There’s an aspirational version of what it looks like to care for an ailing, aging family member. Selflessly tending to their needs, soaking up their last days, reconciling lingering differences.
Kenneth Lonergan’s “The Waverly Gallery,” which opened last week at Shaker Bridge Theatre in White River Junction, cuts through that sanitized fantasy, delivering a more realistic portrait of caregiving: a messy, exasperating labor of love.
Inspired by Lonergan’s experience watching the decline of his grandmother, “The Waverly Gallery” is a vital story given how many people find themselves caring for an aging parent or grandparent, and the cast in Saturday’s performance brought a vivacity and sensitivity to their characters that bolstered an already striking play.
The ailing family member in Lonergan’s show is Gladys Green, a verbose former lawyer who runs a sleepy gallery in Greenwich Village.
Her gallery, with its prosaic landscapes and still lifes of fruit, is more than a pet project for Green played by the brilliant Marina Re, it’s also a lifeline to maintaining a sense of structure and normalcy as her mind deteriorates.
The gallery is also a godsend for Green’s family, “liberal, Upper West Side, atheistic, Jewish intellectuals,” as her grandson Daniel Reed, a speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency, calls them. It’s a safe place for her to be during the day where they don’t have to humor her ramblings, especially after the scrappy artist Don Bowman (Ernest Fleischer) moves in to the gallery and can keep her company.
As much as the family might empathize with Green, it’s clear they also find her more than a little annoying.
The play, directed by Shaker Bridge’s founder Bill Coons, begins with her chatting Reed’s ear off, one topic bleeding into the next. He patiently fiddles with her hearing aid and reminds her that he no longer works at the newspaper when she asks about his job, but we can see his frustration mounting.
That scene shows the first signs of tension that will continue to build as Green’s condition worsens — the uncomfortable duality of loving a family member and also finding that their deteriorating health and the care they require are frustrating and overwhelming.
We see this with Reed, played by Isaac Hickox-Young, who takes up the task of narrating the inflection points of Green’s declining health.
“I guess we all wanted to get out of it,” he said to the audience. Hickox-Young, who performed in Shaker Bridge’s “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley,” plays Reed as gentle and earnest, a young person trying to do the right thing, but who’s in over his head.
Re and Celeste Ciulla, a returning actor to Shaker Bridge who plays Ellen Fine, Reed’s mother and Green’s daughter, also gave standout performances at Saturday’s show. I was impressed by the nuance Re brought to Green, who was funny and at times tragic without ever veering into caricature. Impressed, but not surprised after watching Re’s compassionate performance as the cantankerous Abby Binder in Shaker Bridge’s “Ripcord” two years ago.
Ciulla’s performance contained similar depth. While Reed tries to be gentle, his mother is more explosive. It’s clear that her relationship with Green has always been fraught, even before she got sick.
“We’re going to have to move her in here, and then I’m going to slit my wrists!” Fine exclaims early on, referring to the apartment she shares with her husband, Howard Fine (Claude Choukrane). At first I wondered if Fine really hated Green, but as the play went on it became clear that her irritation was covering up a mountain of pain and sadness.
Watching Ciulla’s performance was a welcome reminder that grief can take many forms, and not always palatable ones.
If there’s one critique for the play, it’s that I would have liked to learn more about how Green’s family paid for her care. Ellen Fine mentions to Reed late in the show that they could rent out Green’s apartment as an office to help cover round-the-clock caregivers, but beyond that there’s little mention of money, which struck me as an oversight given how burdensome paying for dementia care often is.
I also was a little puzzled by how Bowman, the struggling artist, squared with the rest of the family and Green’s eroding health. He seemed the most oblivious to her condition out of everyone, often chalking up her forgetfulness to hearing loss. While the family is in crisis, he remains largely unfazed. But he’s also a broke artist trying to make ends meet in New York, so perhaps he simply has other concerns on his mind, just like Green’s family, who don’t seem that interested in his struggles either.
Bowman does offer a meaningful comment, however, while describing the process behind one of his paintings.
“I tried really hard to get in all the details, because, well that’s what you remember when you think about something,” he said.
Green and her family are fighting to hold onto the details, too. Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand, in the end, but it’s the best they can do.
Shaker Bridge Theatre’s production of “The Waverly Gallery” runs through May 24 at Briggs Opera House in White River Junction. For tickets ($38-$45 for adults; $25 for those under age 35) go to shakerbridgetheatre.org or call 802-281-6848.
