The Waverly Gallery
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Cititour.com Review
With the American population increasingly living longer than ever before, it’s more-than-likely than many theatergoers have some sort of personal experience with a relative or friend experiencing dementia. That may be one reason the timing of the Broadway production of Kenneth Lonergan’s “The Waverly Gallery,” now at the Golden Theatre 18 years after its debut Off-Broadway, seems so right.
Or perhaps Lonergan – and the rest of the world – were just waiting for the legendary Elaine May to “age into” the role of Gladys Green, the 80-something art gallery owner whose already tenuous grip on reality gets looser (and scarier) over the course of this two-act dramedy. Using her peerless comic timing as well as her finely honed dramatic chops, May (still remarkable at age 86) creates an indelible portrait of a woman whose once-nimble mind eventually comes apart at the seams and breaks into tiny fragments that can never be sewn back together.
Lonergan, one our sharpest playwrights, is well aware of the dangers of making this subject matter too maudlin or melodramatic, so the script – especially the first half – is liberally peppered with humor. However, I wasn’t always convinced that Lonergan, director Lila Neugebauer and a top-notch cast always successfully skirted the very fine line of laughing at an absurd (if deeply human) situation or laughing at Gladys, who repeats the same inane question over and over and has little short-term memory.
From the play’s beginning, Gladys’ failure to understand her situation and its effects on others fully exasperates her three closest family members: her doctor-daughter Ellen (a very fine if somewhat underused Joan Allen), Ellen’s loving second husband Howard (Tony-winning director David Cromer in a welcome return to acting), and her grandson Daniel (Lucas Hedges, quite effective when acting alongside the cast, especially May, but rather too flat in his dual role as the show’s narrator). What little patience exists (and which also somewhat evaporates by the end) belongs to Don, a naïve New England artist whom Gladys takes under her wing (played with much-needed sincerity by Michael Cera).
Still, for its verisimilitude, “The Waverly Gallery” adds little to the conversation about how to deal with dementia patients and often suffers from the same kind of repetitiveness that can be found in Gladys’ conversations. I suspect that may be a deliberate choice on Lonergan’s part, but I don’t think it’s the most effective one.
To that end, Neugebarger and her creative team – most notably the brilliant set designer David Zinn (effortlessly given us finely-detailed multiple locations) and projection designer Tal Yarden (who sends images of Greenwich Village’s past onto a brick wall that is used to disguise the many scene changes) – seem aware of this issue and work hard to give the show some extra visual appeal.
Yet, perhaps all the play really needs to succeed in Elaine May on the stage. Her performance is, pardon the pun, truly a work of art.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://thewaverlygalleryonbroadway.com
Cast
Elaine May, Michael Cera, Lucas Hedges, Joan Allen, David Cromer
Open/Close Dates
Opening 10/25/2018
Closing 1/27/2019
Preview Open/ Preview Close Dates
Preview Opening 9/25/2018
Closing Open-ended
Box Office
212-239-6200
Theatre Info
John Golden Theatre
252 West 45th Street
New York, NY 10036
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