shoulda', woulda', coulda'
-- Stella Dempsey Garden's one-two-three sumup of her son Arthur's award winning book Probable Paths.

Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson

• Besides the real-life acting couple who portray the Gardens, it's fun to watch the double mishpoche casting. Jerry Stiller's Herschel Strange, benefactor of the Strange Award that sets the Garden family's confrontations in motion, is a deliciously funny other worldly presence in three screened segments of his life and times, starting with his falling off his bike and declaring that "Everything in life is balance."
  
  
• Meara and Stiller's daughter Amy and the Wallach's daughter Roberta play double roles. Amy portrays the Gardens' ditzy, therapy espousing daughter Sharon in the first segment and their fresh out of rehab granddaughter Jodie in the middle section. Roberta metamorphoses from their unhappy daughter-in-law Claire (she's got plenty to weep about -- an autistic child, a cheating husband she likens to "a malignant growth", her own affair with Arthur which leaves her frustrated but makes him "feel Presidential" -- don't ask!) into an equally unhappy friend of Arthur's. She tries, unsuccessfully, to keep the Gardens' increasingly acrimonious interaction about her murdered brother (and Arthur's lover) from getting out of hand.
  
  
• To avoid nepotism, we have John Shea (who actually looks as if he could be Anne Jackson's son). There are also Leslie Lyles as Arthur's biological clock obsessed wife in part one, and as Jodie's mother in part two and Adam Grupper as the brother who in the first two segments owes his life to Arthur -- though during the middle reunion we see what happened when he was not pulled out of Lake Kiamesha in time to avoid permanent brain damage. All three perform admirably in their overly oy veh roles.
  
  
• The most fun aspects of the play are in Ms. Meara's sly allusions. She tips her pen to the characters in the play's prestigious Broadway neighbor, Copenhagen (Our Review). People old enough to remember will recognize Milton Berle as the inspiration for the recently deceased comic, Shmeckie Cabot, whose eulogy is as much on the senior Garden's mind as what's happening at the family reunion. (I should mention that while the Wallachs tend to attract golden agers, Thursday night's performance was attended mostly by people under forty-five).
  
  
• The staging supports the play's format. The awards scenes and the screen projected sequences are the same but with variations. The only constant is the projected date of the ceremony -- November 9, 2000 which, besides being the show's first performance date is also the date (in 1938) when Hitler's thugs went on the rampage known as Kristall Nacht. Given Herschel's European beginnings and the playwright's liking for veiled allusions, this may not be mere coincidence. If you keep your eye on the pictures in James Youman's handsome set of Arthur Garden's apartment, you'll note that they too change with each replay. While Arthur and his dad remain in their special events tuxedos, David Murin dresses Anne Jackson in three different outfits (she looks terrific in all).