THE HANGOVER REPORT – Calvin Trillin’s small-boned ABOUT ALICE is a tender, urbane love letter to his wife and muse

Carrie Paff and Jeffrey Bean in Calvin Trillin's "About Alice" presented by Theatre for a New Audience. Photo by Henry Grossman.

Carrie Paff and Jeffrey Bean in Calvin Trillin’s “About Alice” presented by Theatre for a New Audience. Photo by Henry Grossman.

This week in Brooklyn, About Alice, the stage adaptation of humorist Calvin Trillin’s best-selling 2006 memoir/tribute to his wife and muse of the same name, opened at Theatre for a New Audience. Despite Alice’s long-standing, recurring medical scares related to lung cancer that could have easily ended in a tragic early death, Alice and Calvin nonetheless persevered (with not an insignificant amount of luck) to live a full, fruitful, and blessed life. We should all be so lucky.

It’s precisely this looming reality of imminent mortality that encouraged the couple to live life to the fullest and with no regrets, squarely in the face of fate. This defiant mindset has been lovingly documented by Mr. Trillin on the page and, now, on the stage as a small-boned, efficiently-plotted two hander. Although this is by no means a revelatory life lesson, it’s one that bears repeating. Indeed, the message comes across beautifully, loud and clear, in the play’s numerous tender passages.

Leonard Foglia has directed the stage version with deft simplicity. He’s also got two very skilled actors depicting Calvin and Alice Trillin in Jeffrey Bean and Carrie Paff, respectively. Both are giving polished, lucid performances that give the production a grace and understated elegance that ensure that the potent human emotions underlying Mr. Trillin’s memoir don’t get muddled and lost in his urbane, albeit affectionate, rhetoric.

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ABOUT ALICE
Off-Broadway, Play
Theatre for a New Audience
1 hour, 15 minutes (without an intermission)
Through February 3

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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