Did you hear the one about the nuns, St. Peter at the pearly gates, and the holy water? It ends with the zinger “If I’m going to have to gargle with that stuff, at least let me do it before Sister Christine puts her ass in it”? (How many Hail Marys does that get me?) It’s an oldie but goodie, and James Cromwell, as retired pharmacist–turned–would-be stand-up comic Bill, delivers it with gusto in Bess Wohl’s laugh-packed Grand Horizons.
Senior citizens telling dirty Catholic jokes are just the start. There’s also the revelation that Bill is sending X-rated texts to Carla (Priscilla Lopez); his wife of 50 years, incidentally, is named Nancy. “That’s what you call it, right? Sexting? Sending pictures?” Nancy (Jane Alexander, giving a gorgeously understated performance) asks their son Brian (Michael Urie). There’s Carla’s ode to battery-powered pleasure, which she shares over tea with Nancy. And—perhaps most outrageous, and hilarious, of all—there’s Nancy’s recollection of some seriously racy stolen moments with the love of her life: her high school sweetheart, Hal. (Tempting as it is to quote Wohl here, it wouldn’t be fair; you have to hear Alexander deliver the speech.)
The setup for all this nuttiness is a two-line dinner conversation. Nancy and Bill have just wrapped up their perfectly choreographed premeal routine: Nancy plating the pot roast; Bill shaking the salt into his hand and sprinkling it over his plate (he doesn’t even need to taste before he salts, because he’s had this dinner so many times); both unfurling and delicately placing their napkins on their laps. “I think I would like a divorce,” Nancy says. She might as well be saying “I think I would like chicken tomorrow”—that’s how casually she drops the bomb. “All right,” replies Bill, continuing to shovel his way through his meat and mashed potatoes.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★ review here.]
Not surprisingly, the news sends their grown sons, Brian and Ben (Ben McKenzie), into a total tailspin. Ben’s well-meaning, and very pregnant, wife, Jess (Mean Girls Tony nominee Ashley Park), draws on her therapist training and eventually gets the couple to grudgingly hold hands. But the brothers are in fix-it mode, and seem determined to talk their parents out of it. “I’m not even sure you can end it at all at this point, I mean, if you wanted to get divorced you should have done it after we went to college, like normal people. Like a mid-life crisis kind of a thing,” says Ben. “I mean, you’re almost eighty. Like. How much else—even is there?”
Senior-citizen sex, know-it-all emotionally erratic kids, a looming divorce: It sounds like a pitch for a sitcom as opposed to the newest play from the writer of the somber Make Believe and the minimalist Small Mouth Sounds. Grand Horizons—produced by Second Stage, which commissioned and developed the play with Williamstown Theatre Festival, where Horizons premiered in July—may not be as weighty as some of Wohl’s other works, but it’s damn funny, and very on-point.
Wohl and set designer Clint Ramos do a brilliant job capturing the cookie-cutter feel of senior living. “It’s one stop shopping,” says Bill, explaining the ins and outs of the not-so-grand Grand Horizons facility. “And then in the cafeteria they put your picture up there on the bulletin board with all the other news. So it’s like, ‘Okay, everyone, so it’s gonna rain Friday, Ed is this week’s Bingo champion, Sheila’s started a new book club, Sam and Joanie are dead.’” Don’t hate yourself for laughing at that line; you definitely won’t be the only one.
Grand Horizons opened Jan. 23, 2020, and runs through March 1 at the Helen Hayes Theater. Tickets and information: 2st.com
