Gadi Inbar has left no cliché unturned; not even a great set , excellent acting and deft direction could rescue this play.
By HELEN KAYE
Sometimes, not even a great set (here by Bambi Fridman), excellent acting and deft direction can rescue a play. Unhappily, Her Last Day fits the category.Gadi Inbar has left no cliché unturned to tell the story of Professor Mariana Gross-Eldar’s (Miriam Zohar) carefully orchestrated last day. She is a renowned scientist who claims rights in an anti-Alzheimer medication that Prof. Berger (Ilan Dar), her former partner/lover, has sole rights to and that will make him immensely rich.She has invited him over to insist that he make the insanely expensive medication available to all, not just the very wealthy.Mariana has invited the family, too, and with their arrival the dramatic potential in the medico-ethical dilemma gets trampled by the clichés. The emotionally-abandoned daughter (Hadass Kalderon), the wronged son-in-law (Shimon Mimran), the suicidal love child (Inbar Gal) and how the terminally egotistical Mariana all contribute to the general misery.Dar and Zohar bring an intrinsic dignity and some humor to their awful roles, even though Mariana’s consistent emotional meanness and cowardice obviously exhaust Zohar. Mimran invests son-in-law Moni Fisher with impish humor and a delicious psychological klutziness.But it’s Liat Goren, beautifully underplaying the part of Talma, Mariana’s housekeeper, who steals the show. Perhaps it’s because she’s the only character in the play that seems at all real.