Two Rooms

Lee Blessing is best known for the Tony Award-winning “A Walk in the Woods” and, recently, “Thief River” at the Guthrie Lab. He calls his Two Rooms “a play about devotion.” Written circa 1988, the story centers on a woman whose husband has been taken hostage in Beirut. Flanked by reporters and government officials, this “hostage wife” weighs her options. If she tells her story, will it help bring her husband home? Or should she keep mum? In an effort to connect with her spouse, she also constructs a cell in their home, trying to re-create, from imagination, the place that holds her husband. Retreating there, she can grieve and “talk” to him, despite all that lies between them. The dialogue that takes place there—in those two, similar rooms—is gut-wrenchingly sad, but, ultimately, beauty comes out of this crisis. 245 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis; 612-333-3010; www.theatreintheround.org