First of Three Evenings of One Acts at EST

The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 34^th Marathon of One Act Plays begins with Series A, running from May 18^th through June 2^nd. 

The first half of the evening includes three one-act plays.  First up, a short play that John Patrick Shanley probably had lying around on a floppy disc for years.  Poison, directed by John Giampietro, is cute and ends with a joke.  It’s merely a sketch, with Jacqueline Antaramian funny as the Gypsy, Aaron Serotsky put upon and impatient as Kenny, and Alicia Goranson mostly manic.

Next up was presumably an excerpt from a longer work, dramatic or otherwise.  Kandahar to Canada by Dan O’Brien, directed by Mark Armstrong, was rather pointless and lazy, but at least it was brief.  It is not a one-act anything, rather a chronology going nowhere but Ottawa.

The evening picked up a bit with Something Fine by Eric Dufault, directed by Larissa Lury.  Beth is a trucker, and her truck’s cab is depicted on the stage adorned with a balloon, a cooler with cake and ice cream for her daughter’s birthday, and a pair of statuettes on the dashboard:  a bobble-hipped hula girl and a Virgin Mary.  Beth (Cathy Curtin) is brash and crass and sleepless, chugging 5-hour energy drinks.  Hula Girl (Lucy Devito) and Virgin Mary (Diana Ruppe) also appear as full grown people – they sway and jiggle with the truck’s journey.  Hula girl chats happily, while Virgin Mary is furious that they’re merely plastic statuettes.  Beth has been driving for 36 hours without sleep, so we are in constant fear she’ll drive herself off the road before she makes it home.  Instead she comes to a different crisis.  Something Fine was quirkily entertaining, going from hilarious to almost poignant.

You Belong to Me by Daniel Reitz, directed by Marcia Jean Kurtz, opened the second half of the evening with a New York story that included gorgeous performances by Patricia Randell as Susan and Scott Parkinson as Robby.  Ms. Randell’s stark white face is frozen in horror as the lights come up on a subway car setting.  In a spring dress and lightweight cardigan, she stares at a man a few seats away, a rather messy man in a winter coat, his thin arms wrapped around his backpack.  He is apparently homeless.  Ms. Randell’s character finally speaks:  “Robby?”  The man recognizes his name, perhaps the voice, and turns to look at her.  “Susan?” he says.  Thus begins a surreal portrayal of a New Yorker’s nightmare, that we know the homeless man we are trying desperately to not see or hear or smell.  Susan and Robby knew one another well, when they were both at Columbia University.  Their lives took different turnings, his more obvious than hers, although Susan is lost in her way, too.  It’s a heartbreaking exchange between them, and Patricia Randell and Scott Parkinson both shine through.

The final play of the evening has a perfect title:  Curmudgeons in Love by Joshua Conkel, directed by Ralph Peña.  Curmudgeon #1 is Ralph (the wonderful David Margulies), a grumpy old man in a nice assisted living facility, who yells at his nurse (tough and tender Daniela was well played by Veronica Cruz), who yells back.  Ralph’s granddaughter Robin (Nina Hellman, who looks frail but can hold her own) comes to visit and he yells at her. When she yells back, it becomes clear that yelling means love.  Ralph is not a happy fellow, though.  After a 30-year marriage with children and grandchildren then years alone, at 80 he fell in love.  All he wants now is to live with Jackie, but he’s told he cannot.  Jackie’s grandson Brant (Alex Manette) comes to visit, and Ralph yells at him, too, so we know how he feels about Brant.  Finally someone else is yelling from outside, and Brant runs out to wheel in his grandfather, dressed in a tux but confined to a wheelchair.  This is Jackie (Martin Shakar), and all becomes clear.  Two old widowers fell in love, and their grandchildren connive to have them married now that same sex marriage is legal in New York. The old men who discovered true love late in life can live together in wedded bliss.  Totally believable robust characters give us the sweetest moment of the evening, when Jackie’s grandson dances as proxy with Ralph. 

Everyone left the theatre happy — smart programming.  Five plays in two hours (including a 10-minute intermission) is an auspicious start to this year’s marathon.  List of plays and playwrights at:  http://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/node/2009

~ Molly Matera, signing off, drying off, hoping everyone has a fabulous Memorial Day Weekend. 

I'll Take Manhattan(s) and Short Stories and ... Coincidences?

There’s an old saying that you will always meet someone you know when walking along the Champs Elysées.  Perhaps that’s so, but one of the things I love about New York City is that it is Convergence Central. 

Almost twenty years ago I worked briefly for an eminent man at a firm where I was perma-temping.  He was an anomaly at the firm, almost of another time, his manner gentle and gentlemanly.  I respected and liked him. While I never doubted his genius, I didn’t understand what he wrote about — I’m a literature/history person, not a mathematics/science person, and he was an economist.  A friend of mine at that firm edited his writings, so she presumably did understand what he was talking about.

Fast forward to 2009-2010.  I was introduced to literary evenings at the Players Club when New River Dramatists presented special performances in which actors read the prose works — sometimes short stories, sometimes chapters of longer works — of writers who also wrote plays and/or poetry.  Several evenings featured stories written by Alethea Black, as I wrote in my blog back in January of 2010. Her stories are what all writers aspire to: Alethea writes the right words in the right order. She pulls us, her readers, into the lives of her characters; we weep with them, we laugh with them. Sometimes we are them. 

This year, Random House/Broadway Paperbacks is publishing a collection of Alethea Black’s stories in a volume titled: “I Knew You’d Be Lovely.”  I pre-ordered it from Amazon ages ago, but as it won’t be published until July 5^th, my impatient friend Matthew picked up bound galleys at the Strand.  I’m not complaining – I’ve now had the pleasure of reading stories I’ve heard as well as some I haven’t.  This past Monday night at the Players Club, the anticipated publication was celebrated with three wonderful actors reading stories from the collection:  Lisa Bostnar read “Someday is Today” so intuitively that one might have thought she was reading from her own diary.  Next up, Patricia Randell read a funny and touching story called “Good in a Crisis,” with wit and poignancy.  Michael Cerveris read a particularly striking story titled “The Only Way Out Is Through.”  Although I’d read it and knew how it ended, his reading brought the story to vibrant life, and the final scene punched me in the chest.  Figuratively, of course.  It was a wonderful evening, and I encourage anyone who cares about the American short story to get a copy of “I Knew You’d Be Lovely” when it’s published on the 5^th of July.

Oh, the convergence thing?  On Monday evening at the Players Club, as I sat talking with friends from my theatre life before the readings began, who should walk in but that very friend — from my corporate life — who had edited that brilliant man whom I had liked and respected all those years ago. I wondered how she came to be there, and she told me that Alethea Black is the daughter of that memorable man. Mathematics from the father, literature from the daughter. I just get a kick out of the disparate parts of my life suddenly overlapping, like a Venn diagram.  I love New York.

(C) Natalie Dee

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer, but not the light.  The printed book calling to me is not backlit.

Two Readings = Two Plays in Need of Producers

Last week was a busy one. Lucky me, I had friends involved in two readings at the beginning and end of the week. In addition, I had tickets to A Little Night Music (2nd set of leading ladies) in between, so I had a bit of scurrying about to do. Every scurry was well worth it.

Tto open the week, on Monday evening the Abingdon Theatre put on a reading of a play I’d heard read an absurdly long time ago. Some years back Bill McCarty surprised his friends by surfacing with a two act play, complete, without anyone knowing he’d been writing one. Those of you who know writers know how odd that is!

McCarty’s HELLGIG clearly draws on his own experience in the glamorous world of stand-up comedy, the thrill of the road, oh the sights you’ll see. In said play is a terrific role for Bill (that’s fair) that fits like a glove, but also one for his remarkable wife, Patricia Randell. Monday night was a very unusual joy, to see these two fine and funny actors working together, and to hear the play read extremely well in its entirety, crisply directed by Daniela Varon. The play takes place in a Florida condo I never want to see or smell, a dump masquerading as housing for three stand-up comics with a week-long gig at a dive. Only two of these comics have any experience – Georgie Rancor, of which he has much (Mr. McCarty), and Bobbie Sheffield (Ms. Randell). These two have too much experience; these two know each other and neither is happy about it. The third is their opener, a contest winner named Fred, brilliantly and heartbreakingly played by David Gelles-Hurwitz.

Not only does this play have a story, every character in this play has a story, every character has a journey, and while some learn a thing or two, others just refuse. Some things never change. Each character is written sharply, and was played on the edge by Alfredo Narciso (as Lucky, the skeavy owner of the club), Lori Gardner (hilarious both as Panama, an exotic heckler, and a TV reporter with more wit than one expects), and Michael Cullen (as a hood in a nervously hilarious then horrifying scene).

One can only hope someone heard the standing ovation this cast received at the Abingdon for offering its audience this funny, sad, forlorn, frank play. HELLGIG deserves a full production, and New York deserves and needs it. Is any body listening?? HELLGIG’s time has come.

#

To close the week, I trekked way west to EST where Meir Ribalow directed a first-time-ever-heard reading of Hilary Bettis’ play, Mexico. Mexico is as unpleasant as reality TV, and funnier. Very darkly funny. It, too, offered fabulous characterizations. Since its leading female role was read by Patricia Randell, one could wonder if it was just her -- but listening to the script, it’s not just Ms. Randell. She is that good, but it’s also the writing.

Hilary Bettis’ characters are frighteningly real; they, like the play that frames them, build in a realistic, believable manner. These characters’ journey not necessarily where we’d like to see them go -- rather, their destinations are inevitable as those of flawed heroes in Greek tragedy. Scene by scene, Ms. Bettis draws us into a real world we don’t want to acknowledge. Surely no one can live like this, think like this, behave like this. Alas, even when the father, disburbinglly well played by Randell Haynes, says “We’re not that kind of people,” the audience knows that in fact they are. Mexico is not fun. It is, however, searingly good, and was extremely well done by all players (including Ean Sheehy and Kira Sternbach).

So there you are – two plays, two fine readings thereof, two stories well told -- someone should put these into full production.

~ Molly Matera signing off, calling all producers.

Paint It Alethea Black

Some weeks are really tough, and that last workday feels exceptionally long. All I want to do is transport myself home to a hot bath and a hot toddy. But then a Friday evening plays out so well I remember why I live in New York. Last night at The Players was one of those evenings.

I go to The Players to hear my friend Patricia Randell read plays and stories with other actors. Patricia’s work is invariably precise, heartfelt, and gripping. She gets me every time.

New River Dramatists presents readings along with and at The Players, and each evening I’ve spent there has been a joy. As New River’s Artistic Director M.Z. Ribalow said, the writers at New River write in more forms than plays, so why not showcase the playwrights' non-dramatic works. At The Players I’ve heard wonderful stories in prose by Sharon Pomerantz, Denis Johnson, and Alethea Black, among others.

Last night The Players and New River presented four short stories by Alethea Black in an evening called “Paint it Black.” Four marvelous actors –- Christianna Nelson, Bill Camp, Campbell Scott, and Patricia Randell –- read stories from differing points of view about different lives. Each of the characters was a whole human being created from Alethea’s multi-layered mind, and each was enthralling. Each story plays out with tension and humor. Alethea’s work is just delicious: She paints pictures and people moving through space and time and life. And she never, ever goes where I expect her to go.

All Friday nights should be like that.

http://aletheablack.com/stories.cfm
http://www.newriverdramatists.org/index.html

~ Molly Matera, signing off. Thanks for stopping by.