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WILKES-BARRE TWP. —“Who appointed you my guardian angel?” the white guy asks the black guy.
“I didn’t ask you to jump into my arms this morning,” the black guy points out.
In case you’re wondering, these two characters — known simply as “Black” and “White” in Cormac McCarthy’s play “The Sunset Limited” — are not longtime friends, and they haven’t been hugging or dancing.
They just encountered each other when Black was on his way to work and prevented White from throwing himself in front of a subway train.
Now they’re in Black’s nearby apartment, having a conversation that keeps returning to Black’s religious faith and disapproval of suicide, contrasted with White’s disappointment in life.
“They’re gonna hash this out,” said Sam Falbo, of Carbondale, who portrays White in the production Gaslight Theatre will present tonight through March 25 in the East End Centre. Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.
The two men both have a background of loss, director Dane Bower said. Other than that, they seem to be polar opposites, as different as the darkest crayon and the palest in a box of Crayolas.
“You really think Jesus is in the room?” White asks Black, whose spare tenement furnishings include a cross on the wall and a Bible on the table.
“No,” Black says in friendly fashion, “I know Jesus is in the room.”
“He sees himself as an emissary of God,” Adam Moore, of Wilkes-Barre, described his character. “He always believed in God, but he meets God later in life.”
“White talks about things he used to believe in,” Falbo said.
Before Black became so deeply spiritual, he served time for murder and took part in a prison fight during which he was stabbed with a knife and beat another inmate with a broken-off leg from a piece of furniture. Early in the play, Black pantomimes his part in the fight, re-enacting it with great energy and vehemence, as White watches.
White, who serves on a college faculty, doesn’t reveal that much about himself, Falbo said during a rehearsal break. “He says so much and gives away very little. You never get a clear understanding.”
“He was a ___head to his parents. His dying parents,” Moore said, speaking of one of the early revelations Black manages to get from White.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright McCarthy, who also wrote “No Country for Old Men,” “The Road” and “All the Pretty Horses,” doesn’t pick a side between the two characters, Bower said, but allows both to present their cases — for life or death, hope or despair, belief or atheism.
“Have you ever read the book?” Black asks White, indicating his well-worn Bible.
White says he’s never read much of the Bible, though he estimates he read maybe two books a week, or 100 books a year, for 40 years.
“But you ain’t read this one?” Black says.
The discussion continues, with Black mockingly suggesting White might see him as a “big black angel,” and White responding he doesn’t believe in angels.
“Damn, professor!” Black says, shaking his head. “No belief?!”
