January 2020
Harry
Townsend’s Last Stand by George Eastman is a play that has been
in the ether for awhile. Its author, almost 75,
originally wrote it as a short story that won 2008 first prize in the annual
contest run by Hampshire Life Magazine,
a component of the Daily Hampshire
Gazette in Massachusetts. Circumstance allowed him to re-imagine it as a
play that would actually see regional production, and under the title Happy Hour, it played several regional
venues in a production starring Love
Boat/Mary Tyler Moore veteran Gavin MacLeod and a Los Angeles actor named John
Hawkinson.
The transition that brings the play,
reverting to the short story’s better, more appropriate title, to New York City Center‘s Stage II I don’t know, but it does
indeed have the feel of what, for lack of a better expression, I’ll call a
“local” play. Just as Bruce Graham’s plays always seem like they’re
transplanted from his native Philadelphia (which they are), Harry Townsend’s Last Stand seems almost
a shy, but welcome visitor; it didn’t really have to come to New York City, but you’re glad it did. I think part
of this may stem from its being a play whose audience may skew quite a bit
older than the norm.
That’s because it’s a very human
comedy about a subject all-too-familiar to people of (and past) a certain age:
the point in life where you realize that, one way or another, you must be the
guardian, even the parent, to your parents—in the case of the play, the
surviving parent of the title, the father (Len
Cariou). Or, from the reverse angle, the point in
life where, as a parent, you realize you have to cede a certain degree of
control and independence to the offspring with objectivity about your physical
and mental health that you no longer have—in the case of the play, son Alan (Craig Bierko).
Despite the essential discomfort of
the situation, HTLS is a somewhat
comfortable play, because while Harry has certainly passed the point at which
he should be alone in the house in which he lived with his wife and raised a
family—indeed, has gone past the point where circumstances are feasible for his
staying there—Harry is himself not
suffering from dementia or the encroachment of severe physical debilitation; he
is “just” an old man who has crossed the border where the issue is inescapable.
And Alan is the good, responsible son.
What I found fascinating about the
play is how long it keeps actual conflict at bay. You know something’s up, and some of it’s
implicit, but the big issue is held off while Alan and Harry dance around each
other, reminiscing, playing out old father/son battles and teasing what’s
really on the table to the surface. It’s a little like good three-camera sitcom
writing. And director Karen Carpenter has
enabled the balance, keeping her work, quite correctly, invisible.
Cariou and
Bierko are a fun tag team to watch, and what makes
the play especially touching in moments is the genuineness with which they
respond to each other as real life reflects the material. At the early
performance I attended, Cariou was still not immediately
on point with all of his lines; he knew them,
but at times there was a notable hiccup while he went reaching into his recall
for it…and of course, he could incorporate that into Harry’s own struggle (and
did)…and Bierko’s response to it, as the younger
colleague listening intently, poised to help the revered veteran if the need
came (it never did) was likewise a component of his portrayal. I’d bet that by now, the little blips have been
smoothed over, and what they yielded
in terms of interplay has found its way into the codified byplay.
Anyway, it’s a sweet play that
deserves a longer life in NYC, should have a thriving regional one, and that
probably isn’t bound by ethnicity. Becoming parent to your parents is as multi-cultural
as universal…
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