Rush to Star Bar’s ‘Later Life’ — you may not get second chance
If you’re middle-aged, you may find “Later Life” almost painfully true to life. If you’re young, it may seem like a disturbing cautionary tale.
But no matter what your age, you’ll get caught up in the Star Bar Players’ warm, sympathetic production of A.R. Gurney’s thought-provoking, bittersweet comedy.
Like many Gurney plays, “Later Life” is as much about the theater as it is about its characters. The plot centers around an encounter between Austin and Ruth — marvelously acted by Rick Gibson and LaDelle Arnold — which takes place in real time during a Boston cocktail party in 1993.
This is a wistful story about what it means to get older: “All decisions are agonizing at our age, because there’s no turning back,” says Austin, uttering the phrase “at our age” for the first of many times.
And there’s the three-ring circus with which Gurney surrounds this tale, in the form of the other guests. They’re all played by two actors, giving Amy Brooks and David Mason the character-acting opportunities of a lifetime.
Gurney exquisitely balances the seriousness and the silliness — and eventually it becomes clear that the seeming interruptions are connected to the play’s central theme.
Gibson is so good as a repressed WASP that I’d love to see him in a contrasting role, just to know if he was really acting. Austin is a banker who has lived in dread of something terrible happening to him. Perhaps it already has happened, as he’s allowed the world to suck the life out of him.
Austin has learned that age changes everything.
“At our age, we don’t just date people,” he says to his friend Walt. “At our age, there is no second chance. This is our last time at bat.”
But he’s amazed to find a possible second chance when he encounters Ruth, whom he met once, decades ago.
Ruth is separated from her cowboy husband, described as a “barbarian”: He threw the television out the window while she was watching “Jewel in the Crown.” But he still loves her, and just possibly she still loves him.
Arnold brings out Ruth’s smartness and her sympathetic nature. It’s easy to see why Austin falls for her.
Jordan Arrick’s set has a clean, uncluttered look that doesn’t get in the way of the multilayered story. Jillmarie Peterson designed the costumes, which speak volumes about the walk-on characters.
But on opening night, the lighting wasn’t in sync with the blocking. People were inconsistently lit, and some odd shadows made the stage seem even tinier than it is.
“Later Life” ends not with an exclamation point, but with a question mark. Although it’s one of Gurney’s strongest works, it’s rarely performed, so I highly recommend the Star Bar production. Unlike other Gurney plays, such as “The Dining Room,” “Love Letters” and “Sylvia,” you may not get a second chance.
