The Velocity of Autumn

Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.

(202) 488-3300

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Eric Coble’s new play features a role that “has bravura written all over it,” said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Alexandra, a 79-year-old Brooklynite, so resents her children’s attempt to move her into a nursing home that she has barricaded herself in her brownstone behind a wall of Molotov cocktails and is threatening to blow the whole block sky-high. The part’s “written for an actress with heat in her eyes and a fire in her belly,” and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons radiates those qualities. She almost makes up for the shortcomings of Coble’s play, which goes for absurdity over realism and winds up feeling silly and histrionic.

Forget the flaws in the premise, said Charles Isherwood in The New York Times. “Thanks to Parsons’s wry, thoroughly unsentimental performance, and Coble’s mostly sensitive writing, the slightly contrived setup fades into irrelevance.” A beloved but estranged son, played by Stephen Spinella, climbs in through a window early on, launching a long conversation about family history, Alexandra’s recent memory lapses, and whether leveling the neighborhood is really such a good idea. We don’t long worry about that possibility: In a play that “recalls the amiably crowd-pleasing comedies of Neil Simon,” the ending obviously won’t involve pyrotechnics. But don’t expect soppy sentiment, either. “Parsons invests Alexandra with such natural intelligence and strength of purpose” that the depth of her plight will cause your heart to ache.