An elderly, tradition-bound Jewish man whose youth was torn asunder by the Holocaust is thrown into an artistic relationship with a headstrong young member of the tribe. Not surprisingly, the two find themselves in conflict due to their highly disparate personalities, tastes, and world-views. This would serve well as a précis of Jon Marans' Old Wicked Songs, but it also applies to Oren Safdie's two-hander The Last Word..., now on view at the Theatre at St. Clement's.

Safdie's play is set in the 1990s in a small, rundown office above a Greenwich Village theater. The office is that of Henry Grunwald (Daniel J. Travanti), an elderly Viennese Jew who fled the Nazis, went on to become a s[...]