‘Trying’ ends run at Gloucester Stage this weekend

GLOUCESTER – The Gloucester Stage Company?s new motto seems to be, “If at first you do succeed, try, try ?Trying? again.”You only have four chances left to see “Trying,” a funny, touching slice of 1968 life, and you should.Joanna McClelland Glass? two-person play is based on her experiences as secretary to an aging Judge Francis Biddle, the chief justice at the Nuremberg Nazi trials. The play takes the fictitious young secretary from a daughter fleeing a bullying father to an equal partner and finally to a woman capable of mothering a magnificently cantankerous elderly man. Through all this growth the author never forgets her historical context.Last year?s two-week run of the play with Richard Mawe and Becky Webber proved so popular with audiences that Director Eric Engel decided to run it for two more weeks this year with the same cast – and he says he?s glad he did.Mawe and Webber have risen to that occasion by making their parts even better and intensifying their characters? relationship.As Webber told a post-play audience Sunday, “We know more about what each moment means.” That may be why some audience members said they felt as if they were in the room with the characters.Both characters in this play have arcs to follow – Webber begins the play moving stiffly to suggest her character?s irritation at Biddle?s constant nagging and in the final scenes she seems to flow somewhat more gracefully while carrying a pregnancy simulator around her waist.Mawe dominates the early scenes with speeches that are alternately funny and sad as he seems to address an imaginary court. His character always moves with a pronounced limp, even when exiting the darkened set at scene?s end, and his fingers are always clenched arthritically.?Trying” is a play that?s worth another try.If You Go??Trying” can be seenat the Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St., Gloucester tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdayat 3 p.m. and Sunday at4 p.m. Tickets are $37, $32 for seniors and students. Further information is available at the box office, (978) 281-4433 or www.gloucesterstage.org.