Climb ev’ry mountain

Friday, Oct. 3 — We don’t often think about it, but what do we do when a loved one from long ago — a previous mate, a once-upon-a-time lover, a log-ago marital partner, an ex-spouse — is dying? What if the relationship was tumultuous, dysfunctional, including elements of child abuse? 

“Annapurna” takes its name from that of the second highest mountain in the Himalayas, one of many that climbers aspire to ascend. The title suggests an analogy for the struggles one experiences attempting to make an extremely difficult relationship work.

Emma, an ex-wife, huffs and puffs herself to the top of a Colorado mountain, seeking to find a long-lost ex-husband. She finds him, coughing and hacking in the last stages of lung cancer in a rickety falling-apart mobile home cabin that is in as much disarray as is he. Dog excrement is everywhere.

What motivates this woman? Why search out someone who has treated her terribly? Is she doing it for him, for herself, to even the score, to resolve something? Does she even know?

He is confused, angry, wary and baffled by her presence. A tragic story from the past is revealed. Raging emotions flare, subside and rage again. Intimate raw conversation ensues, and intense anger makes way for tender mercies to appear.

Michelle Mountain is Emma, a woman of deep, dense, spiritual character. She moves beyond a long ago incidence of suspected violent child abuse, to acknowledge that somehow she still loves this deeply flawed man. Mountain takes words, ideas inherent in the script, and imbues them with a sensitivity that adds to the meaning, and touches hearts. (Just because you leave a person, doesn’t mean you do not still have a relationship with them).

Richard McWilliams is Ulysses, a once-celebrated poet, formerly an English professor at a prestigious college. He is ravaged by years of alcoholism, and despite having stopped drinking, has no love left for life. He just wants to be left alone to die. He has no memory of an incident where Emma found her son beaten and bruised.

Ulysses is painful to watch. Emma picks away at the scabs under which he has buried his failures. His body moves awkwardly, twitches and jerks. McWilliams has an amazing range, revealing a once-powerful man, now frail and wasted.

Is there reconciliation in this play, an acknowledgement of what once was a time of both love and anguish, an ending with resolution? Do we all come to the end of our lives with loose ends, moments of regret, wishes that we might have done things differently if given a second chance?

“Annapurna”
Purple Rose Theatre Co.
Through Dec. 20
2 p.m. & 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 7 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
$42-$15
137 Park St., Chelsea
(734) 433-7673, purplerosetheatre.org