Review: Theatre Artists Studio Presents Neil Simon's ROSE AND WALSH

ROSE AND WALSH is the last play written by Neil Simon, the prolific playwright, now 91 years old, who was hailed in 1991, by the New York Times critic, David Richards, as the Last of the Red Hot Playwrights. The work, which, in concept, has the potential of rising to red hot, is, however, a simmering but unsteady and almost trite rumination on love and loss and legacy. Last, but not the best in a long line of semi-autobiographical works that parallel Simon's stages of life.

It is said that Simon was inspired by Lillian Hellman's 31-year affair with Dashiell Hammett, a relationship sentimentalized in the warm embrace of a 1965 memoir in the New York Review of Books. It may also be that, given Simon's penchant for autobiography, the play was one of a couple of ill-fated attempts to cope with the unrelenting grief over the loss of his first wife, Joan Baim. In Jake's Women (1990), his central character engages with the women in his life, including reminiscences with the heaven-sent spirit of his wife. That play failed as did a subsequent effort, Rose's Dilemma, which (if, at first, you don't succeed...) then morphed into ROSE AND WALSH.

However the play emerged, it wades in shallow waters, uplifted only by periodic flashes of Simonesque one-liner brilliance ("Come upstairs, I hate it when we make love and you're downstairs" or "Never judge a woman by what she wears, it's what she buys that counts.").

In its current staging, Theatre Artists Studio's season opener, directed by Deborah Lee Hall, the potential I referred to earlier is unfulfilled.

The romantic fantasy centers on Rose Steiner (Marney Austin) ~ two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, residing in a Long Island beach house with her daughter Arlene (Julie Lee), eyesight failing, drowning in debt, and forlorn over the passing five years earlier of her 25-year amour and fellow writer, Walsh McLaren (Tom Koelbel). For solace, she has conjured his specter and nightly engages with him in romantic banter (A reminder, dear reader, that "Death is easy. Living is the hard part." Too, echoes of Ghost, but hardly as moving.)

Problem: Walsh has given her two weeks notice that he is retiring ~ no more nocturnal trysts ~ but not before he can ensure Rose's financial security. Solution: Complete his secretly stashed and unfinished manuscript, Mexican Standoff, with the help of (you guessed it!) a ghost writer. The intended result: A barnburner of a book that will fill Rose's diminishing coffers. Enter Gavin Clancy (Jason Isaak), a pulp novelist, who rises to the literary opportunity, and, in due course, becomes Arlene's beau.

How do you let go of the one you love? How do you let go of the memory? How do you survive?

There's enough here, in these questions, to produce a memorable balance of belly laughs and tears. That is, as long as the chemistry between the characters is convincing and the story line demonstrates clarity of direction.

Alas, the script is tired and tiresome. The director's pacing of the play does not help, weighed down further by too much gravity in the featured performances.

Steiner's Rose is defined as nearly blind yet she navigates her property with alacrity. Her lines suggest a woman with her wits intact, sassy and confident, but her mood swings more to helpless, hopeless and solemn. Koelbel, in contrast, comes closest to capturing his character's legendary charisma ~ draped and dashing in an elegant silver robe, gliding in and out of Rose's peripheral vision, playful but resolute in his plan to quit her. On the up side, Rose and Walsh's mutual affection, their combative but playful exchanges, and their interdependence manages to shine through. Fortunately, for both, and thanks to Simon, there is an afterlife.

Isaak's Clancy seems the opportunist, a wannabe writer who seizes the moment to skim off of Walsh's fame but takes to Arlene and (what?) becomes the sudden gentleman. The kindling relationship between him and Arlene emerges out of left field, leaving the bases of believability empty.

It is Julie Lee who evolves in this play to a climactic and emotionally powerful performance as the aggrieved daughter who wishes only that her mother care more for her than a ghost. Her second act outburst resonates with poignancy.

And that was opening night! Time yet for sorting out the gaps and lapses. Neil Simon fans will want to test the waters, I'm sure.

ROSE AND WALSH runs through September 2nd at The Studio in Scottsdale, AZ.

Photo credit to Mark Gluckman