Fireflies Lights Up A November-November Romance

Eleanor Bannister and Abel Brown are at odds again. Abel says he’s looking for work, but has also made it pretty clear that his interest in Eleanor goes beyond the professional. Eleanor can’t decide if he’s a con man or just a man with a complicated life, and can’t deny the feelings she has for him, too. They’re both too smart, and a little too stubborn, to just let it go. Abel makes a last pitch to help Eleanor fix up the rundown cottage at the back of her property, which they both know also means they’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. Or, he says, in a moment of counterfactual argument, he could just burn the old cottage down and be on his way.

“If that’s what you want,” Abel says.

Eleanor lets her guard down. ​“I don’t know what I want, Abel,” she says.

Abel thinks about this. ​“Seems right to tell you, Eleanor, that those are exactly the words every con man wants to hear.”

How much is he kidding? How much is he serious? How well do Eleanor and Abel know each other? How well do they know themselves?

These questions drive the romance in Matthew Barber’s Fireflies, running at Long Wharf Theatre until Nov. 5.

In Fireflies — adapted from the novel Eleanor and Abel by Annette Sanford — Eleanor (Jane Alexander) is a retired schoolteacher and pillar of her small-town Texan community who is now facing what might be called a late-life crisis. She’s a smart, ambitious woman without an occupation and no family to occupy her. What is she to do with the time she has left in her life?

Her neighbor and close friend Grace (Judith Ivey) comes over constantly to try to get Eleanor out of the house. Grace is worried about Eleanor, and rightfully so. It’s clear just from the state of the house that Eleanor — who as a teacher always encouraged her students to think big and see the world — is now retreating into her house, and maybe losing herself in the process.

Enter Abel Brown (Denis Arndt), a charming handyman who drifts into town and seems to know everyone within a couple days. Grace worries that he’s a con man, and sees Eleanor as a potential mark. Eleanor worries that she may be right. But Abel is sometimes all too straightforward, disarming in his honesty, even though there’s always the sense of a complex past that he’s trying to live down. Eleanor and Abel are very different people, both too experienced to fall head over heels about anything. But in the years they have left, maybe — just maybe — they can make room in their lives for each other.

That Fireflies is billed as a romance leaves little ambiguity for how the play will end. The basic structure of the play is well worn, and even the characters arcs have their paces to be put through before the final resolution. But the details, in both the script and the acting, make Fireflies a pleasure to watch.

It isn’t a question of whether Eleanor and Abel will get together, but how. The fundamental decision to play the whole thing pretty straight (under the direction of Gordon Edelstein) goes a long way, allowing the talented cast to find both the humor in the script and the depth in their characters. Alexander is luminous as Eleanor, showing her sharp wit and her stifled ambition, the tangle of motivations that leads first to paralysis and then to movement. Ivey gets most of the laughs as a way-too-nosey neighbor, but startles with her insight. As police chief Eugene Claymire, Christopher Michael McFarland runs with his scene to portray a former lousy student who has turned out to be a pretty good, and deeply humane, lawman.

Arndt has the most hoops to jump through as Abel, a character whose motivations are intentionally unclear for most of the play. As in many romances, tone is everything; one misstep turns a devoted suitor into a stalker, a charming seducer into a sexual predator. Arndt gets Abel right. He has smarts and charm and isn’t afraid to use them, but he’s too guileless to be truly manipulative. Eleanor’s flinty intelligence makes her more than a match for him, and he knows it. It makes this battle of the sexes funny rather than fraught, and the flashes of resolution all the sweeter.

There are a few moments of heavy-handedness. A set decision to present Eleanor’s (beautifully rendered) house first as blocking the horizon and then unnaturally open to it perhaps didn’t need to be so obvious, and in a few places the characters are perhaps a little too self-aware, explaining emotional turns a little too clearly. But even these moments serve their purpose. They keep this November-to-November romance quick on its feet, and make it a pretty great date night for people of any age.

Fireflies plays at Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargeant Dr., through Nov. 5. Click here for tickets and more information.