Playwright George Ayres, who lives in Spencertown, has long been interested in the emotional lives people carry out of sight—especially the stories that resist easy resolution. His new play, Destination, which runs March 5–8 at Chain Theater in Midtown Manhattan, brings that interest into sharp focus, following characters who discover that unfinished business has a way of demanding attention, no matter one’s age.
Set in an assisted living facility in Houston, “Destination” centers on Howard Wright, an 83-year-old retired architect and recent widower who spends his days gazing at the city skyline, sparring affectionately with his neighbor Gigi, and avoiding emotional risks he believes are behind him. That equilibrium is disrupted when Howard learns that Caroline—a woman he loved decades earlier and never fully forgot—is engaged to be married. Acting on impulse, Howard leaves the facility and sets out on a road trip to confront the past, transforming what begins as a reckless escape into a reckoning with love, regret, and emotional honesty.
The play draws directly from Ayres’s own experience. The story was inspired by his father, who lived in an assisted living facility in Houston after Ayres’s mother died. One day, without warning, he left, rented a car, and drove across Texas to seek out a woman he had once cared deeply about. For Ayres, that act—both unsettling and deeply human—became the emotional kernel of the play. “It was always about no regrets,” Ayres says. “Even as you age, you don’t want to sign off without doing something you feel like you need to do.”
Rather than treating aging as a period of emotional closure, “Destination” insists on its complexity. Howard is funny, stubborn, and unsentimental, but also deeply aware that time is finite. The assisted living facility functions not just as a setting but as a threshold—a place where life has narrowed, but not ended. Ayres resists depicting it as a prison, instead framing Howard’s departure as an assertion of agency rather than rebellion.
Running parallel to Howard’s story is that of his daughter Jennifer, who is confronting fractures in her own marriage while rekindling a relationship from her past. As father and daughter navigate different stages of life, the play draws deliberate parallels between their choices, suggesting that emotional avoidance and risk-taking are not confined to any single generation. For Ayres, the dual narrative was essential: Jennifer’s journey allows the play to gesture forward, offering the possibility of change before regret calcifies.
Though “Destination” deals with grief, illness, and mortality, it is threaded with humor that arises organically from character rather than punchlines. Ayres describes it as a love story first—a drama with levity rather than a comedy softened by seriousness. “I like humor that comes from people,” he says, “the way it does in real life, even at a funeral.”
Ultimately, “Destination” is less about reinvention than about acknowledgment—of love deferred, truths avoided, and the courage required to face both. Ayres hopes audiences leave with a sense of hope rather than melancholy. “Regardless of your age,” he says, “you can still enjoy life to the end—and feel like you did what you needed to do.”
“Destination” is being staged at the Chain Theater, 312 West 36th Street, March 5-8.
