A powerfully poignant and often hilarious play, The Waverly Gallery is about the final years of a generous, chatty, and feisty grandmother's final battle against Alzheimer's disease. Gladys is an old-school lefty and social activist and longtime owner of a small art gallery in Greenwich Village. The play explores her fight to retain her independence and the subsequent effect of her decline on her family, especially her grandson. More than a memory play, The Waverly Gallery captures the humor and strength of a family in the face of crisis.
The Waverly Gallery forces us to deal with the walking memento mori that Gladys has become, but in a way that never seems cruel. Infuriating though she often is, it's impossible to hate her, and the casting of May, in her return to the Broadway stage after more than half a century, works brilliantly. She is funny and warm and she's familiar, which helps fill in some of the play's emotional blanks: Our affection and respect for this titan of American comedy spills over into how we respond to her character.
May brings her comic genius to the role of Gladys, and that very off-center, always marvelously skewed approach to the text goes a long way toward making the character much less of a trial for us in the audience than she is supposed to be for the characters around her.
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