Visiting Mr. Green: Broadway and Off-Broadway Come to Rio de Janeiro

By Harold Emert

Dear Elias Andreato, Caio Manhente, director Guilherme Piva and translator Gustavo Pinheiro:

Thank you for saving a Sunday that was becoming nostalgically gloomy for this former New Yorker.

Although I have been away from my native city for more than half a century, there are still moments when I long to go out and see a great Broadway — or Off-Broadway — play. Thanks to your wonderful production of Jeff Baron's Visiting Mr. Green, you saved me the expense of a plane ticket, a cramped economy-class seat, indifferent American airline stewards who sometimes behave as though they are doing you a favour, and a ridiculously expensive New York hotel room — probably not much bigger than my bathroom here in Copacabana.

Don't get me wrong. I still love the city where I grew up, was educated and spent the formative years of my life. But New York has become extraordinarily expensive. And Broadway — and even Off-Broadway — ticket prices can now run into hundreds of dollars, making a theatre outing a very different proposition for someone who is no longer a savvy New Yorker but an “out-of-towner.”

So I was delighted to discover that Broadway had, in a sense, come to me.

A play that has travelled the world

Visiting Mr. Green, written by American playwright Jeff Baron, premiered in 1996 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 1997 Off-Broadway, becoming an international theatrical success.

I never had the opportunity to see Eli Wallach as the irascible Orthodox Jewish widower Mr. Green, or David Dukes as Ross Gardiner, the young gay corporate executive, during the play's successful New York run at the Union Square Theatre.

Nor did I see the 2008 West End production in London, or the Brazilian production that opened in São Paulo in 2000 with the outstanding actors Paulo Autran and Cássio Scapin.

But now, more than a quarter of a century after the play first appeared, I finally had my Visiting Mr. Green experience — in Rio de Janeiro.

And what an experience it was.

Two outsiders, two worlds

In our present age of cancelling people simply because they hold opinions different from our own, Baron's play seems to have acquired an even greater relevance.

At its heart are two apparently incompatible human beings: Mr. Green, 86, an elderly Orthodox Jewish widower, and Ross Gardiner, a young gay man whose family has rejected him.

They initially appear to inhabit completely different worlds. Yet, as their unlikely relationship develops, they gradually discover that they have much more in common than either could have imagined.

Their common denominator is, ironically, inflexibility.

Mr. Green, in his decaying apartment — which resembles some of the ramshackle rent-controlled apartments I know so well — has been grieving and living alone since the death of his wife, to whom he was married for 49 years. He has disowned his beloved daughter because she married outside the Jewish faith.

Ross, meanwhile, initially appears tough as a rock. But beneath that exterior is an angry young man, deeply wounded by the rejection of his own family because he is gay.

What begins as an uneasy encounter between two strangers — Ross has been ordered by a court to visit Mr. Green every week after he almost ran him over — gradually becomes something much deeper: a story about loneliness, family, prejudice, forgiveness and the possibility of human connection.

Broadway and Off-Broadway come to Gávea

Together with an enthusiastic audience at Rio's traditional Teatro Vannucci, I witnessed an emotionally charged performance of the kind that theatre-goers anywhere, in any language, are privileged to experience.

Elias Andreato and the young Caio Manhente, 26, bring extraordinary energy and humanity to their respective roles. Under Guilherme Piva's direction, and with Gustavo Pinheiro's translation bringing Baron's dialogue naturally into Portuguese, the play feels remarkably immediate.

The result is not simply a Brazilian production of an American play. It is a reminder that good theatre can cross borders, languages, religions, generations and cultures — and still speak directly to us.

Baron's play has reportedly been performed in more than 50 countries and translated into dozens of languages, demonstrating just how universal its themes have become.

From India and Japan to South Africa, Mexico and now Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Green and Ross Gardiner continue to meet — and continue to discover each other.

And now the duo await those who love the theatre.

Forget the airfare: you don't have to fly to Broadway or Off-Broadway.

Just head to Teatro Vannucci, at Shopping da Gávea, Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 52, 3rd floor, where Visiting Mr. Green is scheduled to run from 15 to 30 August, with performances on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m.

For this displaced New Yorker, Broadway — and Off-Broadway — have come to Rio.

And I am very grateful that they did.