‘Boca’ is a bunch of 70-somethings starring in a hilarious-but-touching new play

At a certain age, the world is full of possibilities, the future is ahead, and life is ready to be designed.

And that’s how it is to be 70.

At least, that’s how it is at the Boca Oasis Retirement Community in Boca Raton, Florida, the setting for Boca, Jessica Provenz’s hilarious, yet touching, comedy at the Act II Playhouse in Ambler.

“A lot of it rings true,” said actor Penelope Reed, who is 78. She plays two roles, ditzy Janet and Iris, a grounded salt-of-the-earth type. “You feel more vulnerable, and time is ticking. When you get to this age, you have a lot of friends who are dying and who are dead.”

Unlike the characters in Boca, Reed isn’t among her peers who have fled Philadelphia for Florida. But she deeply understands the demands and potential of this time of life played out at the Boca Oasis.

“They are trying to make the best of their time,” she said. “They’ve given up their Northeast homes and they have traveled and here they are at Boca Raton,” she said. “Some of them are content, but illness and death move in and that’s complicating things.

“Some really want companionship. There’s a little bit of pressure among the women for finding a man and then there’s the extreme some people go to get their man.

“There’s the fact of living in a community, where everything is political,” Reed said, laughing, because condominiums and condominium associations can become very contentious, as the people who live in them know.

For Reed, living the best way she possibly can means a renewed and joyous commitment to acting, which has been her whole life.

There are five generations of theater people in her family from her great-grandfather, who performed with renowned actor Edwin Booth in the late 1800s, to her son, Jared Reed, who became executive director of the Media Theatre in March. Her mother, Janet Kelsey, ran Hedgerow Theatre for 55 years, either as executive director or business manager. Both Penelope and Jared Reed took their turns helming the Rose Valley theater — the mother from 1991-2017, and the son from 2017-2021.

Reed had been on the administrative and teaching end of theater for so long that when Act II’s artistic director, Tony Braithwaite, asked her last year to play the lead role in Eleanor, a 90-minute one-woman play about Eleanor Roosevelt, she nearly turned him down.

She worried that she wouldn’t be able to remember the lines.

“When the time comes that I can’t learn anymore, I’ll stop,” she said.

Meanwhile, “you start cherishing your time,” she said. “OK, your body has problems and we’re going to deal with them in the best possible way. It’s your friends that keep you going and maximizing those relationships. That’s the reason I’m so happy acting again — because you get to have a relationship with the audience.”

And with the actors and crew. “It is such a joy,” she said. “Tony runs a happy, tidy ship.”

Reed said that the characters in Boca learn the same lesson — the importance of community and relationships, although how they get to that understanding means lots of laughs for the audience.

“Boca,” Act II Playhouse, Aug. 1-Sept. 3 at the Act II Playhouse, 56 E. Butler Ave., Ambler, 215-654-0200, or act2.org Check with the theater for COVID-19 protocols. For information on other local events, visit inquirer.com/things-to-do-philly