(Image Here For Now Theatre)
Forty-Seven At Here For Now Theatre
When I was forty-seven, it was a very good year. I married the love of my life, who also turned forty-seven that year, and we’ve been together happily for thirty years.
Perhaps Deanna Kruger hasn’t been as lucky because her new play, Forty-Seven is a real downer.
Two sisters, Trish (Kristen Gauthier) who is turning forty-seven and Maddy (Martha Farrell), a mere pup of forty, meet to clear out their recently deceased father’s apartment and celebrate (which is hardly the right word) one of the glummest, grimmest birthdays ever. Home truths are spoken and mysteries are solved. Who was Trish talking to on the phone in the first scene? Why couldn’t Maddy reach Trish when their father was about to breathe his last?
Trish is convinced that forty-seven is the saddest year of one’s life and Forty-Seven, the play, does a pretty fair job of convincing you that just might be true. It is by turns earnest and wearing, poignant and tedious. The best efforts of a game cast under the attentive direction of Rebecca Cuthbertson are of little avail. The technical limitations of Here For Now Theatre’s tiny space at the Falstaff Family Center don’t help a play that requires multiple —and brief — blackouts between its many short scenes to keep the pace from dragging. It’s a rare miss for Here For Now.
Writing Forty-Sevcn may have been good therapy for playwright Kruger. I was in need of liquid therapy at play’s end.
Forty-Seven plays through July 31, 2022.
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