Fresh Voices Review "An Accident"

By Liz Beck - Senior RMU

When I sat down to watch An Accident, I was expecting a heart-wrenching, highly emotional portrait of a couple trying to work through a traumatic event that had left one of them comatose. While the play does involve two people trying to work past a car accident, and their individual faults in it, the show is markedly different from what I thought I was going to watch.
            An Accident immerses us in the story of Libby, a sarcastic, complicated and optimistic woman confined to a bed after being run over by a car. We also meet Anton, the kind, passionate and very guilty man who hit her. Libby awakens after an undetermined time to find she has almost no ability to move her body, and it is unclear whether or not she will regain control. Anton has been visiting her, seemingly out of remorse, and although at first Libby is bitter and guarded, the two gradually warm up to each other.
            You wouldn’t think that a play on a topic this depressing would be funny—but it is. The dialogue is smart and biting, always coming up with humor where you’d least expect it. It is interesting to watch Libby and Anton slowly process the accident together and apart. There were times when I thought the show might be heading in the direction of the dreaded and clichéd romantic comedy, but it never did. Just as Libby will not allow Anton to wallow in self-pity, nor will he let her lose hope. Their relationship remains platonic throughout, which I found remarkably refreshing.
     

Ken Bolden - Hilary Caldwell - Amy Landis
Photo by Heather Mull

    But a show like this—with no set changes and three characters, only two with considerable dialogue—could easily have been bogged down by the sheer weight of monotony. Set changes and the entrance and exits of new characters are what move a play along for an audience a lot of the time, and when those don’t occur, there’s a danger that the plot could drag. But in this show, it doesn’t. I suspect the natural flow is due largely in part to the natural chemistry between Amy Landis (Libby) and Ken Bolden (Anton), who have both truly thrown themselves into their roles, bringing stunning performances. I felt bonded with Libby; Landis’ delivers several monologues throughout the show that really help audience members connect with her character. The physical demands of playing Libby are apparent immediately; for the first half of the show, Landis remains almost completely still. Her ability to act through her voice and facial expressions is truly impressive. The character of Anton surprised me. Bolden plays the character like a soft-spoken grandfather initially, but don’t let this fool you. At certain points, he really transforms the character, and you realize that Anton isn’t a softy at all.
            An Accident supposedly splits this man and woman down a very hard line. In life, we hear stories such as this one and expect that the lines between the parties are ugly, bitter, and uncrossable. We are not surprised when there is a lawsuit, a counter lawsuit. We read the stories and think, what a shame. Their lives are probably absolutely ruined. But in this play, this isn’t necessarily true. I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I’ll just say this. Landis and Bolden take us on an emotional journey of what happens when things are not black and white, when there is neither definitive guilt nor true innocence. We must then ask ourselves, who can we blame if it was truly happenstance? In An Accident, the boundary between the wronged and the wrongdoer is not only blurred - it is crossed.