Success can make you suspicious. Since its premiere in 1996, Jeff Baron’s über-achieving ‘Visiting Mr Green’ has had over 300 productions in 37 different countries. If you follow the logic taught by ‘Menopause the Musical®’ (‘nearly ten million women in 12 countries have attended a performance’ according to the ‘MtM®’ website), you might perversely assume that that means it has to be very, very bad indeed. Thankfully, you’d be wrong. Rather conventional it may be – it’s an odd-couple comedy with a predictable dramatic arc – but there are enough asperities in its portrait of religious and sexual intergenerational conflict to keep you engaged.
This very New York tale concerns 86-year-old Mr Green, a former dry cleaner with at least one foot still in the nineteenth century, and Ross, a young yuppie sent by the court to spend time with the old curmudgeon after nearly knocking him down. Their weekly encounters begin in frosty mistrust and end with a hug, but though the final minutes are pat and somewhat sentimental, at least Baron has the good grace not to lay too much emphasis on Mr Green’s sudden change of heart.
The main selling point for Patrick Garland’s production, though, is the two beautifully observed performances from Gideon Turner as Ross and Warren Mitchell as the old patriarch. His form rounded out by trousers that ride up high, Mitchell’s Mr Green speaks in a half-swallowed voice hollowed out by grief and disappointment. As for his paddling gait, it’s one of the most affecting things you’ll ever see on stage. That walk is worth the price of admission alone.
