‘Old’ Cast Young-at-Heart

Mathilde Giffard, the title character of "My Old Lady," is a 94-year-old Parisian, though she tries to pass for 92. She has a spinster daughter, Chloe, who is around 50. They are visited by an American, Mathias "Jim" Gold, also fiftyish, and Jewish.

That’s the whole cast. No well-endowed ingenue, no muscular hunk, no rebellious teenager within 50 kilometers.

But to allay a Hollywood producer’s worst fears, there is romance. Indeed, one of the play’s revelations is that a man and woman past the half-century mark can fall in love and — don’t tell the children — even think about s-e-x.

Playwright Israel Horovitz, who has lived for long stretches in Paris, has placed this trio in the midst of a typically French legalistic- bureaucratic dilemma.

Gold has come to Paris to claim the only legacy left by a wealthy father, a spacious, luxurious apartment in the City of Lights, with a magnificent view (never seen) of the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Broke, thrice divorced and about as screwed up as you can get without being institutionalized, Gold hopes to sell the apartment quickly and profitably and return home.

At the apartment, he encounters Madame Giffard, who was a teacher of English, which is fortunate since otherwise neither Gold nor the audience could grasp what’s going on.

Under some quaint law, probably Napoleonic, the apartment was purchased cheaply by Gold’s father, but the residing occupant could not be evicted. Au contraire, the resident must be heavily subsidized until she dies. Only then does the purchaser (or his heir) own the place.

Giffard, sharp and puckish, warns Gold not to get up his hopes that she will soon pass away. She tells of a man who bought a Paris apartment counting, on its 75-year-old resident’s imminent death. She spited him by living to 114.

Gold, having neither money nor friends, moves in with the old lady and in lengthy conversations and drinking sessions (on his part) discovers that she was quite a piece of work in the olden days.

She had a fling with the legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, "of course" knew Henry Miller and James Joyce, and was acquainted with Ernest Hemingway ("not very interesting. Bulls, bells, balls…").

Mathilde’s daughter, Chloe, a fine figure of a woman, is horrified by the intrusion of the uncouth, hard-drinking American and swears she will find a way to get rid of him.

Playwright Horovitz, whose 50 or so plays include the well-known "Growing Up Jewish" trilogy ("Today, I Am a Fountain Pen," "A Rosen by Any Other Name" and "The Chopin Playoffs") does not make much of Gold’s Jewishness, but occasional bits of dialogue hint that the topic lies just below the surface.

The following exchange illustrates the point, as well as the old lady’s conversational style.

GOLD: Are you Jewish, Madame Giffard?

OLD LADY: "No. I’m not. There were times in my life when I wished I were Jewish. Somebody I loved a great deal was Jewish, and for him I wished I could have been Jewish, too. Not that I admire the Jewish rules any more than I admire the Catholic rules. I adore eating my coquillages and saucisson, shellfish and sausage, both of which are forbidden to Jews. I would have been a sinning Jew, all of my life, much the way I have been a sinning Catholic. But I do know for certain that the Jews in France, no matter what they ate or didn’t eat, deserved a far greater apology than Mitterand offered them in his "Memories" — his apologia without apology. And now I would like to drink my soup, before it gets cold. It’s filled with shellfish and pork, and could send many Jews straight to hell.

Under the direction of David Esbjornson, the three veteran actors — Sian Phillips as the old lady, Jan Maxwell as Chloe and Peter Friedman as Gold — play beautifully off each other.

Friedman, in particular, is pitch perfect as a middle-aged man, a self-described loser all his life, who learns, to his great surprise, that his future may not be without hope and promise.

"My Old Lady," a Mark Taper Forum production playing at the James Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, runs through Feb. 10. Ticket prices are $30-$44. For information, call (213) 628-2772.