COLD STORAGE by Ronald Ribman, directed by Jeff Seymour, with Seymour and Len Lesser. At the George Ignatieff Theatre (15 Devonshire). To June 11. $20-$25. 416-978-8849. See listing. Rating: NN
Some plays evaporate shortly after seeing them. That’s the case with Cold Storage, a self-produced version of Ronald Ribman’s play from the 1970s.[rssbreak]
On the roof of a New York City hospital, two very different men meet. Richard (Jeff Seymour) is a refined 40-something art dealer who’s in for exploratory surgery, while Joseph (Len Lesser), the owner of a fruit and vegetable store, is a cantankerous senior in the advantaged stages of cancer.
Their initial comic sparrings, interspersed with strange allusions to Edward Spenser, Arthurian quests and the poetry of Wallace Stevens, of course give way to more serious musings about mortality and the meaning of life. There’s nothing in the script that we haven’t seen done before – and better.
The actors invest their thin characters with some life. Lesser (best known as Uncle Leo on TV’s Seinfeld) has the showier role, hamming it up with racist comments. The guy knows how to tell a story. Seymour is very good at the slow simmer, his character’s smugness hiding a difficult past. But too often in the second act he’s so subtle you can barely hear what he’s saying.
Seymour, a noted TV actor (Jeff Ltd., The Eleventh Hour), also directs, which could be a problem. There’s no camera to zoom in for a shadowy close-up and catch every pregnant pause. He should do better with David Mamet’s Speed-The-Plow, which he performs in the same theatre from June 15 to 25.
