Bear (Louis Ozawa) and Marina (Maggie Siff) risk their lives to get to the truth in Breaking the Story (photo by Joan Marcus)
BREAKING THE STORY
Second Stage Theater
Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 23, $42-$82
2st.com/shows
“If it bleeds, it leads,” William Randolph Hearst purportedly said in the 1890s, during the golden age of yellow journalism.
Foreign correspondent Marina Reyes (Maggie Siff) uses that phrase early on in the hard-hitting Breaking the Story, but in this case, the blood is her own. “I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding,” she says repeatedly throughout the eighty-five-minute play.
Marina is a popular television reporter who has suddenly decided to retire and announce her decision in her speech accepting the Distinguished Achievement in Conflict Journalism award. She has recently returned to the United States after nearly getting blown up covering a dangerous story in an undisclosed country; the headlines initially proclaimed, “American Journalist Missing, Presumed Dead.” She tells Bear (Louis Ozawa), her longtime cameraman, “Distinguished Achievement. It’s like they wanna give me a Lifetime Achievement Award in case I die out there next time, but they don’t want to be obvious about it. Anyway, joke’s on them ’cause there won’t be a next time.”
Her return begins a series of life-altering decisions: She buys a big house in an expensive suburb of Boston near her daughter Cruz’s (Gabrielle Policano) new college, Wellesley, and decides to marry Bear that weekend, at the new house, which is more of a vacation home.
Alexis Scheer’s Breaking the Story features a talented ensemble (photo by Joan Marcus)
The wedding brings together Marina’s best friend, socialite and philanthropist Sonia (Geneva Carr), who takes charge and designs a more elaborate affair than anyone seems to want; Marina’s freewheeling mother, Gummy (Julie Halston); Cruz, an aspiring pop star whose most recent song, “Yesterday’s Revolution,” has just gone viral; and Nikki (Tala Ashe), a young, Peabody-winning ladder climber who wants to interview Marina for her podcast even though Marina considers her to be her archenemy. Showing up later is her ex-husband, Fed (Matthew Saldívar), a reporter who now anchors his own show and wants to win Marina back.
New journalism and established reporting face off in Nikki and Marina’s exchanges: At one point Nikki accuses Marina of giving a platform to fascists and dictators, and Marina argues, “It’s our job to tell the whole story, Nikki! Not just the part of the story we agree with! . . .” Nikki responds, “Objectivity is a myth.” A perturbed Marina answers, “Of course it is! Objectivity has never been the point! We’re here to represent facts and ask questions so that people can make up their own mind. Balance. Fairness. Accuracy. All perspectives. The whole story.”
But even as she prepares for this new life, Marina is haunted by PTSD nightmares and the whole story of what happened at the Sapphire Hotel.
Bear (Louis Ozawa) and Marina (Maggie Siff) discuss their past and future in Breaking the Story (photo by Joan Marcus)
Myung Hee Cho’s set is an expanse of grass with miniature hills and a pair of silhouetted houses that serve as doorways; Elaine J. McCarthy’s projections of news reports and peaceful flowers fill several screens in the back. Darron L West’s sound shifts suddenly from conversation to explosions to live music written by Dan Ryan and performed by Policano, although it is difficult to make out all the lyrics.
Written by Alexis Scheer, whose previous works include Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Christina, and the Broadway adaptation of the book of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella, and astutely directed by Obie winner Jo Bonney (Cost of Living Fucking A), Breaking the Story has some shaky scenes, including a surreal cake tasting, but they’re countered by touching moments of connection, highlighted by a moving heart-to-heart between Marina and Gummy, who makes a surprising confession.
Theater gem Halston (Hairspray, You Can’t Take It with You) sparkles as she quickly morphs from a troubled refugee who is looking for her daughter into the hilarious Gummy. Ozawa (The Tutors, Warrior Class) is cool and calm as Bear, eminently likable even when he considers working with Nikki.
But the show belongs to Siff (Curse of the Starving Class, The Ruby Sunrise). Whether out in the field in the middle of a bombing or walking around barefoot on the green grass of her new home, she is magnetic as Marina tries to balance and make sense of the disparate parts of her life. The choices she faces are ones we all must deal with in our relationships with parents and children, colleagues and rivals, friends and lovers, and career and retirement, except, in Marina’s situation, danger is front and center, a violent and bloody death an imminent possibility.
“You’re like this sacred artifact I’ve stolen from the temple and now this ancient monster curse has been unleashed until I put you back,” Bear tells Marina, who replies, “And you only have ’til the stroke of midnight until I disintegrate and the whole world turns to ash.” It’s not exactly a Cinderella story.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]