‘Closing Times’ reckons with a lifetime of regrets

Denver Theatre Ensemble gives Derek Murphy’s Closing Times an intimate, atmospheric world premiere.

A man sits in a bar, reminiscing about the life he did not lead. He goes to a bus stop, where a young woman who clearly knows him refuses to leave him alone. Then the action slides toward an ethereal third space before returning to the bar.

Rinse and repeat.

Those are the three locations in Derek Murphy’s Closing Times, receiving its world premiere from Denver Theatre Ensemble at the University of Denver Black Box Theatre. Yet each cycle through them changes what the audience understands.

Directed by Ina Marlowe, Closing Times is a prickly existential ghost story about a man forced to confront the difference between regretting his life and accepting responsibility for it. Murphy’s repeated motifs occasionally explain more than necessary, yet the production’s shadowy atmosphere and haunting performances carry the play toward a wrenching conclusion.

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Kendall Marlowe and Rhianna DeVries in Closing Times. | Photo: Mad Montgomery

Waiting for something to happen

Murphy’s play has many of the same characteristics as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: circular conversations, things that never appear when expected, a lonely spot where characters wait for what comes next and a lingering question about why and where this is happening. The mood, however, tilts toward noir. Molly enters in a hood, knows more than she should and keeps Eddie off balance with questions that sound casual until they draw blood.

Kendall Marlowe gives Eddie a sallow, depleted presence. He slumps through the bar scenes, then snaps to attention whenever Molly crowds him. His irritation has comic bite, particularly as he tries to enforce an invisible border around his seat, but Marlowe lets the humor drain away whenever Molly lands on something true.

Eddie once owned the rundown bar he now frequents and years ago met Pattie Murray there. They had a passionate romance, but when Pattie became pregnant, Eddie gave her money and allowed her to return to Ireland alone. He has spent decades treating that moment as a tragedy that happened to him. Molly forces him to consider the choices he made before and after the bus pulled away.

Murphy’s strongest idea is that indecision does not erase responsibility. Sometimes doing nothing becomes the action that defines one’s life.

Marlowe resists making Eddie cuddly. He’s witty but also impatient and selfish, which gives his later vulnerability weight. As Molly strips away his preferred account of the past, his posture tightens, his voice loses its swagger and the man who claims to want solitude begins to look terrified of being left alone.

Rhianna DeVries and Kendall Marlowe in Closing Times. | Photo: Mad Montgomery

No clean getaway

Rhianna DeVries plays Molly with the restless intensity required to keep the play’s long, cyclical exchanges moving. They pace, crowd Eddie’s bench and press him with an assertiveness that initially feels antagonistic before revealing deeper personal stakes. DeVries’ performance goes to agonizing places as the relationship between the two characters comes into focus.

DeVries’ Irish accent is less secure. It takes time to settle during the first bus stop scene and occasionally slips at the ends of lines or around colloquial expressions. The inconsistency can be distracting, although DeVries’ emotional authenticity ultimately matters more than the technical unevenness.

Ella Stone’s Pattie never speaks, yet her presence hangs over the production. She brings Eddie his drinks, raises a brush towards Molly’s hair without touching it and always seems to be just out of reach. Stone resembles an ominous stage manager, guiding people through memories they have been hesitant to acknowledge.

Ina Marlowe keeps the roughly 80-minute production moving briskly through its three stations. Scenic designer Joe Tilford uses six chairs and a table to create the bar and bus stop, while a dark false proscenium and glowing square frame the upstage wall. The image does not clearly register as a riverbank — which is how the script identifies the third location — but Shannon McKinney’s lighting and Aaron Dupuis’s sound design create an unmistakably otherworldly atmosphere.

Shadows stretch, water moves and buses rumble toward characters who may already be beyond saving.

Kendall Marlowe and Rhianna DeVries in Closing Times. | Photo: Mad Montgomery

Murphy could trust those images more. The dialogue sometimes reiterates the meanings of waiting, personal space, inaction and closing time after the production has communicated them. Trimming that repetition would sharpen the play’s propulsion.

Still, Closing Times is a strong choice for Denver Theatre Ensemble’s third season. Rather than offer another serviceable staging of a familiar work, the company has secured a meaty world premiere that gives it a clearer artistic identity.

Eddie spends the night ignoring that his closing time has arrived. Ina Marlowe’s tender production makes the reckoning difficult to avoid.