By Jennifer Appleby Chu
When I was twelve years old, my father had open heart surgery to repair a faulty mitral valve. Our family had to travel all the way to Missoula, Montana, and spend an entire month at their famed cardiac clinic.
The thing I remember most is the waiting. Waiting while he was in surgery, waiting while he slowly recovered afterward, waiting when he unexpectedly had to go back into surgery, waiting while he recovered all over again. It was really the only thing we could do.
Man and Moon, currently playing at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, is a story of two people waiting in such a place. It’s your classic unlikely-friendship meet-cute: Luna is an irrepressibly talkative twelve-year-old, Aaron a gloomy young man who only wants to be left alone. Week after week, they are brought together in the waiting room of the oncology unit where both Luna’s mother and Aaron are being treated for cancer. Slowly, gently, a connection develops.
Nina Kuhl, as Luna, rattles amiably and aimlessly around the room, as kids do, happily sprawling over every piece of it, chattering endlessly to Aaron whether he likes it or not. I challenge any adult audience member to not be whisked back to their own childhood watching her. It’s so rare to see truly age-appropriate actors in roles like this that one forgets how much the presence of a good one elevates the whole show.
Aaron, meanwhile, has plenty of good reasons for keeping to himself. He is quietly grappling with not only his chemo treatments but also the special awkwardness of being a trans man with breast cancer. The script handles this sensitive scenario with grace, allowing the character to struggle with it and yet be far more than just his dysphoria. Stories like these need to be told from a place of experience, and this production took the proper care to involve the right people – hiring a trans actor, a genderqueer director, other gender-diverse people behind the scenes, and also our local nonprofit TransPonder for special consulting support.
Dmitri Rose, as Aaron, has the most challenging arc to trace here, and nails it. This is a beautifully fine-tuned performance that is by turns defiant, joyful, existential, and ultimately affirming. Watching him slowly come alive to Luna and himself even as his medical prognosis grows more and more uncertain will break your heart and mend it again.
Credit here also goes to director Eric Braman (in their mainstage directorial debut with OCT), and the whole design team for crafting a progression that keeps things feeling consistently varied, energetic, and forward-moving, extra important for a one-location play with a tiny cast. Riley Allen’s set faithfully evokes the wannabe-soothing vibe of modern medical spaces and gives the actors an excellent assortment of physical pieces to build upon. Versatile costumes by Laura Tuffli allow Aaron to continually shed literal layers along with figurative ones as his friendship with Luna blooms.
It’s no secret that things are tough for the theater industry right now. The temptation, as always in times of uncertainty, is to retreat to the safe zone – musicals, famous classics, and other easy sells. Congratulations to OCT for resisting the urge and instead giving space to this sweet and bittersweet story about growing into yourself.
New plays always need extra support as they find their footing. Go give this one a hand.
