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by Jeff Baron, directed by Jen Shuber

Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto

January 31-February 18, 2012

“A Show Well Worth the Visit”

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company has scored a major coup by engaging legendary actor Theodore Bikel to play the title character in Visiting Mr. Green.  If you have always wanted to see Bikel on stage, now is the time to do it.  Visiting Mr. Green, however, is not a star vehicle but a real two-hander, and it is a real joy to see the 87-year-old Bikel interact in such a vigorous way with Canadian actor Aidan deSalaiz, who graduated from theatre school only in 2005.  The two worked on a play together in Montreal last year and have a real rapport.

The set-up for the play not does to first seem promising.  A rising young executive with American Express in New York, Ross Gardiner (deSalaiz) is sentences for reckless driving.  Had he not stopped in time he would have struck 86-year-old Mr. Green (Bikel), who fell in the street.  As part of his sentence, Ross is ordered to spend the next six months making weekly visits to Mr. Green to help him in any way he can.  They immediately dislike each other on first meeting. 

In the wrong hands this kind of story could turn into merely a young-old variation on The Odd Couple.  Luckily, playwright Jeff Baron is interested in character not one-liners and what we laugh at are not set-ups and punchlines but natural misunderstands arising from attempts at communication between two very different people.  Baron has a knack for natural dialogue and in Ross and Mr. Green has created two realistic, well-rounded characters.

What motivates the action in Act 1 is the question why Mr. Green is living in such squalor, created in exquisitely grotty detail by designer Cameron Porteous.  He doesn’t collect his mail, he telephone is disconnected and he has no food in the house except saltines.  The taciturn Mr. Green wants Ross out of his apartment claiming he needs no help, but it is quite apparent to Ross that Mr. Green does need help and this realization helps him overcome his anger at his court-ordered service to find out how he can win Mr. Green’s trust. 

What Ross learns is that Mr. Green has lost all will to live since his wife’s death six years ago.  In their long but old-fashioned marriage, Mrs. Green did all the cooking and cleaning.  Now that she is dead, Mr. Green doesn’t know how to look after himself but he is too proud to admit it and too proud to admit how deep his depression has become.  Mr. Green only begins to warm to Ross when he realizes that Ross is also Jewish, if only a Reformed Jew.  Mr. Green keeps kosher to the extent of having four sets of dishes two for everyday, meat and dairy, and two other sets for Passover.

Their relationship seems to improve, with each confiding more about his life, until they meet an impasse.  Mr. Green repeated insistence that Ross find a nice Jewish girl and settle down finally gets on Ross’s nerves forcing him to admit that he’s gay--a concept Mr. Green only understands when Ross uses the pejorative Yiddish term “faygeleh” (the equivalent to “fairy”).

Act 2 deals with Ross attempting to win Mr. Green’s trust all over again.  Conventional though the play may be, it does confront several important issues.  Ross points out that when Mr. Green describes homosexuals as effeminate, dirty and disgusting, those are the very terms that non-Jewish New Yorkers used to describe Mr. Green’s immigrant parents when they fled Russia.  Mr. Green’s argument with Ross culminates in the shocking remark that homosexuals and women who marry non-Jews are completing Hitler’s work of wiping out the Jewish people.  The important question the play raises is when does religious orthodoxy become too restrictive and even harmful.  Baron’s view is that intolerance harms not only the person at whom hatred is directed but intolerant person himself. 

The rich characters and the play’s surprising depth help explains why Visiting Mr. Green has had over 40 productions in 23 languages in 40 countries since its premiere in 1996.  The fact that it won the Best Play Award at, among others, the Greek Theatre Awards (2000), the Israeli Theatre Awards (2001) and the Turkish Theatre Awards (2003) suggests that Baron has struck a chord that resonates across many cultures.  Toronto first saw the play in Michel Tremblay’s French translation Visites à Monsieur Green staged by the Théâtre français de Toronto in 2005.

Though hundreds of actors have played the role, after seeing Bikel as Mr. Green it is hard to see how anyone could surpass him.  He has sunk deeply into his character and conveys a complex mixture of emotions--anger, guilt, confusion, righteousness--that roil beneath his verbal uncommunicativeness.  For his part deSalaiz provides Bikel with the perfect foil--bright, active, optimistic.  We see, though it is never said, that Mr. Green, provides Ross with a way of dealing the conflicts he has with his own father and with the sadness of never having known his grandfather. 

Though Baron does not entirely avoid sentimentality, you come away from the play feeling it has met important issues head on and has the ring of authenticity made palpable through two fine performances.  The name of Theodore Bikel may draw you to the play, and indeed, that is an excellent reason to see it.  Yet since Bikel does not treat his role as a star turn but graciously works as a co-performer with deSalaiz, you will find that the play itself is what stays with you long after you leave the theatre.                   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Aidan deSalaiz and Theodore Bikel. ©2012 Racheal McCaig.

For tickets, visit www.hgjewishtheatre.com.