"THE OLD MAN’S FRIEND" at Victory Gardens Theater
BY LUCIA MAURO
On the surface, James Sherman’s latest bittersweet comedy, "The Old Man’s Friend," appears a familiar heart-tugging story of a family coping with the emotional drain caused by an elderly relative’s illness. But look closer, and the playwright – whose work is receiving its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater – seems to be more enraptured with "clever" word plays and formulaic ebbs and flows of moods than an honest or fortifying tale of forgiveness.
The action centers on Susan Kaufman, a successful classical vocalist, who is faced with the imminent death of her aging father. Or so she thinks. Diagnosed with cancer, her dad -- Len Kaufman – is given about six months to live. And, although, a long-standing grudge over money and her voice training has kept her estranged from her baseball-addicted father, Susan agrees to take him into the upper middle-class home she shares with her minutiae-loving professor husband, Jeffrey Silverman, and their precocious 12-year-old son Daniel. Jeffrey’s rather egocentric brother Bob -- a prominent doctor -- serves as a family consultant and playful antagonist to Jeffrey’s off-kilter recollections of their childhood.
The play takes an odd and woefully contrived detour when Susan – suffering from exhaustion – discovers that she might have a fatal illness of her own. Yet, while most of the first act is spent on Susan running herself ragged and sacrificing her opera career, her father’s oblivious behavior does not support her drama-queen tantrums. Susan’s undoing comes across as incredibly false since all her father does is watch baseball on TV. At no point does he ever appear to be on his last leg. Not a bedpan or late-night medical emergency in sight. Another twist is that Len lives beyond his projected death sentence – stressing the irony of how the caregiver can easily end up in worse shape than the patient.
But Sherman’s structure is too clunky and self-conscious to make this traumatic tale believable. A ridiculous flashback scene in which we discover the embarrassing misunderstanding that led to Susan’s and Len’s estrangement (it has to do with the baseball term "bunt" rhyming with an obscene reference to a woman’s private parts) only exacerbates the play’s shallowness.
Too many gaping holes create a frustrating theater experience. It’s unclear why Len bonds with Daniel – and ends up revealing a not-so-intriguing World War II secret during the boy’s simplistic "interviewing" assignment from school. Susan’s neurotic husband Jeffrey is an ineffectual presence and merely a straight man to his brother Bob’s swaggeringly witty instigations.
Most disappointing, Sherman never addresses why Len spends his life glued to the television set. We get snippets of his painful divorce but no real understanding of his insensitive behavior. Then the playwright thinks he can turn Len into a hero by having him drag himself to Susan’s hospital bed and insist on paying for her medical treatment. It’s also hard to believe that Susan had no idea her father served in World War II. And even when she finds out, his story is not particularly enlightening.
Sherman then opts for a no-brainer tearjerker ending: Susan and Len bond over a televised performance of "La Traviata’s" Violetta singing her famed death-bed aria, "Addio." This song alone has the power to reduce the most stoic listeners to weeping mush. Put it at the end of a show about dying – no matter how misguided the play might be – and you’re bound to get the whole audience to wail on cue.
Director Dennis Zacek – a longtime champion of Sherman’s dramatic comedies rooted in the contemporary Jewish-American experience – has certainly assembled a top-notch cast. Unfortunately, the stilted nature of Sherman’s script vastly limits their range. For example, the exquisite Lily Shaw as Susan is saddled with an undeveloped role that requires excessive fretting. The first-act dining-room scene in which her character nearly suffers an unprovoked nervous breakdown has Shaw fidgeting and fumbling for what seems like an eternity. The script hems her in – as it does the excellent Larry Neumann, Jr., who gives the emasculated Jeffrey integrity by sheer virtue of his well-paced craft.
Bernie Landis, a master of flawless timing, does his best to make Len more than a one-note baseball joke. Jacob Zachar turns in a confident performance as the young Daniel. But the cast, including Eric Kramer in the cliched role of playboy-doctor Bob, have been forced to really "act" rather than "be" on stage.
Like Sherman’s groaner of a script (a joke about the "Frisbeetarian" religion and one’s soul getting stuck on the roof ranks as perhaps the worst joke in theater history, save for the "bunt" one), the production suffers from laborious and monotonous pacing. It isn’t until the final scene – as manipulative as it may be – that we finally catch a glimpse of genuine humanity emerging from Susan’s and Len’s unspoken resentment.•
"The Old Man’s Friend" runs through July 7 at Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln. Tickets: $28-$33. Call 773-871-3000 or log onto www.victorygardens.org.
