Elaine May is the star of The Waverly Gallery, Kenneth Lonergan’s memory play based on his grandmother’s dementia. Gladys Green lives in Greenwich Village and operates an art gallery in a neighborhood where everything is past its prime. Her grandson lives in the apartment next door. Daniel Reed (Lucas Hedges) is the narrator, occasionally breaking out of the play to speak with the audience about his grandmother’s decline and its impact on him and his family. Written in 2000, this play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Dementia is certainly a major illness impacting the lives of so many people, including families that I know. At the time of its writing, this play may have been revelatory in its exploration of this woman and the fearsome descent into a frightening place of confusion and despair. In this version, I found the proceedings extremely slow. Director Lila Neugebauer paces this piece deliberately with long scene changes. The images projected seem to showcase scenes from a world when life was being lived to the fullest. The speeches from the grandson are thoughtful but oddly clinical.
The words in this play are often clever but nothing really happens. There is a side story about an artist (Michael Cera) showing his work in her gallery that was diverting but overlong. The core of the problem for me was the fact that I only felt emotion for Gladys. I left the theater wondering if Ms. May’s performance was so strong that it lifted the play into something more meaningful. I found the rest of this talented ensemble too actorly and stiff.
Frankly, I am surprised that The Waverly Gallery did not speak to me having witnessed (and still witnessing) levels of dementia being dealt with in families I know. I’ve absorbed gut wrenching stories like the novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova and its depiction of a woman’s sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Why could I not connect with the material here? Is it the play, perhaps not deep enough anymore with this terrain having been explored more thoroughly in the last twenty years? Was it the direction which plodded along hurting a thinly plotted story? Was it the actors who didn’t seem to connect me to their inner feelings other than superficially? What I do know is that Elaine May’s performance was an incredible combination of understated yet big, and undeniably magnetic.