Word Play: For Whom the Bell Tolls
The crisp, snappy repartee between the two characters in this two-act play is witty and well-written, and delivered by the thesps with sparkling verve.
JUST ANOTHER DAY: Theater Review
In Just Another Day, playwright and co-star Dan Lauria dares go where few dramatists have gone before. If we’re lucky, aging is what awaits us all – that is, for those of us who live out our natural lifespans. Of course, what generally accompanies the process of getting old is the increasing decline of our physical and mental faculties, including memory loss. Relatively recent productions that have dramatized Alzheimer’s and dementia include: 2023’s Memory, beautifully-played by middle-aged Peter Sarsgaard, who snagged a Venice Film Festival Best Actor accolade; 2014’s Still Alice,which scored middle aged Julianne Moore a Best Actress Academy Award; and more to the point, 2006’s Away from Her,for which Julie Christie was Oscar-nommed and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.
But as Dan Lauria pointed out to me during the after-party at the Odyssey Theatre’s patio, other works generally depict how the aging process, dementia, etc., impact on the subject’s family. On the other hand, Just Another Day is a two-hander that focuses on the aging characters themselves, their plight and relationship. Lauria portrays “Writer/Man,” and as related onstage, his backstory is ambiguous. He is a senior citizen living at some sort of institution, perhaps a nursing home or “old folks’ home” or assisted living residence. In younger days, Writer/Man was part of a comedy duo.
His former comedy writing partner, “Woman,” depicted by Patty McCormack, resides at the same place, where they meet every day and sit two-gether outdoors on a bench to converse. Their memories are fluid and flighty, bestowing the aforementioned ambiguity upon them and exactly what the nature of their relationship has been and currently is. During their interchanges, it’s unclear (to them, as well as the audience) whether they were/are married, romantic partners, fuck buddies, strictly professional collaborators, or what?
In any case, during their daily tête-à-têtes they try to put together pieces of the puzzles, as to who they are, what they were to one another and even tackle that greatest existential question of all time, which, as “Alfie” was famously asked onscreen in Dionne Warwick’s hit song, is: “What’s It All About?” The couple coo and kvetch and laugh and bicker and reminisce and hug. Whenever the duo becomes too voluble, demonstrative, or affectionate, an offstage character observing them from the wings rings a bell to force them to knock it off and break it up, intruding on their privacy and interactions.
At one point an irritated Writer/Man sardonically refers to the bell ringer as “Quasimodo.” I had a hunch the bard was suggesting Cuckoo Nest’s wretched Nurse Ratched. At the reception, Lauria referenced the immortal 16th century British poet John Donne, who wrote in his meditation on death: “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee” (and apparently, for Ernest Hemingway). Parenthetically, in a moment of clarity Woman remembers that during her lifetime she has also been a poetess.
The crisp, snappy repartee between the two characters in this two-act play is witty and well-written, and delivered by the thesps with sparkling verve. At times, some linguistically challenged theatergoers may find the dialogue to be above their heads, hard to follow, although more literate ticket buyers will be able to follow the bouncing verbal ball without much or any difficulty. The couple’s rapid give and take is often about sex (including about whether or not they ever did it with one another, and if so, how recently?) and given that the characters are former comedy writers (and the fact that the playwright has 230 screen credits, according to IMDB.com), they frequently reference film culture. The twosome has lots of fun remembering and discoursing upon vintage films; enhancing this motion picture patter, montages of mural size images of great movie couples, such as Bogie and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, are projected onscreen on the stage wall (Ramiro Hermosillo is the sound/video technician; video support is by Fritz Davis). Other times a sky is projected onto the theater’s rear wall, and the set includes a hint of a skyline in the distance, and in the foreground an old-fashioned streetlamp, tree stumps, along with the aforementioned bench (Pete Hickok is the scenic designer).
Tinseltown trivia is usually crowd-pleasing good fun, especially for Angeleno auds steeped in cinematic lore, likely to enjoy the stars illuminating the screen/wall, with the romantic pairings suggesting the onstage couple who have spent an indeterminate number of years two-gether, in some capacity or another. In addition to its rare exploration of grappling with the aging process and the deterioration of our abilities, just another reason to see Just Another Day is its co-stars. I have often observed in my theater reviews that one of the great things about L.A.’s unique and expansive stage scene is the vast talent pool casting directors, etc., have to draw from, that includes the movie and television worlds.
Exhibits “A” and “B” are Just Another Day’s co-stars. Dan Lauria is best known as Kevin’s father, Jack Arnold, in the wonderful TV sitcom The Wonder Years, which ran from 1988 to 1993. In addition to his cornucopia of big and little screen roles, Lauria has also trod the boards on Broadway, starring in a bioplay about football coach Vince Lombardi and in the musical adaptation of the beloved comedy A Christmas Story, wherein Lauria portrayed its author, Jean Shepherd, in 2012’s original Broadway cast. The Brooklyn-born Lauria is an ex-Marine captain who attended college on a football scholarship. He has an everyday, everyman quality, similar to that of the Hollywood actor William Bendix, a fellow New Yorker, and Kurtwood Smith, who from 1998-2006 played another gruff sitcom dad, Red “Dumbass” Forman, in That ’70s Show.
Patty McCormack plays Just Another Day’s Woman and has a similarly illustrious screen lineage. Ironically for an actress now portraying a senior citizen, McCormack made her mark as a child star. She is the fifth youngest thespian to ever be nominated for an Academy Award, having been nommed in the Best Supporting Actress category for her chilling portrayal of a psychopathic, murderous child when she was only 11 in 1956’s The Bad Seed. (True confession: Despite its artsy pedigree – directed by Mervyn LeRoy, adapted from a Maxwell Anderson play – this reviewer/film historian is such a scaredy cat he has never been able to screw up the courage to watch The Bad Seed!) McCormack’s remarkable career sporting 168 screen credits also includes Orson Welles’ unfinished Don Quixote and The Sopranos, plus her depiction of a woman married to an even more terrifying killer Rhoda Penmark – mass murderer Tricky Dick – as Pat Nixon in 2008’s Frost/Nixon. (Rhoda may have had pigtails, but Nixon was a genocidal pig.)
In Just Another Day viewers have the opportunity to experience two consummate professionals now in their late seventies realistically create compelling, completely convincing characters, as they bravely and fearfully, clear-eyed and cockeyed, grapple with what life tosses at each of them as they near the final curtain – as long as they have each other by their side. Director Eric Krebs ably helms the persuasive, poignant portraits painted onstage (alternately as abstract and representational art) as the characters confront losing their vitality while Father Time ticks away at them.
BTW, while L.A. theater often gives audiences the chance to watch screen stars perform live and in the flesh onstage, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the opening night crowd also included notables: Six-time Emmy winner Jean Smart (HBO’s hit series Hacks), accompanied by Joe Pacheco (Apple TV+’s The Morning Show), and Alley Mills, who played Lauria’s wife on The Wonder Years and coincidentally recently just starred in her own L.A. play.
As the characters struggle to remove the tarnish from their golden years, Just Another Day is a deeply moving, highly entertaining rumination on aging and memorable play about losing one’s memory that’s well worth a stroll down theatrical memory lane. See it with someone you love and seize the Day!
Just Another Day is being performed through September 28 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m., plus Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 8:00 p.m. and Wednesday, Sept. 24 at 8:00 p.m., at The Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, CA 90025. Reservations: OdysseyTheatre.com; (310)477-2055, ext. 2.
