Sometimes opportunity doesn’t just knock, it lights up the sky. For Ben Harcourt, it arrives at the climax of oral sex with his mistress. He’ll always remember the occasion, not because the fellatio was any better or worse than usual, but because at that precise moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
The Mercy Seat, Neil LaBute’s new play at the Acorn Theatre, is set on America’s morning after: September 12, 2001. When first we meet him, Ben is in business dress, not at the office but sitting on the couch of a well-appointed downtown loft. His cell phone is ringing continuously, but he ignores it. We understand why when Abby returns. She’s his boss and mistress and she’s gone out for groceries. She’s covered in dust. The dust from the twin towers. And we begin to understand why he’s not answering his cell.
Ben was supposed to be at a meeting at the World Trade Center that Tuesday morning. Instead, he stopped off at Abby’s for a quick one. So now he’s officially among the missing and 9/11 is for him “the opportunity.” He can stay missing, play dead, be rid of his wife and two daughters, and start a new life with Abby. Whether or not to take “the opportunity” is the question he and his lover attempt to resolve, in real time, over the next hundred minutes.
LaBute’s reputation was made by the fascinatingly repulsive film In the Company of
