"The Cost of Living" at City Center by Polish Playwright Martyna Majok

Martyna Majok's play, "The Cost of Living" is a long One Act play with four characters and one dominating theme:  people need other people.  The play involves one estranged couple, Eddie & Ani.  Ani is disabled, her legs have been amputated and has only limited mobility in one hand.  This is the result of a car accident which occurred after the couple separated.  Eddie earnestly tries to ingratiate himself with his ex by offering to be her care giver although he is currently living with another woman.  The animosity & venom directed at Eddie from Ani is piercing regardless of his sincerity to help.  In a later scene, Eddie is bathing Ani after her nurse canceled.  Intimacy between the two begins to soften.  The other couple, John & Jess, is that of employer/employee.  John is a college professor. He's also wheelchair bound & requires assistance.  He hires Jess who desperately wants the job.  She's already working 2 other bartending jobs.  John is hesitant to hire her but he agrees and their relationship becomes genial.   Jess is responsible for showering, shaving & dressing John.  Their banter is more at ease & John asks Jess if she could come back to his house that evening.  Jess gladly accepts, although she misconstrued the invitation as a date.  John meant for her merely to shower & shave him for a date with a someone else.  The play opens with Eddie in a bar speaking to someone offstage.  He offers to buy this person a drink & offers up his tales of woe & loneliness.  The play harps on the neediness & struggles in people's lives.  There's an overall mood of melancholy, misunderstandings & helplessness.  However, the storylines never connect with emotional impact.  Neither John or Ani empathized or accepted the compassion tendered.  At the end, Eddie finds Jess sleeping in her car outside his apartment.  He coaxes her inside for food & shelter.  Despite desperately needed a place to live, Jess rebuffs Eddie's kindness.  "The Cost of Living" was not compelling.  There was pain & disconnect but very little resonated with emotional force.