Still – 03 February 2025

As much as we dislike acknowledging it, many of the choices we make on a daily basis are binary. Yes or no. Stay or go. Do or don’t. Sparkling or still. In Still by Lia Romero, two former lovers Helen (Melissa Gilbert) and Mark (Mark Moses) meet in a bar decades after their relationship, each with the somewhat thinly veiled hope of rekindling a connection that was dear to them.

The first half of the show takes place in the bar, where they have conversations that fluctuate between the mundane and higher order philosophy, simultaneously catching up with someone they knew and learning about each other as if meeting a stranger—one of the many contradictions that this show asks the audience to consider. She drinks, he pours, and the chemistry between them is undeniable. While this first section of the show might seem too long for some, I found it refreshingly honest. In the real world, it takes time to build a relationship. It takes many moments. It takes knowledge of the person you’re building a relationship with—both serious and silly. You have to like a person to want them. This set up did a phenomenal job of introducing the premise of a man and a woman who meet and have genuine knowledge of and respect for each other before engaging in an intimate relationship.

Everything changes after they have sex in the hotel room. Mark mentions that he might run for Congress and Helen finds out that he is a Republican. While Mark doesn’t think this is insurmountable, Helen finds the Republican agenda truly revolting, stating that she wishes he had told her before she slept with him, and then really getting in the weeds with him about when he would and would not vote along party lines. Mark declared her “one of those liberals” in a moment of indecision where Helen decided to stand by her previous statement, even though both knew it to be inaccurate. The crux of the argument really centers around the abortion that Helen had when Mark impregnated her before he married someone else and had two children with her. Helen can’t fathom the idea that Mark had a right to be part of the decision because it was also his baby and also his life. Mark’s vision of their perfect life together was shattered—not by the abortion itself, but by her unilateral decision not to include him in the decision. Mark can’t fathom the idea that his daughters might be negatively impacted by the agenda of his party. Helen doesn’t have the faith in Mark to believe that it could be better to have someone moderate with a personal connection to the issue in office than whatever extreme conservative might run in Mark’s place.

Ultimately, the reason these two characters didn’t end up together is not that a conservative and a liberal are like oil and water—binary and separate. It’s this lack of trust. He can’t trust that Helen’s choices about her own body are correct, and Helen can’t trust that Mark would make responsible decisions for legislation effecting the entire country.

There were a lot of meanings to the title, “Still” that I have thought about since seeing the show. They love each other still. They still love each other—they’re still holding on to a connection that is constant and steady. But also, their love is still. It has stagnated. It is not going anywhere. Though they are both vibrant in their own lives, there is still hesitance, there are still doubts—the stillness remains. There are cocktails that include a sparkling element, the same way a restaurant might ask if you want sparkling or still water– they drink red wine. They don’t want to see each other’s sparkling new qualities. They are not genuinely meeting each other where they are now. They are seeing a new person and simultaneously still seeing the image in their head of what those physical features meant to them. They are missing a chance at a new person because they are unable to separate the ability to make new memories and the old ones that still come flooding back despite their differences.

Still is a beautiful story that holds space for contradictions, simultaneously reinforcing them and asking why they should be reinforced. The opening of the show is about how human cells are constantly in a process of renewing, and the body a person inhabits right now is completely different on a cellular level than the one they had seven years ago. How do you know what it means to still be you? And if you can’t decide this about yourself (or a wooden ship), then how can you decide it about another person? How can a new you and a new somebody else still meet the old expectations? How can you still love someone who has hurt you deeply? Can you still be friends? In the end, Helen is poised at the door, thinking about leaving, still. But we don’t actually see her do it. Despite everything he has thrown at her conceptually (and the avocado she has thrown at him in a more literal sense), the final frame of the story is not her triumphant exit. She stands there, still. Paralyzed. Even though she’s made up her mind, her body stops her. She freezes, trying to think about the consequences of staying or going. She can’t choose both. It’s binary. It’s still. The production itself? Sparkling.

I attended this production on a press pass from Keith Sherman & Associates.