“Cost of living indexes are meant to compare the expenses an average person can expect to incur to acquire food, shelter, transportation, energy, clothing, education, healthcare, childcare, and entertainment in different regions.” – Investopedia

The folks in Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living,” currently running at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, are not “average people” and they experience the cost of living differently than the typical financial markets assessments. It is true that John’s (a manipulative and needy Gregg Mozgala) cerebral palsy limits his mobility, but his wealth puts limits on none of the rest of life’s necessities rehearsed in the consumer price index. John is a Harvard graduate pursuing his PhD, living in a “well kempt and rich” apartment in Princeton. And because he has the money to “basically do anything he want except the things he can’t,” he is able hire Jess (a vulnerable yet strong-spirited Kara Young) as his first non-agency caregiver. When Jess asks, “What’s wrong with agencies,” John responds, “They don’t appreciate my lawsuits.” Jess needs the job John offers so much that she cannot read the danger in John’s reply.

Like John, Ani (a cautious, emotionally damaged, and resilient Katy Sullivan) has mobility issues. She is a quadriplegic living with the results of an “incomplete spinal cord injury.” Initially, Ani appears as a vivid memory to her estranged husband Eddie (a multilayered, multifaceted, and brooding David Zayas) who travels from his home in Bayonne, NJ to a “hipster” bar in Williamsburg, NY. Eddie thinks of her recent death at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. His memories are vivid, detailed, absent of gloom. Eddie is waiting to meet someone who contacted him from his deceased wife’s reassigned cell phone number. David Zayas’s performance here is stunning as is Martyna Majok’s rich trope-filled writing.

Her writing takes the audience on a journey into the past and present lives of the folks in her pathos-filled, character-driven narrative. The relationship between John and Jess unfolds with layers of exposition that are as revealing as they are puzzling. Jess reveals more of herself to John in response to his apparent interest in her beyond her role as his caregiver. John’s affection for Jess turns out to be duplicitous and revelatory of his manipulative personality. Eddie’s relationship with Ani unfolds in a series of flashbacks that end in the present at the Brooklyn bar. The scene in Ani’s accessible Jersey City apartment is the most touching scene in “Cost of Living.”

All four actors deliver authentic performances successfully exposing their characters’ conflicts in believable ways. One wishes some of the characters were more fully developed on stage; however, under Jo Bonney’s pitch perfect direction, the cast delivers enough to make Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living” a must see. Wilson Chin’s spare scenic design combined with Jeff Croiter’s somber lighting design provide exquisite portraits of human need and despair. Each of the play’s nine scenes echoes deeply with John’s paraphrase of the Bible’s message, “The shit that happens is not to be understood.”

At the center of every interaction between Majok’s characters is their need to be cared for and to care, their need to give and receive unconditional and non-judgmental love. Each character takes a different journey on that quest, and some achieve their goal better than others. Each actor grapples with what they “owe each other” and whether they can afford “not to care.” These are enduring questions the play challenges each audience member to grapple with.

The real cost of living requires commodities as rare in the present as they were when playwright Majok sent up her first warning flare in 2017. Those commodities are Intimacy, caring, agency, unconditional and non-judgmental love. The opportunity to reframe one’s understanding of the true cost of living ends on Sunday, November 6, 2022, when “Cost of Living” is scheduled to end its run. It would be better not to miss this challenging opportunity.