This is one of those plays that I went to see in significant part because I had a bunch of friends in it. True, they are friends who are also good actors. Or, in one case, the director.
In this case, the play itself sounded interesting as well. There are no end of plays about young lovers, or kings. But not too many are about ordinary people ravaged by age, frailty, and dementia.
First, though, a bit about the author. I suppose I was vaguely aware of Tina Howe in the back of my mind, but I had never seen one of her plays. They have won or been shortlisted for a number of awards, and a few of the names are fairly familiar, although, oddly enough, not Chasing Manet. She also taught and served on the Dramatists Guild.
I did a bit of reading about her, and discovered some facts of interest. She came from a family of notable writers. Her grandfather, Mark Antony Howe, won a Pulitzer for biography in 1925, and wrote over 50 books. With a name like that, I guess. Her uncle, Mark DeWolfe Howe, clerked for Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. - and later wrote his biography, a book I heard about in law school. Her father Quincy Howe wrote for television and radio news for CBS and ABC, and also wrote a three volume work on history. So quite a pedigree.
Also of interest is the fact that she was named Mabel, but referred to as Tina since childhood. She changed her name legally when she turned eighteen.
One thing I did not know about her was that she was married to historian and writer Norman Levy. And this wasn’t a brief marriage - it lasted over 60 years until his death soon before hers.
So, about the play itself.
What can you say to describe a play that is both hilarious and disturbingly real to life? Howe wrote the play fairly late in life, and presumably after life experience with aging relatives. And it shows. The portrayals of nursing home residents are so spot-on.
Both my wife and I have worked with seniors our entire careers. She as a nurse, and me as an attorney. Dementia is our bread and butter, so to speak. For me, the life progress from retirement to frailty to dementia - and often to institutionalization - is where much of my practice lies. I help clients plan their estates, but also assist in applying for Medicaid benefits for nursing home care, and finding other placement options when people are no longer able to live safely on their own.
In a sense, the play hit way too close to home. (And that’s before you get into the various people in my life who are on that continuum of end of life and functionality - it’s heartbreaking.)
Howe, though, manages to make all of this incredibly humorous, even if you feel icky for laughing. She doesn’t do it through humor that punches down either. There is a gentle satire of the aging, but much more pointed satire of how younger, healthier people react to aging and dementia.
None of us plan to end our lives in a nursing home. Indeed, none of us really plan to get old and frail and lose our faculties and memories. And none of us really plan to die, even though we know we will.
So this play is a hard look at our own denialism, our own whistling past the ol’ nursing home on the way to the grave.
The story itself centers around two elderly residents of the Mount Airy Nursing Home. Cathy is the rare (and unfortunate) resident whose brain still works well, but who has physical issues that prevent her from safely living alone. She has gone legally blind, and, since she was a professional painter before that, this loss leaves her depressed and angry.
Her roommate, Rennie, has progressively lost touch with reality after the death of her husband, who she still thinks is alive. She talks to him, argues with him, and complains to him. This drives Cathy nuts, until she realizes that Rennie has just enough brains and chutzpah to be a co-conspirator in an escape attempt.
And why not dream big? So they plan an escape to Paris, to see Cathy’s favorite Manet painting.
Along the way, there are great scenes involving Rennie’s eccentric large family, Cathy’s uptight and frustrated son (the two of them are pretty horrible to each other - and it is clearly a lifelong thing…), and the other residents of the nursing home.
Will they or won’t they succeed? Will Cathy implode from excessive sarcasm? Will Rennie give away the plot?
I very much enjoyed this production. Cathy Henry, my wife’s knitting guild friend, who taught drama for decades in local high schools, was the director, and I really think she has done an outstanding job on every play she has directed. In this case, there was a coherent vision, memorable characters made real by the actors, and intriguing decisions about staging.
This is the kind of play that can’t just be played straight off the page. The characters don’t play themselves - they have to be brought to life in every detail - tone of voice, gesture, pacing, body language, emotion. Getting these real and true to life is a challenge, and the actors in this case really stepped up.
First, Laurie Howlett as Cathy was superb. She has been in a lot of local productions, although the one role I really remember was as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz several years ago. In this one, she was furious, conniving, depressed, and always owned the scene.
Opposite her was Julie Gaines, as Rennie. Regular readers of this blog will know that Julie is in everything, and is excellent in everything. This was no exception. Although it was startling to see her in the particular grey wig this time, it was even more startling to see her bend her face perfectly to get the character right. The childish surprise and sweetness that certain people with dementia display as they partly revert to the past was as good as it could be. She was the character.
The supporting cast, in a variety of roles, larger and smaller, was great. I will particularly note a few friends. Josh Evans, as Cathy’s son Royal, brought that particular frustration of being a browbeaten adult child, trying to be a good son, but endlessly frustrated. He clearly knows he would go insane in a handbasket if he tried to take his mother home. And she would hate it just as much as she does the nursing home. So, more often than not, everything ends badly.
Sofia Reyes as Iris didn’t get a lot of spoken lines, but she (along with another actor) were often on stage in the background, and needed to kill time.
Let me explain this one: the costume changes are written in a way that leaves some time gaps, particularly for a low-budget community theater that depends on volunteers. Enough money can get you faster changes, but…
So, the solution was that various residents, usually including Iris, on stage in the “hall” part of the home. Without much spoken, they had to hold interest with gesture. And this is where Sofia really did some fine work. The character lives in her own world much of the time, and we got to see that through the gestures and facial expressions during these silences. Watching this was fascinating.
I will also express my appreciation for the set, which was very simple and sparse - in part so that the characters could maneuver their wheelchairs around - harder than it looks. And also, because of the institutional vibe of nursing homes, where utility matters more than style.
A particularly lovely touch was the “wallpaper,” vaguely impressionist, and lovingly painted under the direction of Roger Upton, who claims to have retired from stage and costume design, but turns out to be a bald-faced liar.
I know I am missing things I wanted to mention, but I’ll remember them tomorrow or something. In any case, it was a good production, and a thoughtful look at the ends of our lives.
Unfortunately, this show has run its course - I caught the last weekend. But there will be more. Our local theater scene has a lot going on. You can check out what is coming up next at Bakersfield Community Theater on their website, or follow them on your preferred social media.
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