Visiting Mr. Green
by Jeff Baron

Director & Lighting Designer BRAD MOORE

CAST

GERALD DELISSER.......ROSS GARDNER
RICHARD LYON............MR. GREEN

Set Design LON WINSTON
Stage Manager CINDY HINES
Props JUDY BENSON


 REVIEW - TRTC stages human, humorous Visiting Mr. Green
 by Terray Sylvester The Sopris Sun

For the second production of its season, the Thunder River Theatre Company has chosen a compact, elegant little piece named “Visiting Mr. Green.” It’s a straight-ahead play that holiday audiences will find satisfying. In two acts, through two likable characters, the playwright, Jeff Baron, digs into religious fundamentalism, homophobia, and the rifts between people that such hardened gray matter inevitably creates.

But what satisfies in the play isn’t Baron’s insight into prejudice and narrow-mindedness. Instead, it’s the way he dissolves those barriers to place his characters on common ground. The plot is simple: a father, a child and a reconciliation between the two. The twist is that the father and the child aren’t related, and that the bond they share is a proxy for the affection they’ve squelched, or can’t find, in their own families.

“Visiting Mr. Green” opens with – you guessed it – a visit to Mr. Green. The scene is his cluttered New York City apartment, and the visitor is Ross Gardiner, an up-and-coming American Express employee who has recently almost run over Mr. Green with his car. A judge has ordered Gardiner to check in on the gruff codger once a week. But Mr. Green wants none of it. He’s an aging widower whose adherence to Jewish doctrine is almost as staunch as his initial annoyance at being bothered by the buoyant younger man.

From there, the play progresses through about two months of visits. And in each one, like rays of light falling through the slats of an old Venetian blind, we glimpse the prejudices and fears that have shoved both men into their respective, lonely corners.

If the subject matter of “Mr. Green” is weighty, there’s little that’s ponderous about the play. Baron and the Thunder River Theatre Company leaven the production with plenty of humor and good feeling. “I really wanted to stay authentic to the humanity of this piece,” said director Brad Moore. “While it’s written as a comedy and there are certainly some wonderful moments in there, my hope is that the laughter comes out of the honesty of the characters and the honesty of their portrayal, and not because we've staged some shtick that the audience is going to relate to.”

Gerald DeLisser (Ross Gardiner) and Richard Lyon (Mr. Green) appear to have a fine time sparring on stage. DeLisser presents a cheery young man whose good spirit helps the audience believe that yes, this fellow would go so far out of his way to help a complete stranger. Tougher for DeLisser to portray are Gardiner’s underlying motivations: his loneliness and his eagerness to challenge the biases he has struggled against throughout his adult life. But in his most heated exchanges with Lyon, DeLisser performs convincingly.

And when the young man is at his most aggressive, Lyon responds well. His body language – his pursed, protruding lips and the set of his shoulders – occasionally make it clear that Mr. Green has been put on the defensive and is scrambling. The rest of the time, Lyon’s character seems suitably shell-bound – prickly in a tough exterior. And Lyon in particular appeared to relish his part in the production, filling Mr. Green with an appealing vitality and sense of repressed optimism that otherwise might be missing from the play.



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