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She’s hot.』 『Oh, yeah, she’s hot,』 『The hot younger girlfriend.』 So leer James, Sarah and Richard, the literate and somewhat self important trio of Donald Margulies’s 『Time Stands Still.』 They’re talking about Mandy, Richard’s much younger girlfriend who is offstage powdering her nose.

The interesting thing is, the actress playing Mandy – the hottie in question – isn’t really all that pant and sweat inducing. Oh, she has been before, back in her pre 『Clueless』 jailbait days, and she certainly could be again. But that’s not really what Alicia Silverstone is all about these days.

For that is indeed Silverstone, now age 32, rounding out the four person cast of a potentially important new play by a significant American playwright. Hot? Not. Costume designer Rita Ryack has Mandy dressed fashionably as a successful young New York event planner might present. Silverstone’s bownish blond hair flows free. One scene after we meet her, Mandy is hugely pregnant. In Act 2, she’s carrying an infant in a sling. Her character is head over tails in love with a man who is supposed to be some 20 years her senior.

Sillverstone’s character is a bit of a ditz, albeit a ditz with a sense of purpose. Mandy is the human mirror through which the character of Sarah (played by Anna Gunn) and the audience see a life reflected. Sarah is a hard-charging photojournalist who goes into war zones and clicks away at carnage, at mothers holding infants who are about to die. Mandy, in no uncertain terms, doesn’t like 『bummer stories.』 She doesn’t get why a photographer wouldn’t put down her camera and take somebody to the hospital instead. If Sarah exists to tell tough stories and open eyes, Mandy embraces a happier, more insulated life. Through Richard (Robin Thomas), Sarah’s editor, the two women develop, if not exactly a friendship, a sort of co-existence. In real life, these two women would have nothing to say to each other.