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In the hands of amateurs–or even average professionals–Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport easily could be turned into an ordeal for its audience: The lengthy Tony-winning comedy employs complex verbal imagery and detailed monologues to advance its story. The two main characters, on-stage almost nonstop, must run a gamut of emotions and sustain an extraordinary intensity. But luckily for Valley playgoers, the production is in the capable hands of Arizona Theatre Company.
The play itself is the star, winning attention and admiration for its intelligent, humor-leavened examination of a wide range of situations. As we’ve come to expect, ATC has pulled out all the stops. Director David Ira Goldstein and company have lushly showcased Gardner’s creation with a gigantic, stunningly realistic park set by Jeff Thomson, natural-looking lighting by Don Darnutzer, and a first-rate cast.
It’s the fall of 1982, and a couple of feisty old gents–one black, one white–are spending a typical afternoon near the edge of a lake in New York’s Central Park. For these spry octogenarians, who’ve apparently met only a few weeks earlier, a typical afternoon consists of arguing vigorously and defending a beat-up bench in a small grassy clearing at the base of an old stone bridge. Nat (Robert Ellenstein) likes to pass the time by telling outrageous, far-fetched tales about his adventures, but Midge (David Downing) has heard more than enough.
As the play begins, Nat’s claiming to be a Cuban terrorist working undercover. The long-suffering Midge, who’s still employed as an apartment-building superintendent, just wishes the old blowhard would shut up and go away. Yet we sense immediately that the two are drawn together by well-masked mutual respect.
When it’s revealed that Midge’s job is being threatened by the impending conversion of his building into condos (and his basement digs into a “garden apartment”), it’s Nat who comes to the rescue. He poses as a lawyer and lays an elaborate snow job on the chairman of the building’s tenants committee (Richard Farrell), who happens to jog by the park to tell Midge the bad news.
Veteran film, TV and stage actor Ellenstein (the president of the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek IV), delivers a tour de force performance as the rascally coot Nat. His energy never flags as he weaves one elaborate, vivid yarn after another. Even the audience gets taken in a few times as he promises repeatedly that each fabrication is really true.
Downing, fresh from playing Midge opposite Laugh-In’s Arte Johnson in a California production of the play, provides a perfect balance. Downing makes the most of some intense moments of his own, especially in a poignant scene with Danforth, the yuppified spokesman for the tenants. That squirming, sweat-suit-clad martinet has come to fire and evict Midge–but the elderly superintendent manages some dignified, sensible put-downs of his own even before Nat
barges in.
It isn’t until the second act that we learn that Nat has a 41-year-old daughter named Clara (Susan Long). And it’s not because of anything he says, it’s only because she shows up at the park hunting for her dad, something she’s had to do many times before. Clara is the only one of several children Nat has fathered whom he’ll speak to, and even she drives him crazy. Long’s abrasive accent seems forced at times, and her role is certainly overshadowed by her dad–yet she does reasonably well.
Clara has come with an ultimatum. Worried sick over her aging pop’s penchant for sticking his nose in where it isn’t welcome, Clara has decided he’s too old and too vulnerable to live alone in the big city. She offers him three choices: Move in with her and her husband, move to a “home” or remain where he’s living now but check in daily at the neighborhood senior activity center.
The sly old fox, unimpressed by Clara’s three plans, concocts his most convincing fiction of all: He “reveals” that he has another, long-lost daughter–the product, he claims, of an old love affair–who has only just resurfaced and has insisted on moving Nat with her to Israel, where she’ll take care of him. Stunned, Clara falls for the story. But she wants to meet her mysterious half-sister, so Nat glibly agrees to produce her in person in a few days.
Nat and his ready bag of verbal tricks end up causing a frightening encounter with a knife-wielding punk (Mathew Zimmerer) and a scuffle with an angry hoodlum (Ben Prager), yet it’s clear that the resolute Nat won’t change his ways even in the face of physical danger.
The plight of the aging may be the central theme of I’m Not Rappaport, but many common big-city troubles get thoughtful coverage as well. Playwright Gardner’s richly textured work goes for nearly three hours, all told, and it’s all delectable stuff. Even heartwarming.
I’m Not Rappaport continues through Sunday at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts.
