1. 12/29/14 Theater Review of ‘MyOld Lady’ Performed byPalm Beach Dramaworks - WSJ
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West Palm Beach, Fla.
Israel Horovitz, who in the ’60s and ’70s was one of New York’s most prolific and
talked-about playwrights, is now better known in France, where more than 50 of his
plays have been translated and produced, than in his native land. In “My Old Lady,”
first seen off Broadway in 2002 and now being performed with delicacy and grace by
Palm Beach Dramaworks, he tacitly acknowledged this unjust state of affairs by
writing a play set in Paris that he calls “a love letter thanking France for giving me my
French life.”
“My Old Lady” is a three-hander whose plot is set in motion by Mathias (Tim
Altmeyer), a failed American novelist with a weakness for drink who inherits a
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THEATER REVIEW
Another American in Paris
A failed American novelist inherits a luxurious but crumbling Paris apartment that’s occupied
by two iron-willed Frenchwomen in ‘My Old Lady’
Tim Altmeyer and Estelle Parsons in ‘My Old Lady.’ ALICIA DONELAN
Dec. 18, 2014 10:25 p.m. ET
By
TERRY TEACHOUT

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luxurious but crumbling Paris apartment from his otherwise indifferent father. The
apartment, as he learns when he travels to France to sell it, has been occupied for the
past half-century by two iron-willed Frenchwomen who haven’t the slightest
intention of quitting the premises, a vinegary spinster named Chloé (Angelica Page)
and her mother (Estelle Parsons), a worldly nonagenarian who is given to speaking her
mind with alarming directness: “I’m 90. Subtlety is something that does not interest
me.” It emerges that Mathilde, Chloé’s mother, was intimate with Mathias’s father,
and that Mathias and Chloé are both unhappy and unfulfilled.
Nothing especially surprising happens thereafter, any more than it does in a Mozart
symphony. You know as soon as they meet that Mathias and Chloé will fall in love, and
that Mathilde will do what she can to help them overcome the formidable conflicts of
temperament that stand between them and the possibility of happiness. The magic of
“My Old Lady” lies in the preternatural skill with which Mr. Horovitz propels his
beautifully drawn characters toward what you trust will be their predestined fates.
This is the kind of play in which you want your expectations to be fulfilled, and don’t
feel manipulated in the least by the machinations that lead you down the path to the
final destination.
The 87-year-old Ms. Parsons came to grief on Broadway last season in a poor play
called “The Velocity of Autumn” that closed after 16 performances. Fortunately, that
disaster did nothing to diminish her amazing energy and forcefulness. Watching her
on stage in Florida, I couldn’t help wishing that New York audiences could see how
authoritative she still is. But “My Old Lady” is not a one-woman show, and this
production wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does were the other roles not so perfectly
cast. It’s been quite some time since Ms. Page was last seen on a New York stage, and I’d
forgotten what we’ve been missing by her absence. She stalks around the stage like a
cat who doesn’t care to be touched, waiting until the right moment to let slip the
bruised vulnerability that is barely concealed by her sharp manner. (She also speaks
with a toothsomely tart French accent, for which Ben Furey, the dialect coach,
presumably deserves a slice of the credit.) As for the Florida-based Mr. Altmeyer, he’s
the secret ingredient in this production: You might not notice the strength of his
solidly grounded performance, but it provides an indispensable anchor for Ms. Page
and Ms. Parsons.
The virtues of William Hayes’s direction, like those of Mr. Altmeyer’s acting, are
discreet but definite: He has taken a play that in the wrong hands could become sticky
and staged it with an unsentimental warmth that makes the denouement all the more

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moving for its lack of gush. K. April Soroko, the scenic designer, has created exactly the
right frame for the proceedings, a drawing room whose obvious elegance does not
disguise the fact that it’s seen better days. (You don’t have any trouble imagining that
the bedrooms in this apartment get very cold in December.) Brian O’Keefe’s costumes
are just what they should be, especially the ones worn by Ms. Page, who looks like a
middle-aged Parisian bourgeoise who is still proud enough to take reasonably good
care of herself but no longer hopes to meet the man of her dreams.
Though Mr. Horovitz recently turned “My Old Lady” into a film starring Kevin Kline
and Maggie Smith, it’s more effective onstage, and this production underlines the
play’s sadness without diluting the leavening touches of comedy that make it so
satisfying. It is the seventh show that I’ve seen since 2009 at Palm Beach Dramaworks,
whose motto is “Theatre to Think About,” and it’s as thought-provoking as its
predecessors. To those benighted folk who still persist in doubting the high quality
and cultural significance of American regional theater, I can only reply that to have
seen such plays as Eugène Ionesco’s “The Chairs,” Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen,”
Paul Zindel’s “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” and Mr.
Horovitz’s “My Old Lady” in West Palm Beach is to know better.
—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, is the author of “Duke: A Life of Duke
Ellington,” which recently received an ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil
Thomson Award. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com