Health cares I’ll Be Seeing You spins drama out of illness BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

When it comes to spinning good drama out of illness, there are risks and there are benefits. I’ll Be Seeing You, a new play by Pamela Sanders (at the Firehouse Theatre through August 13), demonstrates both, mostly avoiding the pitfalls.

The story starts out like a Noel Coward romp. Images from a festive New Year’s Eve lawn party are projected, and when the play proper begins the central revelers have convened inside, exchanging bon mots like tossed bon-bons. We are in Carmel, California, the home of the posh Pebble Beach golf course as well as our white-haired guests. Teddy (Tom Oakes) and Iona (Sylvia Ann Soares) are in their 80s but to all appearances seem keen-witted, if past their prime.

Teddy is a retired professor who likes to quote the cynical Roman poet Catullus complaining about such matters as the decline of civilized society. Iona jokingly complains to her husband that she and he are "All Bach and no boogie," but at first we don’t see evidence of that. She declares to her guests, lightly but seriously, that it would be good to die now rather than face her declining years. With the same bright enthusiasm she suggests to Teddy that they commit suicide together. "One shouldn’t stay too long at the ball," she tells him; they should sweep off "con brio." Well, Iona says, at least she has her "little red pill" if things get too bad.

Their two guests don’t take such talk seriously. Peg (Deb McGowan) is their next-door neighbor, 30 years Teddy’s junior but nevertheless looked upon by Iona as ready to "poach" her husband at her death. Kate (Alanna Sousa-Pullan) is their granddaughter, and as one of her grandparents and then the other gets ill and requires care, her staying to help puts strains on her own marriage, since it is based 3000 miles away.

I’ll Be Seeing You becomes a case study, warning and prosecutorial brief against this country’s health-care system, which puts even the moderately well-to-do in financial, not to mention emotional, jeopardy. Except for the destitute, Medicare doesn’t pay for extended home health care. Since none but the outright wealthy can afford round-the-clock nursing, Kate is forced to hire a well-meaning but inadequately trained "health-care provider." Jolene (Katia Cabral) is a brash, hard-working Texan who likes Bible-thumping sermons blaring on the radio almost as much as she enjoys the sound of her own opinionated voice. Eventually she is joined by Sudesh (Samantha Niziolek), a sweet, charmingly accented Hindu who has even less nursing expertise.

Commendably, this play doesn’t go for pathos, even though these two elderly characters are floundering in suffering. Playwright Sanders has kept just about every painful reaction grounded in realistic incident (with the exception of the hospitalized Teddy never phoning his wife to insist that she visit). The realistic situations and responses allow Oakes to not stint on the anguish and yet not put us off any more than would an actual person in pain. For her part, Soares does well demonstrating how such a frightened person could distort reality to the point of denying that her hospitalized husband could still be alive. All around, the acting here convinces.

As much as what it is, I’ll Be Seeing You is, secondarily, various things it could be. The play, which now runs to more than two hours, could use ruthless trimming to strengthen and concentrate the main story. (One underwritten walk-on, a doctor, could be done without altogether.) That would leave room for further development of one or two character relationships into full-fledged subplots. One candidate is Jolene, a strong role as written and a doozy as storming along through Cabral. This force of nature already provides tension and even threat as she second-guesses granddaughter Kate and grows manipulative, knowing she is indispensable. After Jolene takes a much-needed but unannounced break to try her hand at Las Vegas slot machines, Kate knows better than to come down too hard.

But that’s another play. As far as this one goes, it’s a lengthy exercise but not one that rambles so much as repeats its conversations after their points have been made. Yet for all its grueling realism about the medical/financial fate of the elderly in this country, the story ends on a hopeful note. The optimistic concluding scene doesn’t come across as a cop-out left turn to keep us from leaving bummed out, but rather balances with a fortunate scenario what came before. As I’ll Be Seeing You has reminded us by that point, most of us could have such scenes of grim reality ahead of us as well, so we could use the glimpse of optimism.