Graham's "Outgoing Tide' in Wilmington

Last April's Philadelphia premiere of Bruce Graham's The Outgoing Tide demonstrated Graham's mastery of the basic elements of drama and comedy but not the subject of his play: Alzheimer's disease. (To read my review of that production, click here.)

Graham's drama concerns a 70-something man's confrontation with his increasingly frequent mental lapses. Gunner Concannon hatches an unorthodox plan to secure his family's future but meets with resistance from his wife, who wants to put him into an assisted living facility. Gunner wants to arrange an "accidental" death on Chesapeake Bay that will avoid the indignity of senility and enrich his survivors.

In the play's current Delaware Theatre Company incarnation, nothing has changed in Bruce Graham's script, but the direction and acting interpretations revealed the story in a new light.

The well-known TV actor Peter Strauss played the central character a bit more youthful and with more vigor than did the otherwise superb Richard Poe in the Philadelphia premiere.

Gunner and his wife, we are told, grew up in South Philadelphia; presumably they could be related to The Philly Fan, another Bruce Graham creation. Gunner is a blue-collar tough guy who seeks forgiveness, not only for what he's about to do but also for his mistakes as a husband and father. In the Philadelphia production, Poe as Gunner slapped his palm against his forehead to show his frustration when he momentarily forgot a word. In Wilmington, Strauss banged his fists against the sides of his head at those moments, revealing not only his anger with himself but his power as well.

This alternate interpretation by Strauss and director Bud Martin yields two results. First, it shows that illnesses like Alzheimer's often hit people who are still physically healthy. Second, because this man seems a bit quicker and more proactive, I was able to discount his huge mental lapse in the opening scene as an aberration rather than the dispositive definition of his mental state.

Michael Learned, as Gunner's wife, also seemed sharper (her character, after all, is only 67 or 68), and she played a formidable adversary to Gunner's plan. Ian Lithgow was the confused son who gained some sense of self-worth and assurance in the second act.

Of course, Alzheimer's patients do experience flashes of lucidity amid their lapses. The plot of this play demands that Gunner possess enough sustained clarity to arrange a complicated scheme and then execute it. This production renders such a scenario entirely believable.♦


To read a follow-up comment by Steve Cohen, click here.