While Broadway’s The Height of the Storm gives an unflinching, brutal look at the aging process, Michael Tucker’s Fern Hill, at 59E59 Theater after premiering at New Jersey Repertory Company, offers a rosier slant on the same subject. Once again, we are in a well-appointed kitchen of a country house where the mature occupants are facing difficult life choices (designer Jessica Parks is responsible for this elegant eatery). But this time, the solutions are relatively easy, and the outlook is full of fun and mirth with only a few bumps in the road.
The house belongs to writer Jer and painter Sunny. This weekend they are hosting two other couples—rock musician Billy and educator Michiko, and fellow painter Victor and photographer Darla.
Sunny proposes all six move into the farmhouse together and care for each other in a commune situation as they face their “golden years.” The only fly in the idyllic ointment is Jer who can’t accept the possibility of the scheme working and whose marriage to Sunny is crumbling due to his infidelity.
Tucker, best known for his acting on the “L.A. Law” series, has a knack with funny and realistic dialogue, and the issues he is tackling are certainly vital, but he ties up all conflicts and ambiguities a bit too neatly with an second-act group therapy session where all the characters are able to express their emotions like psychological experts.
The realities of eldercare are addressed too glibly, as well. When Victor, the eldest member of the group at 80, requires serious rehabilitation after hip-replacement surgery, and his wife Darla is conflicted about attending an important gallery showing of her work in Vienna, the problem is resolved with a minimum of fuss and messiness, unlike in real life.
It’s an easy, entertaining evening capably staged by Nadia Tass and played with wit and verve by a veteran cast led by Tucker’s real-life wife and frequent co-star Jill Eikenberry as Sunny and Mark Blum as Jer. John Glover as Victor, Jodi Long as Michiko, and Ellen Parker as Darla also have moments of comic splash and dramatic pathos, while Mark-Linn Baker’s free-wheeling Billy provides the play’s highlight with an enthusiastic monologue on the proper way to prepare pasta with clam sauce. However, if the best part of a play about aging is a recipe, the cooks have missed the mark.
