Being the wife of a famous artist is not easy. It might be even harder to be a famous person’s surviving spouse. Such is the fate of Terry, whose husband, Jeffrey, an artist, died as a result of a car accident. Terry, a novelist who put his own creative ambitions on hold when Jeffrey grew up, faces a problem many women in straight relationships have long endured: “I was defined by the man I married,” Terry says. “And now, suddenly, for the first time, I’m just… Mr. Parker. And I don’t know how to do that.”
Michael McKeevers’ Mr. Parker’, which just opened on Theater Row, begins seven months after Jeffrey’s death, and Terry (Derek Smith) is still searching for himself. A good start is to start dating again, or at least picking up a stranger – baby steps.
For example, Terry finds himself in his husband’s work studio—which is less emotionally charged than their apartment—on a hungover post-coital morning. He can’t quite remember the man’s name: Kevin, maybe? Actually, it’s Justin (Davi Santos), an easygoing, doe-eyed bartender-slash-Uber driver who’s 28 to Terry’s 54.
All in all, it looks like Terry got lucky with his rebound. Justin seems sweet and thoughtful, though overly talkative. “I’m a walking encyclopedia of crappy Manhattan trivia,” he tells Terry, adding, “People either love it or hate it,” as if the ability to spew facts is a highly controversial trait.
McKeever’s previous Off Broadway shows, ‘After’ and ‘Daniel’s Husband’, dealt with serious social issues (gun violence, same-sex marriage). That touch is evident here, too: As if losing a husband wasn’t bad enough, Terry was driving at the time of the accident. And a few days later, he had to agree to have the doctors turn off the machines to keep Jeffrey alive.
Perhaps this is why the show, a Penguin Rep Theater production directed by Joe Brancato, is at its best in the lighter scenes that portray Terry and Justin’s getting to know each other. McKeever and Brancato stick to a naturalistic, down-to-earth simplicity that doesn’t shy away from the benefits every man gets from the relationship: Justin has found a rich man who pays for everything, while Terry gets to spend quality time with a handsome boy. Still, you wish the age difference was evoked in less simplistic brushstrokes. Justin has to explain to Terry that vinyl is cool, but CDs are not. Terry complains that Justin spends too much time on his phone. You’d think Terry was a 90-year-old relic who’d spent decades under a rock, not a man in his early fifties who was married to a top artist and must have been exposed to technological and sociological changes.
In any case, Terry has a living, breathing memory of his shortcomings in Jeffrey’s sister, the frail Cassandra (Mia Matthews), who is casually dismissive of Justin and tries to make the distraught Terry more proactive in his management of the imposing estate he now oversees. .
But Terry has lived in the shadow of a famous man for decades and has forgotten how to make his own decisions. Grief only exacerbates his standstill: he holds onto his old answering machine because it contains a saved message from Jeffrey, and endlessly postpones the conversation with a curator at the Whitney Museum who wants to organize a retrospective exhibition.
“Mr. Parker” isn’t the kind of play that takes audiences by surprise, so the denouement is completely predictable. And that’s arguably the show’s greatest asset: real life can be ho-hum too. One day you can’t further, and the next one.
mr. Parker
Until June 25 at Theater Row, Manhattan; bfany.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.