For Better Or For Worse: APT drama portrays challenges of love, life, aging

"I draw on my mother for every character I've ever done," says Kerry Beebe, cast in the leading role in Arkansas Public Theatre's production of Kenneth Lonergan's "The Waverly Gallery." "My mom, in her long life and complexity, serves as a template: Queen, socialite, cantankerous grouch, flighty biddy. Thinking of her grounds me and prevents me from falling into a stereotype or caricature. I hope."

In the case of Gladys Green, Beebe says, "I also especially drew on my grandmother -- a charming hostess (like Gladys once was)."

"I remember her confusion and frustration near the end of her life when her brain didn't work as well as it always had," Beebe says. "I don't believe anyone would see either woman in my performance; I'm not trying to imitate them at all but ground myself in them and use my love for them as a springboard into a better understanding of Gladys.

"Family is so important. Family has made us what we are, for better or for worse."

That's pretty much the heart of "The Waverly Gallery," a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gladys has run an art gallery in a small Greenwich Village hotel for many years and, although she rarely has customers and even more rarely sells anything, her daily presence there anchors her world. She's slipping cognitively and, as New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley put it in a 2018 review, she is "conducting what might be called extreme improvisation. She's bluffing, fabricating, groping for a direction in what must often seem like a void."

Gladys, he writes, "operates on the principle that if she can just continue to talk, she can surely power through the thickening fog of her old age. That she has clearly already lost this battle makes her no less valiant."

That's one of the demands placed on Beebe, whose acting experience includes the American Theatre Co. in Tulsa and "a bunch of different theaters in the Denver area" in roles such as Vera Charles in "Auntie Mame," Mattie Fay in "August: Osage County" and Mrs. Watts in "Trip to Bountiful."

"Gladys talks a lot. Incessantly," she says. "That's a challenge due to the sheer volume of her words, but it's also a challenge to maintain variety and interest. The reward is the same. There is so much rich information about the character as revealed by both Gladys and her family, it's a delight to surf through the many layers of her personality."

As Gladys fails, it falls to her daughter, Ellen, and her grandson, Daniel, to try to help her, guide her, keep her safe and figure out her future when the landlord wants to close the Waverly Gallery. APT veteran Katherine Forbes plays Ellen, a role with "current painful parallels in my family with dementia and Alzheimer's," but one she says is also a stretch for her as an actress.

"I'm pretty open and extroverted," Forbes explains. "I have many people I care about and wear my emotions on my sleeve. I kind of love big. Ellen is a 180 from that. In fact, she's a little critical of the need for a large circle. She's a very complex lady; so many guards up, and she fights not to ever let them down. When she does, she feels she's failed."

Forbes says she approached the role by taking "the true love and loyalty as a daughter, mother and partner that I have been blessed with and understand, then [working] on sharing that in Ellen's way. Not my way. She doesn't love less because she is quiet or reserved. Just differently."

Director Joseph Farmer says everyone in the audience is likely to see someone they know in a character onstage -- and he thinks everyone is certain to react to the story.

"At its core, theater makes us feel," he says. "'The Waverly Gallery' is an example of great classic American theater, busting at the seams with interesting characters and emotions."

"I've heard it said that every family with more than one person in it is dysfunctional," adds Beebe. "Our families are the most irritating and annoying. Despite that, or because of that, Gladys' family still loves and honors her. They model the respect and commitment due to the aging."

"Once the audience meets Gladys, from the moment the lights come up, they won't forget her any time soon," Farmer concludes.