Down but not quite out in New York
US
Visiting Mr Green
By Jeff Baron
Directed by Sandra Bates
Ensemble Theatre, Sydney
Review by Brendan Doyle
Another New York Jewish play, I hear you groan! Another play about the generation gap! Okay, but this one — US writer Jeff Baron's first play, a two-hander — has great rewards, with especially fine performances by a real-life father and son team.
Mr Green (Warren Mitchell) is a crotchety 86-year-old, a Jew of Russian ancestry who lives alone in a dilapidated NY apartment. His beloved wife Jetta died several years ago, and Mr Green has still not forgiven God for taking her away.
Then Ross Gardiner (Daniel Mitchell), a successful young executive, enters his life.
Having knocked Mr Green down in a case of reckless driving, Ross has been ordered to do community service by visiting Mr Green once a week to help him out. At first resenting this invasion of his private grief and miserable existence, Mr Green relents when Ross reveals that he too is Jewish, and all is forgiven. He tells Ross that he has no-one else to help him, no family, and he slowly but surely comes to look forward to the weekly visit and the meal they share.
But things sour when Ross reveals that he is gay. Mr Green takes this almost as a personal insult and insists that "this is not what God wants". Ross soon learns one of Mr Green's secrets: he has a daughter, whom he disowned when she married a goy.
The rest of the play follows the subtle flowering of what promises to be a deep friendship between these two men, based on mutual acceptance, tolerance and understanding, and ends with a moving reunion.
Now 72, Warren Mitchell is probably best known for his similar role of Alf Garnett in the TV series Till Death Us Do Part. Recently, he was also an outstanding Willy Loman for QTC. Daniel Mitchell is the perfect foil for him, and the two provide many moments of poignant theatre.
For a first play, Visiting Mr Green is an impressive achievement. I was reminded of Arthur Miller in the depth of characterisation, although we have much more fun with Baron than with Miller.
Beyond the story of two unhappy men, it's about the alienation of big-city life, about the chasm that often separates men from different generations, or straights from gays. It's about intolerance in a society where people just aren't aware of others' reality.
The author has clearly distilled loads of lived experience into this play, which is why it strikes so many chords with the audience. We're talking real people here, real emotions played out against a contemporary urban backdrop. And the theme of tolerance could not be more socially relevant.
Tom Bannerman's set design spares no detail of the years of grime built up by the reclusive Mr Green. The sure directorial hand of Sandra Bates is unobtrusive but theatrically potent.
The second-night audience gave the show a well-deserved rousing ovation.