BREAKING THE CODE, a romantic comedy encore

Christy Pastence is a somewhat lonely almost 50 year old widow playwright living in the Upper West, NYC with her 28 year old son, Tony.  One day she meets a young Pakistani American man named Moutaz on a park bench in Central Park. They strike up a conversation and agree to meet again. He is the same age as her son. Their friendship leads to romance. Around this time, her younger sister lands on her doorstep in need of comfort and a place to live. “Rana,” is a pessimist and hypochondriac who is burdened and obsessed by a nagging question: did her husband die by accident or by suicide when he chose to lie down on train tracks during a war protest and the train came one minute early? Meanwhile, we learn more and more how Tony is also her best friend.  Moutaz is fighting his own divided loyalties between family obligation and the deep new love he is experiencing. Each of the five characters in this story have codes (both good and bad) by which they live. They have each allowed these codes to limit them in their lives. A Leonard Cohen poem, “Break the Code” inspired the premise for the play.