as everything from word choice to rhythm and inflection seem purposeful and precise. “Lonely Planet” in fact evokes echoes of “Endgame” and “Waiting for Godot.” Dietz gives us two characters in the eye of a storm finding respite in dialogue and friendship. Jody and Carl are at once fully real and poetic figments, standing in for a host of unknowable psychological forces. But like Beckett, Dietz refuses to let his audience forget the abrasive, tactile reality that exists just beyond the boundaries of the play’s wistful world.
Under the graceful direction of Melissa Firlit (and across the beautiful set by Lucas Pinner), Ballard and Keller develop rich portraits of their characters in the two hours we spend with them. Jody begins the play as the steady force opposite a hectic Carl, but Keller gradually shows us the anxieties and fears that quietly prey upon Jody. We meet Carl as funny and flighty, but Ballard finds in Carl stalwart strength to face the troubling reality beyond Jody’s doors, and to impress upon Jody the importance of doing the same. Together, Ballard and Keller develop a chemistry that fills this play with a captivating tenderness.
“Lonely Planet” at Luna Stage invites audiences into a group hug while urging them to care for the most vulnerable among them. The production is a quiet, delicate gem.
“Lonely Planet”
Luna Stage, 555 Valley Road, West Orange
Tickets available online: https://www.lunastage.org/lonely-planet. Running through Dec. 8.
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