Waiting Room of Truth: Moths, Mortality, and the Masks of Love on Stage

Vulture critic Sara Holdren reviews Wallace Shawn and André Gregory’s What We Did Before Our Moth Days at Greenwich House Theater, a three-hour, four-actor dramatic meditation on marriage, desire, and death. Structurally similar to My Dinner With André, the piece uses monologues and a stark set—windows and moth projections—to peel away surfaces and reveal the characters’ evasions, fears, and cruelties. The cast—Josh Hamilton, Maria Dizzia, Hope Davis, and John Early—delivers a precise, unnerving balance of humor and horror, guided by Gregory’s exacting, long-rehearsed direction. The play examines how love persists and dissolves through performances and lies, presenting death as a guiding presence that finally exposes what’s real. What We Did Before Our Moth Days runs at the Greenwich House Theater through May 10.