Stroke of Luck review, The Park Theatre

As his middle-aged kids deliver faltering and hollow eulogies at their mother's memorial in New York, Lester Riley, slurping gin in his wheelchair, makes an announcement. He is marrying his Japanese nurse. A vision of beauty in a taupe overall, Lily is clever, funny and fun. And thirty seven years younger. What can she see in a gnarled, sixty-something, retired TV repair man whose left side doesn't work?  Apart from dollar signs, that is... For Lester's son, Monroe, who's discovered his dad is a secret millionaire, all that matters is saving his inheritance. It's time to make it up with the siblings.

Can't buy me love

Stroke of Luck is a timely and very funny new play that feels light, but provides breadth on the subject of families and death. What right do children have to demand their parents' assets, and if they've been disappointments to their parents, or have judged their parents to be disappointments, why should they get anything? Camouflaged within this jolly two hours with Tim Piggott-Smith clearly relishing the playful role of Lester, are serious issues. Lester's children instantly link his late-life grab at happiness, as a sign of his being infantilised rather than galvanised by illness. They fight to take over his money and his life.

Another fashionable theme running through Larry Belling's script, is drawing out of the inner lives and past lives that are not instantly visible in older people -  two recently read bestsellers, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, come to mind. There is an examination of family using Lily's Japanese frameworks which challenge Lester's individualist American model. Is it now too late for conciliation?

In conclusion: A lovely play, seen on a day which began with the funeral of a friend who leaves small children, and it may have resonated more as a result. Lily's dialogue is too didactic, and sentiment drives too much of the resolution, but Bob Bailey's simple set manages to be many things, and a solid cast blooms under Kate Golledge's affectionate direction.

References
The Park Theatre, Tickets

The Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, London N4.   Run ends 2 March.