|
|
January 28, 2011
An emotional, funny journey
Visiting Mr. Green is one of Chutzpah’s first performances.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Most of us become set in our ways as we get older, and 86-year-old widower Mr. Green is no different – until an accident forces him to spend time with the young corporate executive who almost ran him over. Through the weekly visits that follow the court-ordered “punishment” of Ross Gardiner for reckless driving, Ross and Mr. Green get to know each other, and themselves. And theatre-goers will get to know them as well, when Jeff Baron’s play Visiting Mr. Green helps start this year’s Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz International Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts.
A Presentation House Theatre and Chutzpah! Festival co-production, Visiting Mr. Green co-stars David Adams, as the title character, and Nicolas Rhind, as Ross. When the Independent caught up with Adams, he was on a lunch break from rehearsal.
“We just finished doing a reading of it and it’s surprising to me how, after even a couple of days, how far we’ve come in terms of understanding the characters, understanding the relationship and finding some of the moments,” he said.
About Mr. Green, Adams explained, “Well, he’s quite a journey in the play. He starts out by being very typically curmudgeon-like. He’s an older man, he’s lost his wife, he’s not very happy and he has no idea who this person is who bursts into his apartment. Then, slowly, slowly, a relationship starts to happen and, gradually, the layers get peeled away from each other and they both reveal things about their lives, sometimes willingly, sometimes begrudgingly, and they start to develop a relationship that’s quite lovely.”
Adams spoke about the demands of the role, as only two actors carry the entire show. In this regard, the veteran actor said he got a boost of confidence a few years ago, when he did a one-man show at the Pacific Theatre called Jesus, My Boy, which Adams described as “the story of the Nativity told from kind of a Jewish perspective. It’s Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, reminiscing about what it was like to have a guy growing up as his son who had to figure out what was going on, and it was kind of funny but it’s just one person. I hadn’t done a one-person show in many years and it was great to know that I could, first of all, memorize all those lines and, secondarily, I could keep the audience interested for the full 95 minutes or whatever the play was, which is always a fear for any actor. Am I going to be good enough? Am I going to be interesting enough?”
With Mr. Green, Adams said, it’s a question of whether he will be believable as an 86-year-old man, when he himself is almost 30 years younger. As well, he continued, “Am I going to be believable as a New York Jew? Am I going to be believable as an Orthodox [Jew], as a guy who keeps kosher, even though I don’t keep kosher? Will people believe me? And, especially because we’re doing this show as part of the Chutzpah! Festival, I know that there will be a lot of people who will be looking over my shoulder going, ‘Hmm, let’s see what he’s going to do.’ That’s the neurosis of being an actor.
“But the nice thing is we’ve got a great script, it’s a really good script, and that’s become more and more obvious to me as we’ve worked on it the last few days, that it’s a good, solid script. It’s a lovely story and it’s very engaging. We did a reading for the staff here at Presentation House on the first day and they were very involved and very emotionally involved and that was lovely to feel, just because you go, well, at least what we’re doing is good, the premise is good.”
Adams is no stranger to playing Jewish roles, having portrayed Albert Einstein in Einstein’s Gift and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, among others – though not yet Tevye, a part that Adams has on his “bucket list.” So, Mr. Green is a good fit for him, he said, explaining that the hardest aspect will be to portray in a sincere and not-overly sentimental manner Mr. Green’s transition from being an almost completely mistrustful and cantankerous character to one who has moments of real vulnerability and emotion. At the beginning of the play, in addition to being depressed and disoriented from having lost his wife of almost 60 years, Mr. Green is also questioning his faith a little, said Adams.
“He doesn’t see the justice in the universe and because his daughter married a goy [non-Jew] 35 years ago, he’s written her out of his life; they’ve sat shivah, she doesn’t exist. That’s always a hard thing. It’s hard for me to understand that in a way because I have daughters of my own and I can’t imagine anything they would do that would make me want to cut them off. So, obviously, his faith and his culture are fundamental and very important to him and then that all comes out in the course of the play. He lets it slip at one point and that leads to a whole other thing.
“And then it’s interesting because the young man that comes into his house, at first, he thinks this is another goy, but it’s a secular Jew who doesn’t really know very much, so I’ve got to educate him a little bit, especially about what it means to keep kosher. There’s a lot in the play and I know that it’ll make demands on us physically and emotionally because there’s a lot of fairly heavy stuff that comes out, but it’s also very funny. Unwittingly, of course, Mr. Green says some pretty funny things.”
Adams said he’s excited about this play because there are so many levels on which to enjoy it. For example, he pointed out, “Yes, this play is about an Orthodox Jew in New York, but really there are similarities: he could be a fundamentalist Christian or he could be a staunch Muslim. I think it’s about the rigidity that people grow up with that you hang on to because it creates a framework that you can look at life in an orderly fashion, and then something comes along that shakes that all up and it’s how people respond to that. Are you willing to change a little bit? Are you willing to open yourself up a little bit? Are you willing to reexamine where you’ve been? I think that ... people of all faiths and cultures will be able to understand this character because you know this kind of man.
“I think that the joy of this play comes from the fact that he thinks he knows where things are at, but it takes a young guy to come along and open him up a little bit; reluctantly, yes, but he does open up his heart, he opens up about a lot of things. So there’s real optimism and joy in the piece, but there’s also a real celebration of the fact that, because of where he comes from, because his Jewishness is so important to him, that he hangs on to that ... but he still has to have that ability to look at things and be empathetic to other people and reexamine himself every once in a while.”
Visiting Mr. Green starts with a preview Feb. 10, 8 p.m., and runs Feb. 11-27, at various times, at Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield Ave., in North Vancouver. Tickets are $25 (plus HST and service charge) and can be purchased at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, Presentation House, phtheatre.org and 604-990-3474. For information on the many other Chutzpah! Festival performances – theatre, dance and music – visit chutzpahfestival.com.
^TOP
|
|
