‘Park Your Car in Harvard Yard’

Off-Broadstreet Theatre’s 196th production is one of its best.

By: Stuart Duncan

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Alison Quairoli plays Kathleen Hogan and Benjamin Lovell is Jacob Brackish in Park Your Car in Harvard Yard.

   Some plays are readily identified as tragedies or comedies. Melodramas are easy too; farces as well. But a play such as Park Your Car In Harvard Yard really defies an easy category. It was written by Israel Horovitz, who is the artistic director of Gloucester Stage Company (which, of course, gives him a venue for any of his works he feels is worthwhile). This one workshopped in Los Angeles before opening in Gloucester, Mass., just outside Boston. From there it went to Manhattan Theatre Club, with a cast of Ellen Burstyn and Burgess Meredith, and premiered in February of 1984.
   It then had a Broadway opening (in 1991) with Judith Ivey and Jason Robards in the leads, and as of this moment is being revived in Paris and in Prague as well as warming up for a movie shoot. Surprisingly, with all that activity, few people seem to know about the work.
   What a shame! It’s a powerfully entertaining play and has just opened at Hopewell’s Off-Broadstreet Theatre for a six-week run. It is exquisitely directed and acted by the cast of two — well, two-and-a-half, really; there is a radio voice that for all intents and purposes is very much a character in the action. (In the Broadway staging, that voice belonged to Christopher Plummer, so you can see someone felt it was an important ingredient.)
   In essence, Park Your Car In Harvard Yard has a simple plot — an old man, Jacob Brackish, comes to his home in Gloucester, having just received a sentence of death by his family doctor. He brings with him Kathleen Hogan, a sort of housekeeper for whom he has advertised. She has already lost her battle for an easy living, but at first all we know is that he needs the company and the care; she needs the money.
   Almost immediately there are obstacles to the arrangement in little ways. He is deaf without his hearing aid and since he was once a high school teacher of music appreciation as well as English literature, there is constant music on the record player — all classical, which is not Kathleen’s forte. Also, she reveals a hidden agenda in her approach to the job when we learn that Brackish had once failed her in music when she needed a decent mark to go on to college. Not only that, he also failed her husband (now dead) and both of her parents. Kathleen blames him for much of her failure in life.
   His answer, of course, to any of this would be, "I don’t remember." Her response is: "Saying you are a hard man to please is like saying a rattlesnake is a hard animal to hug." By the end of Act 1 (the play is usually performed in a single act of 105 minutes, but with delicious desserts and beverages before the show, the producers felt an interval might be advised, so we have an intermission), we discover that Brackish is not really deaf, but uses the ploy for whatever advantage it might give him.
   And by Act 2, we learn many other secrets, some tiny, others rather important. The respect between the odd pair, however, continues to grow, even when faced with bad news. Brackish says, "There’s nothing that spreads faster than bad news and cheap oleo margarine." It’s not exactly Neil Simon dialogue, but it is very real and from the heart.
   It takes a pair of strong actors, ready to make serious choices, to find all of Horovitz’s twists and turns. Alison Quairoli and Benjamin Lovell are two such. With the obvious help of director Bob Thick, they give us a poignant evening — touching comedy, facing the past and preparing for the present, with equal honesty and eventually reaching a compromise that is fair and just. Mr. Lovell is a British actor who now makes Wilmington, Del., his home. Ms. Quairoli has just played an entirely different sort of role as one of the sexy wives in Run For Your Wife. Who knew she had this broad a range of acting talent?
   Interestingly, the style of the two are very different, and many kudos to Mr. Thick for allowing both to flash the fine points of the script, admittedly in different manners. The work is called "a comedy," but at the end Brackish dies (and so does the radio voice, played beautifully by Doug Kline). Two deaths in the same script when there are only three characters is not usually labeled "a comedy," but the evening is certainly redemptive, very human and some would say, inspirational. You can call it whatever makes you comfortable.
   For example, there is a lovely moment when Brackish does a quick bit of arithmetic and comes up with an answer. It takes Kathleen a second or so longer, but she corrects him. He is not at all used to being corrected, but he pauses and then admits his error. A tiny moment, to be sure, but a turning point, hardly noticed at the time. Comedy? Perhaps not, but quite wonderful.
   In his curtain speech, director Thick notes that this is Off-Broadstreet’s 196th continuous production. Park You Car In Harvard Yard is one of the best.
Park Your Car In Harvard Yard continues at Off-Broadstreet Theatre, 5 S. Greenwood Ave., Hopewell, through Sept. 8, Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. (desserts and beverages served one hour before show), $23.75-$27.25; (609) 466-2766; www.off-broadstreet.com