Mix Two Strangers, Let Simmer

It’s one of the most familiar formulas on stage and screen: Throw together two mutually suspicious or even hostile strangers, and then contrive events and revelations so that they achieve a degree of hard-earned respect, affection or even love for each other.

This recipe is used so often that it’s easy to dismiss any particular example as an exercise in fill-in-the-blanks sentiment. Yet some of these examples clearly yield more laughs and then tears--and more satisfied consumers--than others.

Jeff Baron’s “Visiting Mr. Green,” at Pasadena Playhouse, is one of the better examples. Or at least it seems that way under the guidance of director Andrew J. Robinson, and with the redoubtable Harold Gould in the title role.

Gould plays a lonely widower, 86, living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a Gary Wissmann-designed apartment that looks much as it did circa 1940, only drearier. That’s when Mr. Green and his wife were newlyweds, living over his dry cleaning shop.

Into his life strides Ross Gardiner (Daniel Nathan Spector), 29, an American Express executive who has been sentenced to assist the old man as penance for reckless driving. Ross’ car, we learn, almost hit Mr. Green as he crossed a street. The old man escaped injury. Still, the judge assigned Ross to visit Mr. Green each Thursday evening for six months and help out around the apartment--a plan that Mr. Green immediately resents. If it seems unlikely that the judge would have forced Mr. Green to accept Ross’ help against his will, just forget it and play along.

When Ross first shows up bearing soup from a kosher deli, Gould’s Mr. Green looks like a modern King Lear on the moors. His belt’s unbuckled, and his haunted eyes struggle to absorb what this young intruder is saying. (His program bio reports that Gould performed “King Lear” at Utah Shakespeare Festival; why not in L.A.?). After he finally figures out who Ross is, the men agree to request an end to the arrangement, but the offstage judge won’t budge. And so the two of them have plenty of time to get to know each other.

Mr. Green softens somewhat when he learns that Ross, too, is Jewish, though he’s scornful of the younger man’s ignorance of his Jewish roots and kosher culture. However, Ross draws Mr. Green into reminiscences about his dear, departed wife, Yetta. As we approach intermission, the two of them are getting along so well that we wonder how the play might possibly sustain another act.

As if on cue, Baron releases the first of two tide-turning pieces of news just before intermission, saving the second for not long after the break. Ross is the source of the first disclosure, while the second comes from Mr. Green. Both developments provide much-needed spurs to the drama, but for the sake of retaining an element of surprise, we won’t reveal the details.

Let’s just say that the disclosures and their aftermath allow the poignancy that Baron has bottled up inside the play to come out in a torrent. Keep tissues handy.

In recognition of the beginning of Yom Kippur at sundown Sunday, the playhouse moved the start of the opening performance to a time three hours earlier in the afternoon than usual. It turns out that this gesture was even more appropriate than one might have realized. The play is not only about two Jews, but its message is almost completely in accord with that of the day of atonement.

Still, it must be noted that the play violates the usual conventions of its genre in one way that isn’t completely satisfying--both of the key revelations reflect badly on Mr. Green, and he ends up doing most of the atoning, prodded by Ross. Often in these plays, each character benefits about equally from his association with the other, but here Ross is much more self-aware from the beginning. By the end, Ross has changed slightly, but this is due more to an offstage incident with his family than it is to his association with Mr. Green.

This means that Spector, as Ross, doesn’t have the opportunity to transform before our eyes as much as Gould. Nonetheless, Spector provides solid support, taking care to establish Ross’ occasional arrogance and impatience as well as his genial affability.

Gould, meanwhile, is irresistibly irascible and then unquestionably moving as the octogenarian who’s just beginning to figure out how to live the rest of his life. His performance makes “Visiting Mr. Green” worth a visit.

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“Visiting Mr. Green,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 24. $13.50-$42.50. (800) 233-3123. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Harold Gould: Mr. Green

Daniel Nathan Spector: Ross Gardiner

Written by Jeff Baron. Directed by Andrew J. Robinson. Set by Gary Wissmann. Costumes by Maggie Morgan. Lighting by Michael S. Zinman. Casting by Marilyn Mandel. Sound and music by Mitchell Greenhill. Production stage manager Jill Johnson Gold.