Dan Luria, Patty McCormack (Photo by Russ Rowland)

Just Another Day

By Julia Polinsky

A gentle, sadly sweet cross between Waiting for Godot and many another older-person-family-drama, Dan Lauria's Just Another Day presents two characters, Man (Luria) and Woman (Patty McCormack), on a perfectly lovely park bench with a nicely pretty streetlamp and a gently blue sky.

The mood is benign, so when Man and Woman point out that they don't know where they are, how they got there, if they know each other (or slept together last night), or what is happening, it's puzzling, rather than painful; the bland beginning somehow doesn't hurt as much as it could. Which is a good thing, because the play deals with the problem of elderly people with dementia, which can hurt. A lot.

Luria's difficult play can be hard to watch, partly because the disconnection between the two actors is so palpable, and that's just not very interesting. Even for such accomplished actors as Luria and McCormick, it can be challenging to make such lost personalities interesting and engaging, but they do. Luria is so charming, he shines; McCormack is excellent, particularly in the second act; she deserves better material.

Patty McCormack (Photo by Russ Rowland)

That disconnection, though, must be intentional. It's a portrait of two elderly people with memory issues. When they bicker with each other, or as they play with words, or cry, they are unable to connect. An off-stage bell rings, at certain times; it's hard to understand why, nor is that question cleared up when the bell ringer appears for a bow at the end of the show.

The first act feels remarkably surreal without being weighty or significant, merely disjointed. It gradually becomes clear that Man and Woman are dementia residents of a nursing home, trying to figure out what happened, and how they lost their memories. For some reason, they each have a book about their former lives, most likely as memory prompts.

 

Dan Luria, Patty McCormack (Photo by Russ Rowland)

Those books come into play in the second act; they do indeed prompt memories of his life as a comedian and hers as a writer. Apparently, they were a team. They do indeed have a shared past (although we never find out if they slept together last night). They do what they can to re-enact the jokes, the songs, the stories. The book is a tool to help them connect; fortunately, the skits and jokes and word games also engage the audience. That second act helps Just Another Day a lot.

With the sweet blandness of scenic and lighting design from Andy Evan Cohen and Joan Racho-Jansen, and Bettina Bierly's costume design, not to mention the slow pace of Eric Krebs's direction, it's as if the play were deliberately trying not to hurt anyone or provoke any huge emotion. Perhaps that's the goal, especially since there's talk of making Just Another Day a fundraiser for regional theaters. It's easier to make that goal a reality if nobody feels too much. Just Another Day definitely hits that mark.

Just Another Day
Theater 555, 555 West 42nd St (between 10th &11th Ave)
Through June 30