FOREWORD
Starting Times
by playwright Edward Friedman is an interesting
work, constructed around two couples, a younger
one, composed of Rick, a doctoral student in
English literature, and his girlfriend Melissa;
and an older one, which will be formed little by
little during the play by Professor Arthur
Jacobs, Rick’s thesis director, and Melissa’s
aunt, Edith. It is a very fine, acute, and
descriptive study, on one side, of the graduate
student/thesis director relationship, or better
said, about the protective power Rick imagines
that this close and special relationship allows
him to have, in order to protect his mentor
against flirting attempts of someone he
perceives as a pushy, invasive, and vulgar,
middle-aged woman, Edith; and, on the other
side, the commencing relationship of Arthur and
Edith, both divorced and emotionally hurt by
their respective pasts, under Rick’s suspicious
supervision and Melissa’s more open-minded
agreement. Arthur
was abandoned by his wife after she became a
lawyer; and Edith, who suffered an abortion and
lost a child she was expecting, divorced her
husband, Lenny following his incarceration.
Friedman shows very well that Rick’s
overprotective approach forces Arthur and Edith
to go slowly from a first date into a more
serious and possibly durable
relationship as a couple. The play is full of
references either to Anne Tyler’s novel
Amateur Marriage or to William Shakespeare’s
theatrical universe, or to Anton
Chekhov’s. “All’s well that ends well,” the
English playwright and bard would have
concluded: at the end, Rick defends his doctoral
thesis and becomes a Ph.D. and
a newly appointed assistant professor at
Marquette University, and Arthur and Edith are
publicly accepted as a couple. It seems that
Rick and Melissa are to live
separately, at least for one year, perhaps more.
Friedman thus hints at the uncertain circle of
life in a touchy but definite way. Starting
Times is an admirable play that
reminds us of Spanish Golden Age theater’s quid
pro quo situations.
“Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” Samuel
Beckett once said.
Friedman’s play is a solid example
of the Irish playwright’s encouraging notion.
Alain Saint-Saëns
Playwright