Have you read The Beast in the Jungle? Henry James’ novella from 1903 regards a man who dreads that something unknown but probably catastrophic is lurking in his future. Anyone who knows this story and sees Later Life is likely to recognize how it has inspired A.R. Gurney’s play, which was originally staged in 1993 and is currently presented by Keen Company in a pleasant revival.
Gurney, the insightful interpreter of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture on the wane, updates James’ premise to the present and sets it one evening upon a spacious terrace overlooking Boston Harbor. Stars glow in the sky. Tinkling murmurs from a party indoors can be heard. Here is where Austin, a bespoke gentleman in his handsome 50s, encounters Ruth, a pretty lady of similar vintage.
Or rather, they re-encounter each other. Ruth remembers Austin, though he does not immediately recall meeting her. As their lightly bantering conversation progresses, it is revealed that when they were much younger, Austin and Ruth enjoyed an intense flirtation one night on the island of Capri. He was in the Navy and she was on a college sorority tour of Europe.
Their incipient romance never went beyond a good night kiss because Austin told Ruth that he liked her too much to involve her in his future: “You said that you were sure something terrible was going to happen to you in the course of your life,” she reminds him.
Did it ever happen, wonders Ruth. No, it never did, says Austin.
The proper scion of a distinguished Boston family, Austin went on to have a successful banking career, was married and fathered two children. Now he is divorced but apparently content with his solitary existence. Except that Austin now takes Prozac and is seeing a psychiatrist.
In contrast, it turns out that Ruth’s life has been marred by several tragedies. She is separated from a third husband who–we hear from other people–spends her money and smacks her around.
Oh, yes, there are other characters in the 80-minute play: A fondly bickering couple of elder Bostonians; a lively younger pair hailing from Atlanta; Austin’s best friend since boyhood; the woman who Ruth has been visiting in Boston; the hostess of the party; and several more. They enter and exit the terrace to serve the story as humorous counterpoint or as suppliers of background information. From one of them it is learned that Ruth’s estranged husband has just flown in from Las Vegas and wants to bring her back.
Even so, it is obvious that the romantic spark that Austin and Ruth once shared has warmly rekindled. Could their meeting be Austin’s second chance to capture the happiness he once denied himself?
Keen Company’s production, which is capably directed by Jonathan Silverstein, the company’s artistic director, is agreeably acted on a setting designed by Steven Kemp that appears slightly artificial. These heightened visuals—garlands of glowing yellow and white lightbulbs looping high above the terrace represent the stars in the Boston sky—harmonize with the romantic nature of the play. A familiar face from daytime dramas, Laurence Lau gives Austin a sense of wistfulness that becomes more apparent as the character realizes what he has missed in life. Initially, Barbara Garrick seems a tad coy as Ruth but she relaxes into a more genuine personal mode as the show proceeds. Everybody else in the play is portrayed with spirited good humor by Liam Craig and Jodie Markell, whose distinctive characterizations of various partygoers are aided by the wig and hair designs contributed by Dave Bova and J. Jared Janas.
Unlike James’ story, Later Life is not an especially profound psychological study. But it succeeds as an effective, even touching, portrait of a gentleman whose cautious restraint always has prevented him from joining the party happening in the next room. It also is a play characteristic of much of Gurney’s well-crafted work: It is congenial in tone, economic in form, and a thoughtful, if affectionately satirical, consideration of old-school values and manners.
Later Life opened March 14 at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row and runs through April 14. Tickets and information: keencompany.org.
