Jill Eikenberry Stars in FERN HILL by Michael Tucker

L-R: John Glover, Mark Linn-Baker, Ellen Parker, Jodi Long, Jill Eikenberry, and Mark Blum in FERN HILL.  Photo by Carol Rosegg. 

Fern Hill by Michael Tucker, currently enjoying its New York City premiere at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan, is a beautifully written and brilliantly performed play about three “artsy” couples in their golden years and the relationships that exist between the partners in each of the three marriages:

Vincent (John Glover) is an established painter who will be entering the hospital for hip replacement surgery in a matter of days and who will be turning eighty in two months.  His much younger wife, Darla (Ellen Parker), is an acclaimed photographer who is about to be honored with her first one-woman exhibition in Vienna.

Jer (Mark Blum), is a respected writer and college professor who is celebrating his seventieth birthday today.  His wife, Sunny (Jill Eikenberry) is another talented painter, albeit one not nearly as well established as Vincent.  Together they own and reside in Fern Hill, a farmhouse retreat outside the city.

Billy (Mark Linn-Baker) is a stoner, a foodie and a rock-and-roll musician who will turn 60 next week.  His Asian wife, Michiko (Jodi Long), first met Billy when he was on tour years ago and she was one of his groupies; she currently works in a college’s Fine Arts Department.

The three couples have been close friends for years and now are all together at Fern Hill where they are about to celebrate the milestone birthdays for all three men: Billy’s sixtieth, Jer’s seventieth, and Vincent’s eightieth.  And to consider Sunny’s proposal that they form something of a commune and all move in together at Fern Hill to live out their final years together.

Sunny’s idea really does make a lot of sense.  Far better that they all age together and care for one another in their twilight years than that they go off to separate retirement or nursing homes to live out their final days among strangers or, worse yet, become burdens on their children.  Naturally, Vincent is all for it: he is, after all, the oldest and the frailest of the group with the shortest remaining life expectancy.  And while he loves his New York loft, the area in which it is located is rapidly becoming gentrified with “undesirable” hedge fund types and celebrities and even one of the Kennedy kids, and he doesn’t like that at all so he really won’t mind giving it up.  And that’s reason enough for Darla, his primary caregiver, to favor the idea as well.

 

And, despite their being the youngest of the three couples, it makes particular sense for Billy and Michiko for an additional financial reason: Billy’s band, Olly Golly, is no longer as popular as it once was and Billy’s and Michiko’s combined income has declined substantially (although they’re still spending as much as ever); if they move to Fern Hill, they can sell their New York apartment and live comfortably from the proceeds of the sale.  And of course Sunny loves the idea: it was her idea to begin with after all, she loves her friends – and maybe Jer is no longer quite enough for her.

Jer, however, is the lone holdout.  Yes, he loves his friends but he doubts that he would love them as much if they were around all the time.  More than any of the others, he values his privacy – as well he should.  For as it turns out, Jer has been carrying on with a young, promiscuous student – which might not fit in so well with his living a communal life with his more elderly friends at Fern Hill.

When Jer’s adulterous affair is disclosed, Sunny is understandably upset.  She considers throwing him out and perhaps she will.  But the issue of whether or not she throws him out is not really what drives the play.  Nor is the issue of whether or not the six friends actually will form a commune and live together in their final years at Fern Hill.

No, what really animates the play are the discussions among the six friends regarding their own sex lives; the distinctions they draw between sex and intimacy; their marriages; their own past indiscretions, shortcomings, and prior adulterous experiences; their perceptions of how they or their partners may have changed over the years; and their own assignments of credit or blame for whatever failures may have occurred in their relationships.

It is all very enlightening but, as Billy put it, it is also a kind of Rashomon experience in which the participants each see things in a different way.  So, for example, Jer sincerely blames Sunny for his own infidelity since she stopped “adoring” him and stopped “enjoying” their active sex lives whereas Sunny honestly believes that their sex lives had been artificial “performances” for years and that she only stopped “adoring” Jer when he stopped being “adorable.”

Tucker has a wonderful ear for language.  Billy’s rendition of his recipe for spaghetti and clam sauce, for example, might not be in a class with Hamlet’s soliloquy but it is, without doubt, the most delightful exposition of a recipe for the classic dish that I have ever heard. And Darla’s explanation of why Jer was so easily seduced by one of his students was as sharp and succinct as it could be:

“You were the man.  Men are easy, Jer.  They come with a handle.”

The entire cast of Fern Hill is absolutely terrific but two members of the cast really stood out.  Jill Eikenberry’s performance as Sunny, the betrayed and disillusioned wife, still in love with her husband but wishing that things could just go back to the way they were, was impeccably nuanced.  And Mark Linn-Baker was simply superb as Billy, the 60-year-old drug and alcohol addicted Peter Pan who never really grew up and continued to live in the past – though, all things considered, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.