Kate Corrigan has her life in order, or so she likes to think. In what she describes as "not lower middle age" but "upper youth," she has a lucrative job, a no strings-attached man, and a new house in the suburbs. "Consider yourselves part of the clutter," she blithely tells new neighbors Molly Blumenthal and her grandson, Jeff, when they pay Kate a call before she has even unpacked. And delightful clutter they soon become, overwhelming Kate's tiny existence with a roller-coaster friendship, pot-roast, and the problems of all the elderly women on the block. As she meets these women, living in quirky isolation after outliving their husbands' and their families' need for them, Kate realizes the life she's found looks a lot like the one she'd been running from. "Is it in the genes, an instinct," she wonders, "like elephants heading for the burial ground? Am I a little old lady in training?" Confronted with old fears and new choices, Kate finds her life opening up—wide enough, for the first time, to admit love. "A sensitive comedy about friendship between generations," said the Stanford Mail. "Full of wit and laughter...warmth and wisdom," echoed the Sierra Madre News. "L'chaim!" say Kate and Molly. Audiences of all ages applaud their determination to "grow older, wiser, stronger in every way. But not old."
Peter Pagliaro, Royal Playhouse, West Palm Beach, Fla.