On Theater: Love is still a struggle in ‘Later Life’
Shakespeare’s “The course of true love never did run smooth” is a message applicable not only to young romantics like Lysander and Hermia in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but to a pair of more seasoned participants in Cupid’s game of chance.
Prolific playwright A.R. Gurney (“Love Letters,” “The Dining Room”) focuses on Austin and Ruth, who are both approaching senior citizenhood, in “Later Life,” currently on stage at the Newport Theatre Arts Center. The two main characters had met three decades earlier but he can’t quite recall the circumstances.
He’s divorced, and she’s separated from her irresponsible husband. There’s a valid connection here, but Austin — a proper born and bred Bostonian — is reticent at first, while Ruth clearly enjoys casting herself as the temptress, presumably willing to take a chance at happiness in the autumn of life and of the year 1993.
Where the show veers off course is in the series of interruptions from various denizens of the high-rise apartment building (actually only two actors in multiple disguises). They barge in, loudly and frequently, until the audience is as weary of them as are Austin and Ruth.
Director Phyllis Gitlin has chosen an ideal pair of performers to fan the flames of late-life romance. Mitchell Cohen’s buttoned-down Boston banker is a splendid contrast to Nancy Lang Gibbs’ sensuous and seductive visitor of Midwestern heritage.
Cohen, a Newport Theatre Arts Center veteran, reveals an aching vulnerability beneath his conservative veneer, a fellow burned by a failed marriage whose inner desire to find romance is thwarted by a conventional attitude regarding life and love. He manages to bring layers of feeling into what seems at first to be a conservative, one-dimensional character.
Gibbs, on the other hand, is a pure delight, her facial inflections speaking volumes as she meticulously flirts with the reticent Austin with one hand while holding him at bay with the other. Her emotional transition when her own troubled history comes to light also is splendidly accomplished.
The rest of the dozen or so characters are depicted solely by Harriet Whitmyer and Cort Huckabone, each accorded the opportunity to venture over the top to offer some outlandish comic relief. Costumer Joni Stockinger has provided both performers with showy wigs and outfits in which to embellish their characterizations.
The subtly elegant high-rise terrace is beautifully designed by Andrew Otero and ably abetted by Michael Castillo’s lighting effects.
“Later Life” illustrates how romance might develop between two people in the second halves of their lives — if they weren’t so frequently interrupted. It’s some tasty food for thought at the Newport Theatre Arts Center.
TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Huntington Beach Independent.
IF YOU GO:
WHAT: “Later Life”WHERE: Newport Theatre Art Center, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays until April 19
COST: $16
CALL: (949) 631-0288 or https://www.ntaconline.com
