Two men are conversing while one of them fishes off of a Chesapeake Bay dock. The fisherman regales the stranger with tales of fishing with his son. The stranger seems somewhat confused by the conversation. A woman soon approaches. As they converse, we learn they’re not strangers at all. They’re a family. So begins Bruce Graham’s The Outgoing Tide, now running at the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center through February 1.
Gunner Concannon (Steven David Martin) has been enjoying his retirement with Peg (Elizabeth Henry), his wife of 50 years, but all is not well. He’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s (or dementia, it’s never clearly stated) and becoming increasingly more challenging to live with. Peg is at her wit’s end, and has begun exploring “care” options, much to Gunner’s frustration.
Peg has enlisted their son Jack (Jonathan Graham) to help convince Gunner to move into the facility, but Gunner will have none of it. He sees it for what it is – a “damn warehouse with a swimmin’ pool.” Gunner has his own plans for his and his family’s future that involves an insurance policy and a late night solo boat ride on the bay. Will his family agree to it?
Graham’s dramatization is a sort of an updated Whose Life is it Anyway? for an aging population. The protagonist in Whose was a young artist whose paralysis causes him to see no future. Tide’s protagonist is an old man who is losing grip on the present and detests what he sees as his future. Both question whether life is worth living. That question – and the answer Graham seems to provide – may be the source of great debate among its audience…