Since its founding in 1986, Naked Angels has earned a reputation as one of New York’s most essential theatre companies via its twenty-five year dedication to developing and producing relevant, provocative new work (like last season’s hit Off-Broadway oft-extended dramedy Next Fall, now the toast of Broadway with multiple Tony Award nominations). Their latest production, the post-prison drama THIS WIDE NIGHT, kicks off Naked Angels’ silver anniversary season in high style, with a gritty production featuring bravura performances by Tony nominee Alison Pill and three-time Emmy Award-winner Edie Falco.

In a dark, derelict studio flat in Britain, Marie (Pill) fetally curls up in a dumpy hand-me-down recliner, watching her soundless television. A knock on the door breaks her out of her trance – Marie’s former cellmate Lorraine (Falco), recently released from jail, arrives unannounced and needs a place to stay for the night. In ninety minutes of tense silences laced with sadness and sly humor, two wounded women attempt to reconnect in a tug-of-war of emotions and try to learn how to live beyond the prison walls.

Acting students would do well to try to snare a ticket to this show; both performers give detailed, nuanced performances that lift Moss’s script to an even higher level. Pill, recently seen in the short-lived Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker, brings a mature intensity to her performance that belies her 24 years. Her Marie has a tough skin barely concealing her jittery, scared (and scarred) underbelly. Edie Falco gives a transformative performance as Lorraine, a desperate ex-con released after twelve years in prison. Her haunted eyes, and fidgety gestures are powerful reminders of what a fantastic stage actor she is; Falco’s skills extend far beyond her justifiably acclaimed, award-winning television work on “The Sopranos” and “Nurse Jackie.”

Pill and Falco are riveting together – the characters’ seesawing affection for each other tempered by revulsion and their difficulty in transitioning to life post-jail life make for quietly brilliant fireworks. Additional credit is due to director Anne Kauffman’s assured pacing. The design team got it just right, too, set designer Rachel Hauck’s appropriately depressing apartment, Matt Frey’s moody lighting that conveys the women’s loneliness. Rob Kaplowitz’s soundscape full of clanking pipes and the white noise of an empty room, and Emily Rebholz’s detailed distressed costumes that clearly delineate the two women and their journeys.

Playwright Chloë Moss has crafted an indelible drama in which the silences are as potent as the characters’ heartbreakingly, artfully inarticulate dialogue. In fact, THIS WIDE NIGHT won the prestigious 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to recognize women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre (other finalists included the recent Off-Broadway hits Ruined, What Once We Felt, and the currently-running Oliver Parker!).

Edie Falco and Alison Pill, photo by Carol Rosegg.

In 2006 Moss had a playwriting residency at HMP Cookham Wood, once the most overcrowded women’s prison in the UK, an experience which led to the creation of THIS WIDE NIGHT, which was originally produced in London in summer 2008, and toured women’s prisons later that fall.

Due to popular demand, THIS WIDE NIGHT has been extended, but only by one week, through June 27 – prior commitments by Pill and Falco preclude the show from any further extensions. Theater-goers who are lucky enough snag tickets are in for a treat – there’s nothing like watching two actors at the height of their powers

THIS WIDE NIGHTplays the following performance schedule: Tuesday – Friday at 7:30pm, Saturday at 2pm and 7:30pm, and Sunday at 2pm and 7pm. The Peter Jay Sharp Theatre is located at 416 West 42nd Street. Tickets are $70; for reservations call 212.279.4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com.