Theater review: 'Old Enough to Know Better: Aging Well in Sarasota'

“Old Enough to Know Better: Aging Well in Sarasota” is a compilation of anecdotes, monologs, dialogs, jokes and observations derived from interviews of about 100 Sarasota residents on the far side of 50. Jason Cannon directs the piece and also put it together.

The result is an interesting and rarely seen theatrical form. Essentially, it’s a live documentary montage. This comes in the form of eight chapters under loose headings like, “If Youth But Knew,” “Road Rage,” “Bundles of Joy,” and the like. The sixth chapter is “A Good Death.” I figured this was the natural conclusion, but there are two chapters after death—who knew?

Sally Bondi, Nicu Brouillette, Alison Campbell, Lonnetta M. Gaines, Dan Higgs, Katelyn McKelley, Bob Mowry and T.J. Patrick compose the cast. Each tends to embody the same characters, based on actual interview subjects, but they bounce around and aren’t stuck in any given persona.

Characters include a gay man finding a second chance (Higgs); a 70-something man who feels 20 (played by 20-something Mowry); a joyous black woman (Lonnetta Gaines) and a reflective intellectual (Brouillette). Their speech has the flavor of real talk, because it is.

Along with hard-won life lessons from Sarasota seniors, a screen behind the stage offers brainy quotes by Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf and others. Groucho Marx’s bon mot is my favorite: “I intend to live forever or die trying.”

It’s a light-hearted show; it's cute, non-confrontational and statistically inaccurate. Nobody fondly recalls the time they sacrificed their first-born child to Cthulu, the military secrets they sold to Soviets or the happy day they gave Hitler a bouquet of flowers.

There are no bitter regrets, for that matter. The sample base is skewed to positive, life-affirming, self-actualized, downright good people of a certain age. Perhaps a future FST production will deal with aging badly in Sarasota and offer more attention to the evil, rotten, mean, nasty and bitter segment of the elderly population.

We shall see. It’s a remote possibility. But, theoretically, it could happen.

“Old Enough to Know Better” is the first of a series of FST productions based on the experiences of local residents across the spectrum of ages, ethnicities, incomes, sexual orientations and genders. Wherever you fit on that spectrum, chances are you’ll see some reflection of yourself in the not-too-distant future. Or even hear yourself, if you wind up being interviewed. 

For now, those over 50 will see themselves in these vignettes. Those under 50 will know what to expect. All the world is a stage …

And, if you’re lucky, life has a second act.