SYNOPSIS
Ruthie, Paula, Milton, and Bernice are long time friends from the Murray Hill section of New York City. Their lives intersect at a park on the corner of 32nd st. and 3rd Avenue where they meet most days to socialize, whiling away the hours with laughter, fighting, and intruding in each other's lives, with love, sometimes with criticism, sometimes just to be nosy. But, always with a shared sense of irrelevance, and aloneness that comes with getting old in a young world.
Ruthie, the youngest of the group, lives in a rent controlled apartment left to her by her parents. She is bit of an oddball, spending her days shoplifting thrift stores, and selling her stolen goods to women in the neighborhood. She is best friends with Paula, an attractive and wealthy widow, who struggles with anxiety. Ruthie has been counseling Paula against the long time affair she's been carrying on with her unscrupulous psychiatrist in exchange for emergency 'scrips of Xanax, which she prefers in lieu of the courage it takes to face her issues. Milton, a widower, is a retired economics professor who used to cook the books for his brother's investment firm. He is the oldest of the group, spending his days in the park reading, playing chess against himself, and missing his wife Selma, and his son David who died some years before Selma. Bernice, also a widow, struggles with anxiety like Paula, but, puts real effort into therapy with her own psychiatrist, and shares Ruthie's concerns about Paula's mental health. In a society driven by an obsession with youth and staying young, this is not a band of doddering seniors. The drama that unfolds at this park every day is a snapshot of the world. A world in which the aging and the aged are invisible. It is a story of longing, and of happiness; of a demand for respect from a world that ignores them