Second Stage's Breaking the Story (closing today) has a lot of goals for its 85 minutes: depict the PTSD of a war journalist, discuss the meaning and ethics of journalism, show a woman trying to turn away from what she wants most, and explore the effect on her family of the journalist's constant absences and seeming attraction to danger. It succeeds to some extent with all of these goals, but the play has a certain hollowness. The characters are bundles of traits that don't quite cohere, so it is hard to be totally invested in their lives and stories.
It doesn't help that Time Stands Still, written by Donald Margulies and starring Laura Linney, covers similar territory and is so much better. I have a more emotional response to Time Stands Still 14 years after seeing it than I had at any point during Breaking the Story. I don't think it's completely fair to judge a play in the light of a previous work, but sometimes you just can't help it.
Wendy Caster
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