Starting Times

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. 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. Starting Times is an admirable play that reminds us of Spanish Golden Age theater’s quid pro quo situations.