Caring and courage propel SpeakEasy's tender 'Cost of Living'

After a devasting car accident that leaves her paralyzed, Ani tells her estranged husband, Eddie, why she doesn’t want to listen to music. A therapist helped her understand why it’s so painful.

“When music plays,” Ani explains, “the body goes looking for the things it’s missing. The broken things. The s--- that’s disconnected. And it tries to bring everything back together like it used to be. Back in order.”

That’s one of many exquisitely tender moments in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living.” With direction from Alex Lonati, the production (showing through March 30) delves into the lives of two pairs of lonely people seeking connection in a vulnerable time in their lives. The play won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for drama after it debuted at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 2016.

Caregiving, dependence, immigration, and uncertainty are overarching themes of the stories portrayed by a great ensemble. Each tale is tinged with its own searing sadness and loneliness. There’s love there too. Ani and Eddie (Stephanie Gould and Lewis D. Wheeler) have been together for a little over two decades, but it feels like too much has transpired between them. So, when Eddie decides to take care of Ani after her accident, she’s angry and resistant.

But he persists, and she relents.

Showering, feeding and cleaning for a loved one requires a level of intimacy. For Jess and John (Gina Fonseca and Sean Leviashvili), an aide and patient, it takes longer to cultivate a comfortable relationship and rhythm. John, a graduate student who has cerebral palsy, is helped by Jess, who also works multiple jobs at bars. She keeps him at arm’s length initially. Over time, Jess, a graduate of Princeton University, and John learn more about each other. He tells her what it feels like to be in his body, she reveals that she’s seen a lot of things in her twenty-five years.

Majok, the playwright, emigrated to the U.S. from Poland and grew up in New Jersey and Chicago. She studied at Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, and the University of Chicago. She’s written several plays, including the book for the musical “Gatsby” coming to Boston in May. Before she found major success, Majok described struggling to make ends meet in an interview. “Cost of Living” started as a monologue of a man who misses his deceased wife. The inspiration for the play came from a combination of things transpiring in Majok’s life. Like Jess's character, she also worked in bars and as a caregiver while she lived in Chicago. After grad school, she struggled to keep stable housing. Majok said all those experiences, along with loneliness, helped birth the scenes that would later become "Cost of Living". It’s a “time capsule of uncertainty and precarity,” she said.

Majok has carefully plucked those pieces from her life to sketch a story of the vulnerability of loving and giving, which feels particularly poignant for this audience member. Just after the loss of my mother, a friend (who had also lost their mom) shared with me that grief and pain were the price that we pay for loving. And that our moms were worth it.

Six months after my loss, when I listened to Ani tell Eddie why music is so painful, it rang true for me, too. When specific tunes come on the radio (mostly Diana Ross or anything Motown), my heart looks for what it’s missing—the things that are disconnected—and seeks and fails to put things in order—at least for now.

And I’m reminded that at some point, we all must pay some cost for living and loving.

SpeakEasy Stage Company’s “Cost of Living” shows now through March 30 at the BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion.