Actress’ moving work is what makes ‘Time Stands Still’

Through Oct. 14. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 3 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $20-$25. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave., Atlanta (in Little Five Points). 404-584-7450. horizontheatre.com.

Bottom line: Carolyn Cook’s sharply focused performance transcends some ultimately familiar ground.

The focal point of Donald Margulies’ drama “Time Stands Still” is a successful photojournalist named Sarah Goodwin, who returns to her Brooklyn loft apartment physically and psychologically damaged by a near-death experience with a roadside bomb while on her latest assignment in Iraq.

Some of the wounds are more visible than others. Although she flippantly describes her badly burned face as “my new Phantom of the Opera look,” her situation is clearly no laughing matter. Even months after the incident, one arm is still in a sling and one leg still in a brace, requiring the use of a crutch.

But Sarah is too fiercely independent to lean too heavily on her longtime boyfriend, James, for figurative support. They live together and work together, too. He’s a writer covering the war for the same magazine, and how and why James left Iraq before Sarah’s accident becomes a cause of deeper spiritual scars for the couple.

Margulies (a Pulitzer Prize winner for “Dinner with Friends”) equips the characters with a lot of eloquent and insightful dialogue about the “moral implications” of their choices and actions as they grapple with their guilty consciences on both a personal and a professional level.

As it continues, “Time Stands Still” proves to be much more effective in the latter regard. Sarah, in particular, is haunted not only by her experiences documenting catastrophic global events, but also by the idea that she might be “building a career on the sorrow and suffering of others.”

What a shame, in the end, that the play essentially degenerates into a glorified domestic soap opera, with Sarah confronting the age-old feminist conflict between wanting to pursue her passion for the work or finally marrying James and settling down to start a family.

The first thing you’ll notice about co-artistic director Lisa Adler’s sharp Horizon Theatre production is yet another striking set by sister scenic designers Moriah and Isabel Curley-Clay. (An especially nice touch: Beyond the large windows at the back of the stage, what initially appears to be the fire escape of an adjoining building periodically turns into a pair of film strips highlighting Sarah’s photography.)

With due respect to Robin Bloodworth’s solid performance as James — and fine, mostly comedic relief from Chris Kayser and Ann Marie Gideon (as Sarah’s editor and his much-younger new bride) — it is the gifted Carolyn Cook’s star turn that simultaneously elevates and grounds the drama.

Over and above the physical challenges of the role, between Cook’s heated exchanges with Bloodworth, her sly repartee with Kayser and her sensitive scenes with Gideon, she runs a gamut of emotions that rings consistently true. In her loveliest moment, without uttering a single word, her face expresses all we need to know about a pivotal passage from the book she’s reading.

To watch Cook play it, you’d almost think Sarah were the first woman in the world trying to balance a job with a love life.