STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

“The Waverly Gallery” touches a place in our hearts for all those who are suffering the slow decline of memory due to Alzheimer’s disease.

The play, by Kenneth Lonergan, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001. And Sawtooth Productions is presenting a free play reading of it at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 5, at The Argyros in Ketchum.

The tickets have been spoken for, but people are encouraged to sign up for the waiting list by emailing nick@theargyros.org, as people have been returning their tickets due to other commitments.

Joining Kathy Wygle will be her sister Patsy Wygle, who has appeared in numerous plays in New York and Sun Valley.

This play reading is special because it will feature three members of a theater dynasty in Ketchum. Jamie Wygle will play the grandson watching the effects of Alzheimer’s on his grandmother played by Jamie’s aunt Kathy Wygle, co-founder of Laughing Stock Theater and longtime director of the nexStage Theater—the predecessor to The Argyros.

Patsy Wygle will round out the family tree.

Gladys, played by Kathy Wygle, owns a small art gallery in Greenwich Village but is faced with losing it to a landlord who wants to close it and replace it with a restaurant.

Joining Jamie and Kathy Wygle in this wacky and heartrending look at the effect of senility on a family will be Patsy Wygle, Jonathan Kane and Mackenzie Harbaugh.

Jamie Wygle is joining his mother Patsy Wygle and aunt Kathy Wygle in “The Waverly Gallery.

The play won an Obie for Eileen Heckart in the role of the irascible but increasingly erratic matriarch. It earned a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play and a Tony Award for Elaine May 19 years later when it premiered on Broadway.

New York Times critic Ben Brantley called the play a “finely observed story of the predations of old age.”

Kenneth Lonergan is one of my favorite playwrights,” said Kane. “He’s only written a handful of plays. This one is sad and funny—and the ability to write a play like that is the gift of a playwright. We’re hoping for some serious chemistry with Kathy, Patsy and Jamie Wygle—all three are perfectly suited for these parts.”

“The Waverly Gallery” is the second reading curated by Kane for the smaller, more intimate Bailey Theater of The Argyros. The first—Martin McDonagh’s gothic dark comedy “The Beauty Queen of Leenane”—kept the audience laughing throughout as it featured the inane relationship between lonely spinster Aly Wepplo and her smothering mother played by Claudia McCain.

Joining them in the wacky telling was Kagan Albright.