Theatre in Review: Women of a Certain Age (The Public Theater/LuEsther Hall)

	Roberta Maxwell, Amy Warren. Photo: Joan Marcus

If Women of a Certain Age is the most powerful entry yet in Richard Nelson's trilogy, titled The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, it's for reasons that I'm sure the playwright regrets. The action is set on November 8 of this year, between the hours of 5 and 7pm, and, as the conversation turns toward that day's election, the characters quietly assert -- nervously and with a certain hesitation -- that, by evening's end, Hillary Clinton will be the president-elect.

We all know how that turned out, and, seeing the play on the Saturday after the election, those words sent an audible gasp through the room. Nelson conceived the Gabriel trilogy -- and the earlier Apple Family quartet -- as the most topical of dramas. The plays trace each family's dynamics against a background of current events, often tied to the latest election. Nelson charts the intersection of the personal and the political in the least tendentious way possible, using his characters to catch the mood of each moment. This, however, was surely the first time that an unexpected electoral outcome added an extra level of dismay to the proceedings.

Even without this unwelcome development, the mood in Women of a Certain Age is melancholy, even elegiac. As the previous plays in the cycle established, the Gabriels are a family of artists and artisans -- and, one by one, the pillars supporting their lives are being pulled away. It's the first anniversary of the death of Thomas Gabriel, novelist and playwright; Mary, his wife, a retired doctor, is still hollowed out with grief. (In this play, more than its predecessors, we feel the hole that has been left in the Gabriel family by the loss of Thomas; at times, you can practically feel his ghost in the room.) Mary also gets some very bad news about her planned return to work, adding to the uncertainty of her future. Patricia, Thomas' mother, has run out of money and can no longer afford her assisted living facility; she is recovering from a stroke that has rendered useless a hand and a leg. The family home, where Mary and Thomas lived, will be sold, and Patricia will move in with her son, George, a musician and carpenter, and his wife, Hannah, who works for a caterer. Hannah has also picked up a part-time gig as a hotel maid, as money is in increasingly short supply. Before the play begins, George and Hannah's son, Paulie, a college freshman (whom we never see) has learned that his tuition money must go toward Patricia's upkeep; if he wants to continue his studies he will have to scrounge together scholarship money. We are told that the young man, stung by the news and eager to cause hurt, has coolly told his father, "Uncle Thomas would have fought all this."

Maybe Thomas would have, but, for the Gabriels, life has increasingly become about holding tight as money slips away, options are eliminated, and their community is gradually colonized by wealthy weekenders. We see the effort it takes to move Patricia from an easy chair to her wheelchair. Even with her two jobs, Hannah manages to find time to tutor the other maids in English. George tries to put off a real estate agent who wants to drop by with a client, only to be told, rudely, that his house no longer belongs to him. Karen, Thomas' first wife, who has been semi-adopted into the family, heads off on a date, only to realize that the man is yet another real estate agent, trying to pump her for details about the house. By staying put in Rhinebeck, Mary, Patricia, George, and Hannah have become exiles in their own town, struggling to find a foothold in a community that has little use for them.

Much of the evening is spent looking backward. The meal they are making is taken from recipes in Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls. (Sooner or later, nearly everyone ends up making paintbrush cookies, an oddly childish activity for these middle-agers; Joyce, George's sister, laments that they don't have the ingredients for Raggedy Ann salad.) Even nostalgia comes with a certain chill, however; Mary has found a packet of letters that strongly suggest Patricia's sister killed herself, more than half a century earlier, because she was married to a closeted gay man. The look of confusion and sadness on the face of Roberta Maxwell, who plays Patricia, as she hears this news is one of many memorable moments in Women of a Certain Age.

As the shadows draw in around the Gabriels, they remain remarkably gallant, and you want to cling to them for dear life. More than once, I was filled with sadness over the knowledge that this was the last time I would be seeing these characters and the superb ensemble playing them. Maryann Plunkett's Mary is a quietly stunning achievement, always busy, always with something to talk about, until the words and activities wind down, just for a second, and you see the look of panic and grief in her eyes. Her overreaction -- almost a panic attack -- to the reading of a little prose sketch by Thomas, obviously based on her, reveals just how deep a sense of loss runs in her. Jay O. Sanders once again captures George's growing cynicism -- "The buzzards are circling," he says of the town's burgeoning real estate market -- but he also nails the prankish sense of humor that led George to inscribe a desk he built for a rich client with a quote about the brotherhood of man. Lynn Hawley keeps a mordant eye on everyone as Hannah, and as Joyce, Amy Warren deftly deflects questions about her personal life and needles Patricia about her past. (The most she gets back is "You are very lucky, Joyce. I could have been my mother," a statement that is amusing, enigmatic, and menacing all at once.) Maxwell is superb as Patricia, retaining her sardonic sense of humor, but making a revelatory moment out of her failed attempt at slicing an apple with her one good hand.

Once again, the action unfolds on the kitchen set designed by Susan Hilferty and Jason Ardizzone-West, with Hilferty providing the detailed, character-specific costumes. Jennifer Tipton has provided the simple, elegant lighting and Scott Lehrer and Will Pickens, the sound design, which includes the sound of someone exhaling at the end of each scene, and music from a piano that only Mary can hear, as the instrument has been sold off. The array of mics hanging over the action provides the subtle reinforcement that helps to enable the ultra-naturalistic acting style.

Nelson, who also directed, has done a valuable thing with the Gabriel plays: By showing us a family slipping into the widening gulf between rich and poor, he shows that -- despite the popular wisdom -- not all lost and dispirited middle-class Americans are fundamentalist Christians, xenophobes, racists, or some combination of the three. The darkness threatens us all, and we must find a way to make common cause or the future will be bleak. -- David Barbour