Deborah Bennett plays Felicity, a dementia patient, and Sarah George is her devoted daughter and caregiver, Agnes, in Spotlighters Theatre’s touching production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Shadow Box. Photo by Spotlighters Theatre / Shealyn Jae Photography

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As we age, we all face mortality — our own, that of a parent, a friend, a lover…someone close to us. Some face the reality head on. Others avoid it, ignore it, make bargains with it.

In actor Michael Cristofer’s play The Shadow Box, each character provides a unique perspective on death in ways that are neither judgmental nor maudlin, but ring true as distinctly human.

The play is a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winner that was turned into a 1980 television movie directed by Paul Newman.

The Shadow Box is running through March 1 at Spotlighters Theatre in downtown Baltimore. It examines three hospice patients, Joe, Brian and Felicity, as they cope with the last days of their lives.

Taking place during a 24-hour period, the play is set on the campus of a large U.S. hospital, specifically in three rooms occupied by each patient and their families.

The actors are on display, as though behind glass, while an unnamed psychiatrist (never seen: we only hear the voice of Rodney Bonds), questions them.

Hence the play’s title: a shadow box is defined as “an enclosed glass-front display case containing an object or objects presented in a thematic grouping with artistic or personal significance.”

Three intriguing characters

The audience is first introduced to Joe (Jim Hart), aptly named as he portrays what could be called an average Joe, or Everyman.

Joe appears to deal with the anxiety and apprehension of his predicament by demonstrating an almost boyish demeanor — not complex or intellectual, just smiling and upbeat. As the play progresses, though, we learn he is actually quite serious in his understanding and acceptance of his fate.

Maribeth Vogel plays Joe’s wife, Maggie, who, as the old saying goes, seems happy to drift down the river of denial, avoiding her husband’s predicament. She refuses to enter their cabin-like room, as if to cross the threshold would constitute acceptance of Joe’s pending mortality.

Between them is Steve (Lincoln Goode), their teenage son, whose chief role in the play is to demonstrate what any parent would dread — having to tell their child they will soon be leaving them forever.

Tom Wyatt portrays Brian, a loquacious, vivacious patient who is torn between expressing his own joy of life while always remaining cognizant of the doom that looms around the corner.

To emphasize Brian’s strengths, Cristofer supplies two foils, his ex-wife Beverly (Holly Pasciullo) and his gay boyfriend, Mark (Caleb Brooks).

While Beverly is a cross between the Unsinkable Molly Brown and Sweet Gypsy Rose, Mark is cerebral, quiet, eyes always cast downward. Mark seems depressed in the classic, clinical sense — that is, depression as anger turned against one’s self.

Powerful exchanges

The second act features one of the most engaging, fiery exchanges of the production, as Beverly (Vogel’s Maggie is truly a force to be reckoned with) and Mark butt heads over how best to deal with Brian in his final days. It’s a powerful scene in a play full of powerful scenes.

Director Sharon Weaver assembled an impeccable cast who demonstrate a full range of emotions and expressions. They never fall back on clichés, and the actors occupy their characters rather than simply “playing” them.

Completing this triumvirate are Deborah Bennett as Felicity and Sarah George as her daughter. Bennett offers another example of the ways we die, this time from the point of view of an elderly dementia patient and her caregiver, George’s Agnes.

Unlike Joe and Brian, whose illness oftentimes appears distant, only appearing through a sudden fit before dissipating, Felicity’s pain is clearly constant.

She wails, she curses, she all but spits venom at times as someone who is suffering not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Agnes, like a desperate woman in a sinking boat, tries her best to stem one leak after another. She placates, soothes and speaks whatever language her dying mother needs to find rest. The relationship between mother and daughter is not pretty, special or noble. It is hard — and real.

Felicity has made “a bargain,” as the Interviewer observes, somehow staving off death by sheer force of will, as she waits…waits for someone so dear to her heart she cannot bear leaving even a life of pain without seeing that person again.

There’s a truth here that only Agnes knows, and when it is revealed, we see the great steps some families take for the sake of granting a loved one some semblance of peace.

Peaceful resolution

The Shadow Box is the sort of play where one may expect Prozac to be distributed to the audience afterward, but antidepressants aren’t necessary.

By play’s end, as Maggie puts aside her denial, Mark faces his role in caring for Brian, and Agnes accepts her mother’s fate, there is the comfort of resolution and the peace that it brings.

Now in its 58th year, Spotlighters continues to amaze with top-rate performances delivered in its intimate “theater in the square.”

The Shadow Box is at Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul, through March 1. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $24 ($21 if 60 or over or with military ID). Visit spotlighters.org or call (410) 752-1225 for more information.