It’s I’m Not Rappaport meets Waiting for Godot meets The Gin Game! Take two old codgers on a park bench, combine with existential meanderings in a fixed setting, season with the ravages of aging, and you have Just Another Day, Dan Lauria’s uncertain reflection on all three components (but especially the third). Just Another Day suffers from being too much—well, just another day. Nothing terribly dramatic happens, and a great deal of curiously multisyllabic palaver fills out the hour and 45 minutes, including intermission. But it does have two actors very much worth seeing, for Lauria has cast himself, and opposite him, a flawless Patty McCormack.
Morning’s at Seven
Paul Osborn’s play Morning’s At Seven is one of theater’s great rescues. A flop on Broadway in 1939, it was resurrected in 1980 by director Vivian Matalon, whose peerless production established it as a classic piece of Americana. It’s a gentle satire on small-town life, with busybodies and petty jealousies and snobbery, and although it’s as sturdily constructed as a Chekhov play, it’s not as dark. There may be conflicts, but the characters have more fun—and are fun to be around.