Trafalgar Studios, London SW1
The last time Warren Mitchell was on the West End stage he played Solomon, the 89-year-old furniture dealer in Arthur Miller’s The Price. This time he plays another Jewish New York octogenarian. In Jeff Baron’s gentle two-hander, Mitchell is Mr Green, a lonely widower who waits for death in his grubby — though kosher — apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. Death came pretty close a while back when he was nearly knocked down while crossing the road.
Baron’s play begins with the arrival of young executive Ross (Gideon Turner), the speeding driver who has been sentenced to six months community service for which he has to visit the old man once a week. Over this period, mutual suspicion turns into a predictably tender relationship.
