Great Barrington — Great Barrington Public Theater’s (GBPT’s) production of “The Best Medicine” will run at the McConnell Theater on the former Bard College at Simon’s Rock campus, from Friday, August 1, to Sunday, August 17.
The one-woman play tells the story of a wife who has to take on the role of her husband’s caregiver because of his progressive and incurable disease.
Starring in the play is Caroline Aaron, who is known for starring as Shirley Maisel in the TV series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and in numerous movie, stage, and television roles, including three Woody Allen films: “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Alice,” and “Deconstructing Harry.”
Directing the play is filmmaker and theater director Matthew Penn, who has directed numerous television dramas including “Law & Order” and “The Sopranos” and is the co-artistic director of the Berkshire Playwrights Lab.
Playwright Robin Gerber previously wrote the play “The Shot” about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, which was performed at GBPT in 2022.
Gerber is a historian and motivational speaker, and she told The Berkshire Edge that she based “The Best Medicine” directly on her experiences as a caregiver to her husband, who has Parkinson’s disease. “This is a comedy about caregiving,” Gerber said. “It’s the story of a very independent woman in a marriage. When her husband is diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she needs to learn how to navigate and reimagine her life.”
Gerber said that 10 years after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she ended up taking a comedy class. “I took the class because I felt like I kind of lost my autonomy, sense of fun, and joy,” Gerber said. “In the class, the teacher led me to the topic of not liking being a caregiver. He said that could be a good and edgy topic for a comedy skit. I thought that was completely crazy, but I went ahead and made it into a skit. The skit had a real resonance with the audience, which led me to think there could be a play out of this.”
“There is comedy in everything,” Gerber said, even during the saddest times in one’s life, a notion actress Aaron agreed emphasized. “I think that comedy is how we all survive,” Aaron said. “There is a light side of the moon, and there is a dark side of the moon. But together they all make up the moon. There always has to be lightness in the dark. How would we walk around otherwise?”
“When I look for a play to direct, the first thing I’m interested in is the human story behind it, and then its structure,” Director Penn said. “[Gerber] is a wonderful structuralist, and comedy usually comes from pain. With almost every comedic situation that’s dramatized, you have one or two characters in a situation of real pain. It’s that gift to recontextualize pain that we register and identify with. One of the things we hope that people take away from this is a kind of identification.”
Because of the region’s aging demographic, Penn said he believes many residents from the Berkshires will be able to relate to the play. “It’s [Gerber’s] gift of the script, and Caroline’s embodiment of the character, that will allow us to laugh at it or with it, and see it all in a different light,” Penn said.
“The bigger point of the play is that it leads to a real exploration of love,” Gerber added. “It’s not so much an exploration about caregiving, but there’s also a big and important part of the play where the character asks if she should stay or go. She asks herself, ‘Do I even want to do this? This is not what I signed up for.’ And this all leads to this idea of what love is all about.”
“To me, this is about playing a woman who is blindsided by a chance event that happens in her life,” Aaron said. “It’s like a drive-by shooting in a sense. This event of her husband getting Parkinson’s is so much of a shock to her. And then there is the question of unconditional love and whether or not it exists. You can say that and assume that unconditional love is there, but then you get tested in a big way.”
According to Penn, what is unusual about the play is that Gerber did not write “The Best Medicine” about her past, but about circumstances that she is currently facing. “And I can’t imagine directing this play without [Gerber] being there next to me,” Penn said. “But it is a very unusual circumstance in which you have a playwright who has written about themselves right next to you in a situation that continues to unfold.”
“There could be a sequel to this play because things have happened since I finished the script,” Gerber said. “But I want to keep the script where it is. One of the elements of theater is connecting to the audience, and I think this will connect with people. The issues surrounding family caregivers have been kind of underground for a very long time, but they are getting too big to ignore. There are over 60 million family caregivers around the country, and now the Trump administration is deporting people who do a lot of the caregiving work, and even cutting Medicaid funding for people. This crisis is going to get bigger, and art has a part to play. I hope that this play will play a part in these issues.”
For more information about “The Best Medicine,” including tickets, visit GBPT’s website.
