This week's two local productions are terrific shows, well directed and superbly acted!

Two local theatrical productions provided great entertainment this weekend, with inspiring, thought provoking and moving subject matter, well worth the price of admission. The Diablo Actor’s Ensemble at 1345 Locust Street in Walnut Creek, next door to Peet’s Coffee, is currently presenting a very powerful story of discovery and growth, with Jeff Baron’s outstanding play, ”Visiting Mr. Green”!

This was Baron’s first play and it opened in New York in 1996 with Eli Wallach playing the part of Mr. Green, an 86 year old widower living in a dingy, unkempt little apartment on the lower east side of New York. The play found an exceedingly receptive audience with this hauntingly humorous and heartwarming story of two people thrown together by circumstances, (angry and resentful at first), who eventually learn to communicate and care about each other. The play has been translated into 22 languages and has been produced around the world in over 300 separate productions, winning numerous “best play” awards, everywhere.

The 29 year old Ross Gardiner (played by Dennis Markham) is an American Express Card executive who very nearly runs over the senior Mr. Green (John Hutchinson) with his car, causing him to fall, to hit his head and injure himself. Gardiner is cited for reckless driving and is judged negligent, and subsequently has been ordered by the court to perform community service for the next 6 months. More specifically, the court has ordered him to call on Mr. Green every week for that period, to help him take care of his needs. Neither man really wants to fulfill the court’s decision, but even after Mr. Green tells the court he doesn’t want or need this stranger coming into his life, the judge’s decision stands firm.

When Gardiner makes his first evening call on Mr. Green, he discovers a very lonely, withdrawn and resentful older gentleman, whose wife of 59 years, Yetta, had passed away a couple of months earlier. Mr. Green had depended on his wife for all chores normally associated with that of a devout and loving wife; the home cleaning, the grocery shopping, the food preparation, the laundry service and in fact, his entire social world. Green cannot understand how a wife who was 8 years younger, could die suddenly and leave him alone. He is totally unprepared for this new role so late in life.

At first, the two men’s meetings are barely communicative, restrained, and resentful, that is until Mr. Green discovers that, like himself, the younger Gardiner comes from a Jewish background. While Mr. Gardiner is not a devout Jew and cannot speak any Yiddish, their Jewishness does provide a basis for some opening dialogue. And a wonderful, colorful dialogue it is. Humorous, acrimonious, and stimulating, the clever insights and deep dark secrets born and nursed by both men, bring many levels of food for thought, many delicacies to this verbal banquet.

While there is a great deal more to this story that I would love to reveal, to do so would be a disservice to my readers who will want go to the theater and have this story revealed in its own time, in the proper manner. Believe me, it is a superb play with equally articulate and superb acting by the two man cast as these two gentlemen and with equally astute direction by Scott Fryer. This is a play that I have seen previously, many years ago, was eager to see again and I cannot recommend it enough. It is a brilliantly written little gem. Markham and Hutchinson are wonderful, pluperfect in their roles as they truly become Mr. Green and Mr. Gardiner.

“Visiting Mr. Green” will continue Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Sunday performances at 2 p.m., and one Saturday matinee this coming Saturday, May 7th, at 2 p.m., closing on May 21st . Tickets range in cost between $10 and $25 each, with seniors only paying $22 each. Tickets can be secured by visiting https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/8213805 To purchase tickets by phone, please call 866-811-4111

The second show this week is a highly entertaining and superbly acted one-woman show, performed by Kerri Shawn and directed by Scott Denison, about a woman known very well by most Americans, as the unabashed columnist who wrote under the pen name of Ann Landers. Playwright David Rambo wrote a play with well documented excerpts from the second Ann Landers’ very public life, long running columns and her private letters. She was a woman who in real life, was a lady by the name of Ester “Eppie” Ledderer. The play is entitled, “The Lady with all the Answers”.

The first Chicago-Sun Times columnist of the “Ann Landers” advice column was penned by a nurse by the name of Ruth Crowley for 9 of the next 12 years. Crowley kept her real name under wraps for the entire time that she wrote the column, but when she died in 1955, a writing contest was held by the newspaper and Ester “Eppie” Pauline Friedman Lederer was given the column. Eppie was a very controversial, bold, direct and often critical adviser. She upset many people with her stand on legalizing prostitution, gay rights. pro-choice and even a controversial description of Pope John Paul II and Polish men, describing the Pope as a “kindly Polack” and going on to say that “Polacks are anti-women”! Boy did that bring a huge uproar from the Polish-American community!

Her advice was sometimes deemed inappropriate and incorrect and she was occasionally derided for her insight, insults and misinformation and failure to do proper research. She even advised people as late as 1996 not to throw rice at weddings in that if birds ate it, they might explode, which was totally incorrect. Milled rice is not harmful to birds. She was a funny, perceptive and very intelligent Jewish woman who spoke her mind and spoke it openly and often, continuing to write the column until her death in 2002, after 46 years.

She was considered a heroine by many soldiers when she visited Vietnam and personally conveyed messages for them from the front to their relatives back home by making over 2,500 personal phone calls to soldiers’ families when she returned home from her tour in Vietnam. She visited thousands of troops on front lines and in hospitals, with the backing of Lyndon Johnston. She was one of the first columnists to recommend that people connect with Alcoholics Anonymous for drinking problems.

This story is also about her sibling rivalry and estrangement from her twin sister “Popo”, who had gotten her start as a journalist by helping Eppie in organizing her material, who then broke away and started her very own column. Yes, it was her twin sister, Pauline Esther “Popo” Friedman Phillips, who wrote the competing advice column, well known as “Dear Abby”, between 1955-95.

Kerri Shawn is a very talented actress who (according to my wife, who has heard Eppie Lederer speak and read her column for many years) pretty well nailed her character. I personally have only been familiar with Ann Lander’s column as fed to me by my wife, after she read and reread the column to me occasionally. I have long admired Kerri Shawn as one of the better local actresses, consistent and accurate in her diverse portrayals. I don’t think I have ever found any of her work less than perfect.

The time is 1975 and this is a very entertaining and candid look at a famous lady who graciously invites us into her living room in her home in Chicago, while she is attempting to ferret out and write what will turn out to be the most difficult column of her entire career. I will have to let you wait to see the show to figure out what this is all about. As it turns out, this lady, certainly did not have all the answers after all!

In fact, if you are not a great Ann Landers fan, you might have a little difficulty with the first act, which seems so scattered as she tries to get to the main point of this evening’s quandary. She has a very strong and abrasive personality and until you get to know her, you might find it a little difficult to hang in there. But do hang around until the second act, where you will begin to understand the depth of the real person.

The set designed by Kelly Tighe is perhaps the best designed set ever to adorn that unique little space. The way it is laid out, it makes just about every seat in this little theater, a reasonably comfortable seat. I did end up with a slightly sore neck from having to loot to my right all evening, but it was not a major problem. Lighting by John Earls and Sound by Jeff Collister are equally excellent in design and effectiveness.

“The Lady with all the Answers” continues in the Knight Stage III Theater, downstairs in the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:15 p.m., with Sunday performances at 2:15 p.m., through May 15th. You can order tickets by calling the box office at 943-SHOW (7469) or by visiting the box office at 1601 Civic Drive in Walnut Creek, or by visiting the Barnes and Noble book store ticket outlet in Walnut Creek. Tickets are a flat $25 each.