NO COUPLE IS AN ISLAND

Joshua Owen’s warm and funny
tragicomedy finds two marriages
weathering storms of very different kinds

Michael Mulheren, Victoria Clark, Rebeca Robles and Ben Rosenfield

A marriage can be its own world, with inside jokes, shared memories, and shared rapport. In Joshua Owen’s Human Things, making its world premiere at the West End Theatre, a couple’s world is their own island. When a young couple sets up camp on an atoll in the South Pacific to study an endangered migratory bird species, their world and marriage are put to the test.

Rebeca Robles and Ben Rosenfield

Greg (Ben Rosenfield) and Margaret (Rebeca Robles) don’t seem to be doing all that great. Margaret has just spent the night out on the beach without telling Greg where she was, leaving Greg to worry and putter around the tent. Things are a little tense, but overall Greg is happy to support Margaret in her ornithological work, despite not having a background in bird science.

Michael Mulheren

Things are disrupted when Bo (Michael Mulheren) turns up in their tent. Bo has a few decades on them and is a little more eccentric than the serious scientist Margaret. But once it’s established he’s mostly harmless and just needs a first-aid kit for his wife, Darce (Victoria Clark), the two couples hunker down for an incoming hurricane, brought to brilliant life by Reza Behjat’s lighting and Ian Scot’s sound.

Ben Rosenfield

Apropos of the circular atoll, director Rory McGregor stages Human Things in the round, keeping the action moving briskly. Joshua Owen’s script captures the shorthand and familiarity of a long-term couple in the May of their relationship, and the familiar loving contempt of a couple in their December.

Ben Rosenfield and Michael Mulheren

With so much comparing and contrasting of a young couple and an older one in our story, it’s only natural that during intermission, couples of all ages are found laughing, mingling, and reminiscing while the theater undergoes a set change for the second act.

Rebeca Robles

Jacob Bers’ set is rough-and-tumble, with a canopy hanging overhead, an old transistor radio, and a slapdash science station. For Act Two, after a disastrous storm hits, everything is in disarray as our expeditionary gang tries to hold on to survival.

Michael Mulheren and Victoria Clark

Human Things works as a tragicomic four-hander; its two-hour runtime sails by thanks to its splendid cast. Robles brings a fiery intensity to Margaret, Rosenfield an earnest likability to Greg, Mulheren an easy warmth to Bo, and Clark a wonderfully mercurial humor to Darce. The design team makes full use of the West End Theatre’s modest space and budget. With sharp comedic turns, Human Things turns a remote island, an approaching storm, and two troubled marriages into an affecting night of theater.

Victoria Clark

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photos by Emilio Madrid

Human Things
The West End Theatre
263 West 86th Street in New York City
Tue–Thu at 7; Sat at 2 & 7; Sun at 2
ends on Oct. 18, 2026
1 hour and 55 minutes, including intermission
for tickets ($49–$119), visit Human Things or Ovation Tix

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