Len Cariou and Craig Bierko photos by
Maria Baranova
Harry Townsend’s Last Stand
by Ron Cohen
Father-son
relationships in plays can be brutal. So, it’s quite refreshing to witness a
dad and son who really like each other, enjoy each other’s company, as do Harry
and Alan in George Eastman’s modest but affecting two-hander, Harry
Townsend’s Last Stand.
It also helps
that the two are brought vibrantly to life in a pair of wonderfully calibrated,
mutually appreciative performances by Len Cariou as the old man Harry and Craig
Bierko as offspring Alan, while Karen Carpenter’s perceptive direction gets all
the dramatic mileage there is – and maybe even a bit more – out of Eastman’s
deftly constructed script, patently balancing laughs against tugs at the
heartstrings.
Alan, a
successful real estate salesman in California, has come for a weekend visit
with the widower Harry at the family lakefront homestead in Vermont. It’s there
that Harry lives alone, but is tended to daily by his daughter, Sarah, who
lives nearby with her husband, Charlie.
On this
particular weekend, Sarah and Charlie have gone off for a weekend in New York,
and Alan has come in Sarah’s stead. He also has a mission -- or two – in mind.
Harry – once a popular local radio personality and sparkplug for the lakefront
community – is now in eighties and feeling the forgetfulness and frailties of
age. There’s the coffee pot stowed in the oven, the arm that got burnt on the
stove and the tendency to fall a lot. Alan wants Harry to get a walker instead
of the cane he uses, but it’s something Harry quickly dismisses as
“scaffolding.”
More
importantly, Alan has come to convince Harry to move to a retirement home, a
move made particularly urgent, as we eventually learn, by the fact that Sarah’s
husband has accepted a job in New York and the couple plan to relocate there.
Living in a
retirement home is something Harry is absolutely loathe to do. In the play’s
most poignant scene, he points out that this is not simply old-man stubbornness
or a need for independence. Being in the house filled with the memories of his
beloved wife is his happiness, he explains. How can he leave it?
Meanwhile, as
Alan moves the retirement community discussion gently on, the two guys share
drinks and laughs, recall old times. Some of the frictions between them are
aired – how Alan hated Little League baseball but played because Harry wanted
him to, how he couldn’t match Harry’s outgoing personality, while Harry
complains about the rarity of Alan’s visits. There are jokes about Alan’s
California lifestyle, while Harry also embarrasses Alan by revealing more than
the son wants to know about his mom and dad’s sex life.
Len Cariou and Craig Bierko
But there’s
never any doubt about the affection and love between the two men, a love that’s
beautifully emphasized near the play’s end, when Alan discovers how Harry has
saved all of Alan’s Father Day cards.
So, in
addition to prompting a tear or two, the production offers the joy of watching
Cariou, a mainstay of Broadway and classic regional theatre as well as
television (with Blue Bloods), take stage with a robust performance that
smartly sends out laugh lines and at other times calls up a fury over the
exigencies of aging worthy of a King Lear.
For his part,
Bierko provides a perfect sounding board, sometimes responding with a dry
humor, sometimes more emphatically, but always listening with sympathy, concern
and a sense of truth.
It’s all
played out on set designer Lauren Helpern’s comfortably cluttered rendition of
Harry’s abode, expressively lit by Jeff Davis.
And now, you
may be wondering who is George Eastman, the playwright, not a terribly familiar
name in the annals of New York theater. His program bio has some meager facts:
He lives on Cape Cod with his wife, and his first play, Snow Job, has
been produced “in community theatres throughout the country,” There are other
titles, including three new plays that “address the sweet and sour moments of
aging.” (Internet research reveals he has taught French in high school and also
written short stories, and the Harry Townsend script has had some
prominent readings earlier.)
The bio also
tells us that he “is thrilled and humbled that his favorite play has come to
Off-Broadway.” Happy to have it here, Mr. Eastman. Its naturalistic
craftsmanship and genuine sentiments are a welcome anomaly these days on New
York stages.
Review posted
December 2019
Off-Broadway
play
Playing at NY
City Center Stage II
131 West 55th
Street
212 581 1212
NYCityCenter.org
Playing until
February 9