STAGE WEST: "The Waverly Gallery" from Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company

Deborah Gilmour Smyth and Tom Zohar (with William Huffaker in the background) in "The Waverly Gallery." Photo by Michael Makie

            I remember a few years ago I was showing one of the classes I teach at San Diego State a documentary about little robot seals being used in senior-care homes to comfort anxious and disoriented residents. When the film had concluded and the lights in the classroom went up, one of my students said aloud: “Oh my God, I don’t want to get old!”
            It made me wonder on my way out of the Tenth Avenue Arts Center after opening night of Backyard Renaissance’s “The Waverly Gallery” how many people in that audience were thinking during – and afterward – the same thing that student said out loud.
            Gladys Green, the protagonist of Kenneth Lonergan’s play, doesn’t want to hear that it’s terrible getting old, which in so many words her daughter’s husband Howard bluntly tells her. He apologizes for his tactlessness, but who can blame Gladys for snapping? NO ONE wants to hear it.
            One might suspect, given the premise of “The Waverly Gallery” – a small but tight New York family coping with the heart-breaking, painful slipping of their matriarch into the throes of Alzheimer’s – would be a very difficult watch, and it is, but not completely. Lonergan, who’s demonstrated in his thoughtful film scripts such as for “You Can Count On Me” and “Manchester By the Sea" a gift for dramatizing family crises with heart and hope, wrings a good deal of humor out of the story of Gladys Green and her family. It’s not until the last 10 minutes or so that the goings are so upsetting that all one can do is sit, frozen.
            Initially, it is jarring to hear an audience laughing as Gladys (Deborah Gilmour Smyth, brilliant) gabs endlessly, forgets things left and right, repeats herself and tries to over-feed the family’s dog. But as Gladys deteriorates, the laughter in the house is less and less.
            How many thousands (maybe more?) families in America alone are dealing with this terrible predicament: an elder parent or grandparent whose dementia and general health is becoming worse and worse, leaving the family with the choice of putting them “in a home,” provided they could afford the cost of doing so, or, as Gladys’ daughter, Ellen (Katie MacNichol), her husband Howard (Alexander Ameen) and grandson Daniel (Tom Zohar) do, try to care for that elder person themselves?
            In the case of “The Waverly Gallery” as it is for many who in later life suffer from Alzheimer’s, Gladys Green once had a whole life. In younger years she was a successful lawyer and then the proprietor of an art gallery in Greenwich Village. That gallery, where the elder Gladys is now spending most of her time, is scarcely frequented, but it is her lifeline, her best friend.
            The secondary narrative of the play is the arrival at Gladys’ gallery of a budding young artist from Boston, Don Bowman (William Huffaker), whose work we can assume is no great shakes, but Gladys likes him and likes the company. She not only gives him her walls to display his art but a place to live in an unseen back room.
            But the fates are cruel and inevitable. Not only is Gladys’ mental state worsening and her delusions increasing, but the landlord of the gallery space informs the family that he intends to evict Gladys so that he can build a café adjunct to his hotel.
            These circumstances, all of them, are dire and urgent, but “The Waverly Gallery” is equally focused – no, more so – on the relationships of this emotionally embattled family. Grandson Daniel (the play’s narrator) lives in the same building that Gladys does, and he absorbs most of the trauma from his grandmother’s decline. Yet he loves her and is patient until he can’t be patient anymore. The onstage dynamic between Gilmour Smyth and Zohar, who’s never been better, is lovely and wrenching.
            Gladys’ daughter Ellen is losing her inner war with patience and is seemingly on the verge of a breakdown, yet MacNichol exudes the character’s inner strength that somehow keeps Ellen together.
            Ameen’s Howard cares but just can’t help his intermittent lack of diplomacy. I’m sure there are Howards everywhere in a family fraught like this one who does the best he can without being able to wholly get in touch with his feelings.
            The Don Bowman character is sweet and naïve at first, though shows himself to be self-involved and less than understanding of the family’s feelings. Really good Boston accent, by the way, Mr. Huffaker.
            Backyard’s production is directed by Francis Gercke, who co-directed (and performed in) a staging of “The Waverly Gallery” 20 years ago. This “Waverly” is one of Gercke’s finest directing efforts. He’s allowing his stellar cast to tap into every complex feeling and thought instilled in these richly realized Lonergan characters.
            For Gilmour Smyth, this makes three first-rate performances in a row for Backyard Renaissance: as Violet in “August: Osage County” in 2023, as Mag Folan in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” last year, and now “The Waverly Gallery.” In each case I marveled at how she could give all to these incredibly demanding roles performance after performance. Fortunately for theatergoers, she sure can.
            “The Waverly Gallery” runs through Dec. 6 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown.