Asolo Theater Company knows it doesn't hurt to center on characters close to an audience. Though set in New York City's Central Park, I'm Not Rappaport could be any should-be-peaceful public place where two old people can share a seat. In Florida, it might well be a shelter at a beach or a spot near the fountain in a mall. Here it's a park bench slightly out from under a bridge, where retiree Nat tells tales of his radical lifetime to another octogenarian, Midge. A nearly blind "super" of a building about to go co-op, Midge is infinitely more worried about losing his job and basement apartment than the world's management vs. labor and other economic problems Nat goes on about. Besides, Nat's stories contain "alterations" that make their truth impossible to tell apart from exaggerations. So what if he really was, as he claims, "dead once and so...knows things"?
Yet despite his doubts, Midge submits to Nat helping him get rid of a young punk who forces him to pay protection money. Nat also talks him into negotiating with a rep from his building so he can stay in his home and job. The tactics turn out as badly as Nat's enlisting Midge in an attempt (a funny gangster imitation as if from "The Godfather") to foil a "Cowboy" dealer from shaking down a young woman who can't pay fully for drugs he's sold her. Then there's Nat's daughter Clara who's married with children and a good job. No longer a rebel, with or without a cause, she scorns Nat's "beloved masses" as "crap" who've given up. Worried for his safety, Clara wants him to live with her, in a home, or with a routine that includes days at a senior center.
In an area sometimes known as "God's waiting room," the audience is right with Nat when he speaks of lives now being too long to be a comfort to the young. Age frightens them as a "coming attraction." But Nat insists that life is precious close to the end, just as it was in the beginning. David S. Howard's eloquent Nat and David Downing's uptight Midge are so believable that they're cheered when they seem to be getting ahead. Gasps greet their failures. Carolyn Michel makes Clara likable.
Danforth, the condo rep, is the least stereotypical of the supporting players, and Dean Anthony wins some sympathy for him. The villains seem contrived, more suitable to 1986 when the play first appeared on Broadway, than to today. Though dope peddling and protection rackets still exist, an otherwise so-sedate part of Central Park for same may be a stretch.
What hasn't changed, for better or worse, are people getting older, seemingly without purpose or to be discarded. Likely, some of the applause is for the spirit of survival in Nat and Midge. Certainly, it is all in appreciation of Howard and Downing's indomitable spirits shining through.
Howard Millman deserves a hand for direction that lets these old pros' experiences connect with those of the characters and to emotions to which Florida retirees can definitely relate.
