VISITING MR GREEN at the Domain Theater

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 18 October 2024

Visiting Mr. Greenwritten by American playwright Jeff Baron, sits comfortably on the Galleon on the Domain Theatre’s stage. Vicky Horwood has two wonderful actors, Andrew Clarke and Andrew Horwood, to lend their voices to the story.

Andrew Clarke is Ross Gardiner, a middle-aged professional whose weekly visits to Green are court-ordered after an accident. The Mr. Green in question is an elderly man whose wife recently died. They are both Jews. Ross Gardiner feels lost in his religion. Mr. Green clings to his orthodoxy, the rituals of which cost him his daughter. She married, that is, a non-Jew. Greene performed a shiva for her, a funeral ritual during which she is declared dead to him.

Director Horwood keeps accents and Yiddishkeit to a minimum, although a handy glossary is included in the program. Believe me, the sound and rhythm of the story would be completely different if it was done authentically. The goyim shouldn’t worry too much. This glossary has the word “faigele”, originally “little bird”, but here homosexual. This is the factor that limits Gardiner’s life.

On each visit, Gardiner takes care of Green, buying him food from a kosher deli, cleaning his house and picking him up off the floor when he collapses. Suddenly he has someone to care about. The outcome of the play is not surprising. Green’s late wife wrote and received many letters from her daughter and many phone calls. Green never bothered to fix his phone or check his mailbox. Gardiner arranges the initial contact and then the visit.

The set—the living room of Greene’s apartment—is carefully arranged and decorated. There is food in the cupboards and refrigerator. The door to the corridor is painted and numbered. Little things catch your eye. Andrew Clarke wears a different outfit every time he walks through that door, and Horwood wears a sparkly tallit in one scene. This is a prayer shawl with blue stripes and fringes. You don’t have to be Jewish to identify with the people and their problems.
Meeting Mr. Green is a great choice for the Galleon Theatre, personal and compassionate. It’s very well done.

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