As Dan Lauria’s Just Another Day begins, Man (Lauria), 70-ish, is sitting on a bench in a park. Woman (Patty McCormack), 70-ish and standing nearby, asks if she can share the bench. After a brief, ever-so-slightly-caustic exchange, she sits.
Just before the encounter and thanks to sound designer Andy Evan Cohen, Barbra Streisand singing “Memory” is heard, suggesting that the time could be 1973, when The Way We Were was released. Soon, though, it’s just as likely or more so that memory and its questionable reliability is more to the play’s two-act point, along with the inkling that a romantic comedy for seniors — a stage rom-com — is also getting underway.
And why not? Don’t seniors deserve rom-coms, too?
Man, who turns out to be a writer, and Woman, who turns out to be a poet, begin to chat — well, not quite chat. He compliments her but asks if they slept together the previous evening. Instantly, they’re arguing, becoming increasingly estranged. Until they aren’t. Whether they have even met previously becomes a subject of discussion.
And that’s when memory’s foibles surface. Have they known each other for a while? Have they been lovers? As they end the first act happily walking off arm in arm, nothing is clear about the brevity or length of the possible relationship.
What is notably clear is that they’re both intelligent and informed. Woman’s vocabulary, as perhaps befits a poet, is broad. She throws around words like “gasconade” when criticizing him for what she takes as braggadocio. She even uses the adjective “fulsome” correctly — to mean “offensive,” not “fuller.” It’s another of her persisting digs.
What’s clear is that they both have a marked sense of humor. She says, “I now have too much faith in God to believe in religion.” Later, he says, “I am not a Neanderthal…I was born in Brooklyn.” Later, she refers to “A Rosetta Stone.” He quickly replies, “I don’t believe I knew her.” And on it goes like that.
Their discourse keeps the first Just Another Day half buoyant, even as a returning occurrence infuses a larger head-scratcher on their whereabouts. Every time they touch for whatever reason, an insistent bell rings. Why? What does it signify? The matter begins to be explained when the word “institutional” is uttered. Oh, okay, so they’re in an institution. They’re aging. They’re losing their memories. Maybe they’re in the early stages of dementia, surely another pressing subject on Lauria’s mind.
Which is corroborated by act two. Man and Woman are in different outfits. (Bettina Bierly is the costumer.) Now, Woman is the writer and Man, using a cane, is a painter. Still, they are unsure about having met before, which becomes a problem.
While the exchanges are different in detail, the attitudes presented are the same. The bell continues to annoy them, as does whoever is clanging it. Likewise, the bell’s purpose not fully explained magnifies audience annoyance as well. (Is it ever explained? No spoiler forthcoming.) Suffice it to say that slowly but unavoidably repetition takes its toll — no pun intended, or is it?
Whether or not treading over the same well-trod ground slowly drains the comic-drama’s commentary on aging, memory, and romance in later life, there are no two ways about how strong the performances are under director Eric Krebs, who never allows what are only prolonged duologs to become static. Man and Woman are forever sitting, standing, circling the bench, perching on the rock. They may be aging, but only at an epilogue do they show signs of running out of energy.
Obviously, the physically imposing Lauria wrote Man for himself to take on. Start to finish he’s gruff, confused, loving, and any number of other strong character attributes. His squarish-roundish face is infinitely expressive. McCormack is femininely feisty, alert to every behavioral quirk in Man that nags at her.
(Reviewer’s admission: It’s difficult for a longtime fan watching this latest McCormack appearance not to recall her performance, at the age of nine, as the menacing Rhoda Penmark in the 1954 play The Bad Seed and her Oscar-nominated performance in the 1956 motion picture version. Somehow that unforgettable turn doesn’t detract from this extremely different one, only enhances it.)
One surprising observation about Just Another Day: It eerily echoes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Two characters meet, repeatedly get on each other’s nerves, yet are irrevocably locked together. To them, as to Vladimir and Estragon, it’s just another day in a presumed series or never-ending days. Even the sets aren’t dissimilar. Beckett requires a rock and a tree. Just Another Day features the frequently occupied rock and, in place of a tree, a lamppost.
The latter entry will probably not have the staying power of the former, but there it is, all the same.
Just Another Day opened May 12, 2024, at Theater 555 and runs through June 30. Tickets and information: theater555.com
