The most outstanding, performance this season Lakeside has to have been Roger Larson in “Visiting Mr. Green,” a play by Jeff Baron produced by My, My, How Nice Productions.
We could have been in New York at a fabulous $200 dollar a night off Broadway theatre. That is how it felt at the Bravo theatre. His portrayal of an embittered, 86-year-old Jewish widower was a wonder to behold. From the moment he shuffled onstage to answer the front-door knock that opens the play he didn’t miss a beat. Every nuance, every tiny shake of his elderly hands were all in character. Not a moment was forced. True, honest unsentimental acting of this caliber is usually only encountered in New York, LA or Toronto but here in a role that reveals his true abilities as a performer we have Roger Larson creating a character and performance for us that goes beyond and into the world of the consummate professional. He made this small-minded old man as disagreeable as the author intended. And the real trick is, he made it look easy. Larson’s mood swings were both delicately suggested and disarmingly real. Score one for bravura performances, senior division.
“Visiting Mr. Green” is an endearing play about the accidental friendship between an old Jewish man and a young Jewish man, each with a secret. Under the capable direction of Jayme Littlejohn with consultation from Bernadette Jones, Jayme seems to wave her magic wand over Baron’s play and presto! It’s got significance.
We are in Green’s Upper West Side apartment, expertly designed by Dana Douin with some of the same dusty features from the dark Manhattan West Side flats of 100 other New York plays. Green, a retired dry cleaner, lives here amid the fading wallpaper and the brown grocery bags, an angry recluse cursing God for taking his wife, Yetta, two months earlier.
Into Green’s dyspeptic world barges Ross Gardiner played by Ken Yakiwchuk, a yuppie who shows up not because he wants to, but because he has to. Unbeknown to Green, a judge has ordered the younger man to visit the older one once a week as restitution for having almost hit him with his car. Instantly, the play’s dynamic is established. The comedy comes mostly in the form of brush-offs by Green of the younger man. This makes the enticing first act very comedic and moves us smoothly into the dramatic second act. Not only does Ross bring takeout from a kosher deli, but he cleans the apartment and offers to help Mr. Green to the lavatory. “Shall I go inside with you?” Ross asks after Green makes a move for the bathroom. “And do what?” the old man replies, deadpan.
Yakiwchuk, with his dark good looks and athletic bearing, has an earnest appeal as the unhappy young man who eventually becomes Green’s surrogate son. Playing the foil to Larson’s Mr. Green, Yakiwchuk handles it all with aplomb and finesse. Never allowing himself to fall into “acting” the part he draws the audience in to experience his innermost thoughts and feelings. It’s a spare, unfussy performance, as lacking in clutter as the apartment is filled with it. Yakiwchuk deftly handles Larson and guides him to the awareness that his lonely old age could have been something richer and far less empty. Mr. Green and Ross battle their way to friendship in a well-executed pas de deux, and the audience laughs appreciatively at the octogenarian’s irascibility and the younger man’s exasperation. It’s all exceedingly charming so if there is a remount of this production soon do not miss it. It is very likely that this play will have another life again with the Bravo theatre.
Acknowledgements to: Bernadette Jones, David Wharff, Roseann Wilshere, Lynda Derringer and Dona Hall, production manager Kathleen Neal, stage manager Diane Jones, props Gale Bildfell and Mary Anne Molinari, sound design Emma Bergh Apton, sound operation Kitt Vincent and Pierre Blackburn, lighting design Ricardo Perez, lighting operation Pierre Huot, costumes Leslie Yanko, dresser Glenda Brecher, construction chief Richard Bansbach, set construction Norm Whelpdale, Rick Bleir, and Alan Marsh.