It’s perhaps ironical that Kenneth Lonergan’s “The Waverly Gallery” is considered a “memory play” when its story is of an elderly woman beginning to slip into Alzheimer’s disease. The gallery is one that the character, Gladys Green, owns in Greenwich Village. She lives above it and clings to it.
Lonergan’s play, in which both Eileen Heckart and Joanne Woodward starred as Gladys when it premiered during the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1999, didn’t make its Broadway debut until 2018. That revival would earn Elaine May, playing Gladys, a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Now Deborah Gilmour Smyth, associate artistic director of Lamb’s Players Theatre, steps into the role of Gladys in Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s production of “The Waverly Gallery,” beginning previews next Thursday.
It’s the latest star turn for Gilmour Smyth at Backyard, where she performed last year in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” and the year before that in “August: Osage County.” Francis Gercke, who is directing, co-directed and performed in New Village Arts’ production of “The Wavery Gallery” 20 years ago.
Gilmour Smyth calls playing Gladys Green “extremely emotional. Lonergan wrote this back in the ‘90s when a lot of things were just beginning to be assimilated and put into books to help people dealing with aging parents.”
“I’ve seen some of this,” added Gilmour Smyth, who says she has power of attorney for a good friend who just in the past 18 months has entered memory care. “It’s painful in a way I didn’t expect. I said I would do this (role) last year; then my friend started getting worse and worse. But it’s been bizarrely helpful in a way.”
The cast of Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s “Waverly Gallery,” left to right, Alexander Ameen, Katie MacNichol, Deborah Gilmour Smyth, Tom Zohar and William Huffaker. (Backyard Renaissance Theatre)
“The Waverly Gallery” is told from the perspective of Gladys’ grandson Daniel, who is “paying homage to his grandmother,” said Gilmour Smyth.
Tom Zohar is playing the part of Daniel, based on Lonergan’s own autobiographical experience. The Backyard cast also features Katie MacNichol as Gladys’ daughter Ellen, Alexander Ameen as Ellen’s husband Howard, and William Huffaker as a young painter from Boston named Don Bowman whom Gladys seeks to help even as her mental state deteriorates.
“It’s a lovely relationship,” said Gilmour Smyth. “But as the disease progresses, she doesn’t even know his name.”
Gilmour Smyth said Gladys was at one time an attorney and an active Greenwich Village socialist but still a woman of some vitality.
“What I love about Gladys,” she said, “is that she’s such an outgoing human being. She’s getting sick, but she’s still funny and still warm. My friend is that way, too. There’s a logic to every human being, even if they’re in dementia.”
She recognizes that some theatergoers, those who may be seeing memory loss in their own friends or family members, may be hesitant about the subject matter of “The Waverly Gallery.” But they shouldn’t be.
“I hope that people aren’t afraid of it (the play) because I think that it deals with this disease on such an honest level. It might give them a touch of healing in their heart. For me, that’s how I feel.”
‘The Waverly Gallery’
When: Previews begin Nov. 13. Opens Nov. 22 and runs through Dec. 6. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays
Where: Backyard Renaissance Theatre at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 Tenth Ave., downtown
Tickets: $15-$50
Phone: 760-975-7189
Online: backyardrenaissance.com