If any sort of reality show were to come out of this pandemic, a beautiful Colonial house with a charming front porch on Pearl Street in Mystic would appear to be the perfect setting.

After all, the talent is there. It's the home of Ruth Crocker, the well-known local author and former nursing home owner whose son, the Broadway, film and television actor Noah Bean, fled New York nearly two months ago with wife and actress Lyndsy Fonseca and 2-year-old daughter Greta to return home to Mystic. Following close behind were the couple's dear friends, Chris Thorn and Megan Bartle, refugees from Brooklyn, who arrived a few days later toting their own TV- and stage-acting pedigrees to ride out the coronavirus.

Closing out the cast on Pearl Street is Jerry Slack, Crocker's fourth husband, whom she met half a century ago in a Boston commune where she also met Noah's dad. They reconnected a couple years ago and were just married in January.

"My mother is one of the greatest hosts of all time ... Not much fazes her when it comes to being hospitable," Bean said in an email. "But this was obviously something different — filling up her house for an unknown length of time with very uncertain circumstances."

Still, the six adults have managed a nice equilibrium, built around Greta's nap schedule. Fonseca spends two hours teaching preschool lessons in the mornings, then it's off for "daddy adventure time" and some outdoor fun, Bean reported. Lunch is a group effort, and the adults take turns looking after Greta or spending time on yoga, writing, walking, cleaning, yard work, bike riding and other activities.

"It's actually been pretty productive and ... a huge relief to have so much help with the kid," Bean said.

Bean, who lives in Los Angeles, had just started shooting a new miniseries for Apple TV in upstate New York when the coronavirus shut down everything.

"I understood pretty quickly that it didn't make any sense to be in New York City," Bean said.

Bean asked his mom to pick them up rather than risk a flight back to Los Angeles, and she was happy to do it.

"It didn't surprise me that she immediately said yes to all of us crashing with her, but it did reaffirm for me how limitless is her warmth and generosity," Bean said.

It hasn't been all fun and relaxation. Bean has found time to make a recording for The Old Globe theater in San Diego for its Act Breaks series, and he shot a film conceived and performed by best friend Thorn for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.

Oh, and he also conducted a wedding last Sunday, right in front of that handsome, comfy house with the big front porch on Pearl Street. It was a wedding that in any other time would have been held about three weeks later at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, amid all the flowers and sculptures, with all the guests on both sides of the family arriving in handsome tuxes and frilly dresses from Maine to Minnesota to mingle, drink to excess and tell off-color jokes.

Instead, the simple half-hour wedding of Chris Thorn and Megan Bartle, punctuated by the poetry of Wendell Berry and Shakespeare, played out in front of a handful of guests scattered on the sidewalk, with a few other curious passersby keeping their social distance, while a phone camera mounted on a tripod live-streamed the ceremony to family and friends spread across the United States.

Bean, who graduated from Pine Point School in Stonington and the Williams School in New London, joked that his friend Chris, whom he'd known since they attended Boston University together, was used to playing to small houses.

"Megan and Chris are grateful to be with dear friends in this beautiful place, but they are deeply saddened to be separated from their families during this time," Bean said, following the wedding script.

Thorn and Bartle had followed their own escape route out of New York City. The bar where they worked together in between acting gigs had closed down suddenly, so Chris got on his bicycle and pedaled from Brooklyn to LaGuardia Airport to rent a car, arriving in Mystic on March 16.

"Theaters suddenly started to shut down and there started to be an atmosphere of panic in Brooklyn," Crocker said in an email. "At the Trader Joe's where they shopped, the shelves were almost empty and riding the subway was no longer an option."

A month or so later, with the pandemic showing no sign of easing, quarantine dinner chatter one night in Mystic turned to the May 24 wedding that Chris and Megan had been forced to cancel. Megan mentioned that she hadn't actually found anything to wear anyway, and Crocker at that moment suddenly recalled a beautiful dress she had worn only once years ago that she hadn't been able to part with.

"Megan tried it on and it was so perfect that it seemed to seal the idea that we could have a wedding," Crocker said. "No one else saw the dress except for me, Megan and Lyndsy until the wedding day so we were able to have one of the magic moments that are fun in a traditional wedding."

Crocker also managed to find a handmade recital dress she wore seven decades ago during a violin recital at the age of 4, which became granddaughter Greta's flower girl costume. After the wedding, Greta ditched the dress to check Megan's heartbeat with a stethoscope from her children's doctor kit, and the family partied the night away — unable to invite any of their guests to join them inside.

"The wedding ... was a bit like the magic of watching a play come together in a workshop," Crocker said. "There was an atmosphere of faith that this was going to work — no matter what."

Noah and Chris worked on creating a ceremony, and since Chris had conducted Noah and Lyndsy's wedding in Mystic four years earlier, Noah decided to return the favor. Still, they needed a justice of the peace to make it all official, so they asked an old family friend and neighbor, Sully Ahamed, to do the honor from the safe distance of the sidewalk.

The wedding certainly served as a bit of a distraction from the seemingly interminable periods of being cooped up at home with little to do.

As Chris said in an email, "The whole thing feels like a Chekhov play. There's a lot of anticipation, anxiety about the future, joy, boredom ... a lot of human emotion squeezed into one house within the same group of people."

To spice things up, the actors enjoy reading through plays, including new shorts by Noah, and have a regular cocktail hour at 5 p.m., with Chris serving as bartender.

"Mostly it's just lots of good conversation," Chris said in an email.

Before New York went into lockdown mode, Chris and Megan had just finished a show at Lincoln Center, and Chris had just begun rehearsals for a "King's Speech" tour stop at the Hartford Stage.

"The career has always come with a certain amount of uncertainty so that softens the blow a bit," Chris said of the shows put on hold. "But it is hard. Hard to imagine how live theater will come back but we are certain that it will."

Chris and Megan met seven years ago while on tour performing "Of Mice and Men" and "As You Like It" with The Acting Company based in New York City.

"We both liked exploring the cities in which we stayed," Chris said. "You know, back when there were restaurants and bars."

He eventually proposed at Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Megan's favorite place in the world.

"It was a total surprise," Chris said. "Megan cried and said 'yes!'"

Bean said the wedding came together in about two weeks once the couple decided they had everything they needed right on Pearl Street, including a beautiful setting, foraged flowers and a homemade cake baked in heart-shaped pans.

"This wedding shines a wonderful light over this strange and uncertain time for all of us," Bean said, "and it will hold a special spot in our hearts and memories forever."

Crocker, who had anticipated a spring party to celebrate her own recent wedding, said helping create a special moment for Chris and Megan had regenerated her own creative spirit.

"It feels like a wonderful circle of life," she said.

l.howard@theday.com