The Waverly Gallery

By Richard Zoglin

The theater has been through its AIDS phase; why not Alzheimer's disease? In this off-Broadway work, Lonergan (This Is Our Youth) depicts the sad mental decline of his grandmother, just as she is about to be evicted from her Greenwich Village art gallery. The play is slight and doesn't rise above its autobiographical confines, but there are some astute observations of the family's conflicted reactions. And Eileen Heckart gives a brave, touching performance as a woman whose conversation first wobbles, then drifts and finally careers full speed on a long, lonely track to nowhere.

--By Richard Zoglin