Character Study Interplayers’ ‘Park Your Car’ Moves Forward Under The Power Of Its Two Cast Members

“Park Your Car in Harvard Yard” Friday, Jan. 29, Interplayers Ensemble

Is “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard” a drama, a comedy or a tragedy?

A little of all three, which is another way of saying none of the above. A more accurate description is simply: a character study.

This Israel Horovitz two-hander works best as a satisfying look at two strong personalities, one a cranky, retired high school teacher and the other a mousy, idiosyncratic young widow.

It’s a character study, but a character study by default. The play has no plot, or at least none that an audience could possibly buy.

It’s all-character, all the time.

Which is both the production’s great strength and its weakness.

The strengths are evident, because they are standing on the Interplayers thrust stage for the entire two hours. Bob Welch as Jacob Brackish and Ellen Lawson as Kathleen Hogan are masterful in creating living, surprising characters laden with mysteries and hidden motivations.

Lawson, in her frumpy coats and stockings that sag around the ankles, is at first almost a comic character. When she first shows up to answer an ad for a housekeeper, she’s the picture of low selfesteem.

She ends every observation with a Yankee-accented, “Not that I’m complainin’.” She hangs her head in surrender before a shot has even been fired.

Her character can be summed up as “local, down-market eccentric,” and Lawson proves adept at comic timing and body language. But soon Lawson sinks her teeth into this role and flares into someone considerably more interesting, more feisty and more sympathetic.

She becomes a woman who has been beaten down by life (and by Brackish) and who has decided not to take it lying down. This mousy little frump goes on the attack.

Welch, once again, turns in a remarkable performance. As in last season’s “The Gin Game,” Welch proves that he excels in portraying cranky and domineering old men.

Brackish is a Harvard-educated man who never married, never had kids, and devoted his life to teaching English and music appreciation at Gloucester High School. This was not the life he had mind - he should have been in an endowed chair somewhere - and he took his resentment out on his students.

Now, retired, he takes it out on Kathleen.

These two actors spar and fight and bicker and generally keep us mesmerized for the play’s duration.

Which is a good thing, because Horovitz’s plot and structure are barely competent. The development of the story relies almost entirely on gimmicks: the long dramatic monologues (done to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon); the “surprise” revelations about the relationship; and the contrived plot twists, which we never see but are only told about.

We never even learn exactly why this play is called “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard,” although there is a parking reference toward the end (but nowhere near Harvard Yard).

Fortunately, everything else about this production works well enough to counteract the script’s by-the-numbers quality.

Director Joan Welch strikes a careful balance between comedy and pathos. She never allows this two-character debate to turn into a standoff, verbally or physically. The set by Jason Laws is deliciously seedy, the way an old bachelor’s “hovel” ought to be, with fine attention to detail.

The evening turns out to be a fascinating visit with two one-of-a-kind characters. Even without much to do, they’re worth watching.