"You collect old furniture, old cars, old pictures, everything but old people," says Nat in the best speech of I'm Not Rappaport. "Bad souvenirs, they talk too much. Even quiet, they tell you too much, they look like the future and you don't want to know. Who are these people, these oldies, this strange race, they're not my type, put them with their own kind, a building, a town, put them somewhere. You idiots, don't you know? One day you too will join this weird tribe. Yes, Mr. Chairman, you will get old; I hate to break the news. And if you're frightened now, you'll be terrified then. The problem's not that life is short but that it's very long; so you better have a policy. Here we are. Look at us. We're the coming attractions."The speaker, as you might have guessed, is quite old — in his eighties, in fact — and the "us" of whom he speaks includes another octogenarian, this one with vision so poor he can hardly see a few steps in front of him. These two aging, independent spirits — Nat Moyer, a Jewish former waiter and inveterate impostor, and Midge Carter, an African-American night superintendent of a New York City apartment building — are the protagonists of Herb Gardner's play, and at their best they speak for the elderly everywhere who insist on maintaining their human dignity in the face of a society that would prefer to hide them away. At their best — or, rather, at the late Gardner's best — I'm Not Rappaport is about the evils of ageism, the existential rights of the elderly, and also the genuine concern of the young for their increasingly vulnerable parents.
But it seems that Gardner doesn't trust his audience to remain attentive to a comedy on such serious subjects; so his play is intermittently littered with one-liners, with superficial humor, with situations so unlikely, we're required to forget for a time the admirable urgency of its best moments. When Gardner shows us Nat trying to pass as a Mafia godfather, all the poignancy of his situation is forgotten as we laugh at this silly improbability. Does Nat's daughter credibly tell her strong-willed father that his impostures could get him killed? Hearing her reasoning, we can't help but agree. But then Gardner asks us to believe that Clara Moyer falls for her pop's utterly unconvincing claim that he has an illegitimate Israeli daughter who's about to resettle him in the Promised Land.
The pattern is repeated again and again: a powerful moment of drama is undercut by a few minutes of sitcom, of fodder for the laughtrack, or of just plain unlikelihood. And this alternation is most aggravating because Gardner's depiction of Nat and Midge's difficult lives has already given them heroic status; neither needs to play swashbuckler to earn our respect.
Oh well, at least Gardner always gets back on the momentous play that threw him. And there's also something admirable about the almost free-form structure of his comedy, something modern and persuasive. Much of Act One is just an extended conversation between Nat and Midge, who are still getting to know and to tolerate each other. Then the plot kicks in: Midge is almost fired from his super's job by a man named Danforth, but is rescued by Nat's timely (and most satisfying) impersonation. Nat is mugged and recovers. His daughter delivers an ultimatum about the way he must live in the future. Nat and Midge witness a young junkie being threatened by a drug dealer. There's something pleasingly asymmetrical about this series of events, as if it were dictated by its own organic logic rather than by some preconception about the shape of good theater.
And, speaking of good theater, the acting in this Asolo Theatre production is generally splendid. It's hard to know where to begin in praising this cast. As Midge, David Downing is nothing short of perfect. He powerfully shows us a man who, fallen into old age and near-blindness, has resolved to struggle on no matter what indignities he may encounter. As Nat, David S. Howard is every bit as superb: whether remembering his fiery youth as a communist, or posing as a high-priced, fast-talking lawyer, he presents a remarkably detailed account of his character's few virtues and many foibles.
Carolyn Michel as Nat's daughter Clara is both caring and strong-willed: when she threatens to have her father declared mentally incompetent, you just know that she's motivated by nothing less honorable than love. And Brian Graves as a young man operating a small-time protection racket is as sinister and impervious as can be; you'd have a lot better luck reasoning with a park bench. Only Francisco Lozano as a country-western-style drug dealer and Merideth Maddox as the junkie he supplies fail to convince us of their reality. But Howard J. Millman's direction couldn't be any more lucid, and Jeffrey W. Dean's attractive set, of an isolated, somewhat verdant park area backed by a usable brick-and-stone footbridge, is ideal for Nat and Midge, as well as for less savory characters in search of a secluded venue. Finally, Vicki S. Holden's costumes show us that Nat and Midge's dignity extends to their sense of style: their physical substance may be wearing thin, but their clothing is in good repair.
Call it one of the many contradictions of I'm Not Rappaport, a play that contradicts itself so often, you have to admire and regret it almost at the same time. If you insist on taking your pleasures unalloyed, you may find it infuriating.
But if you're patient, there's a lot here that's important — and rewarding.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2004.