Candy Box

ON BORROWED TIME

by Paul Osborn

A handful of actors have enough box-office clout to get produced pretty much any show they want to appear in. One is George C. Scott, who last came to Broadway in 1986 as an aging, derelict Huck Finn in an unpopular bit of myth debunking called The Boys in Autumn. Now Scott is back as a quintessential foxy grandpa, all harmless cuss words and mock-fierce benevolence, in a sentimental 1938 comedy-drama about an old man’s battle of wits with death, personified as the prissy bureaucrat Mr. Brink. Scott’s new role may be at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from his last, but it prompts the same question: Why this play?

One answer: On Borrowed Time, which Scott also directed (moving its era from the edgy late 1930s to the innocent-seeming years before World War I), is a splendid vehicle for the winsome tricks of a veteran cast. Teresa Wright, whose 1942 Oscar for Mrs. Miniver makes Scott’s 1970 award for Patton seem recent, flutters and flusters as the grandmother. Bette Henritze whinnies and hectors as an interfering aunt. Conrad Bain wheedles and soothes as the family doctor. In Scott’s wiliest staging, he, Bain, and George DiCenzo test whether death has been suspended by circling around a poisoned housefly like slow- motion Marx Brothers. No one gets more laughs than Nathan Lane as Mr. Brink, slowly igniting as his timetable is thwarted.

The inescapable problem is the play’s candy-box presentation of mortal agony as a peaceful, painless passing into a warm yellow light, followed by a resumption for eternity of one’s former games and rituals. Save for about three minutes of medical candor, this is a vapid insult to anyone struggling with the real problem of mortality. Perhaps Scott, 64, finds this inanity reassuring. But what a pity to waste his gifts on piffle.