Alliance Repertory Co. delivers a rich character study with "See Rock City"

11/7/06

By Bill Zapcic
Staff Writer, Home News Tribune

Forty or 50 years ago, as post-World War II prosperity let people move from small country towns or big cities into the suburbs, the notion of vacation trips became part of the American culture. All kinds of places started competing with each other for the holiday dollar. 

Some places like Niagara Falls had developed sort of legendary status, still attracting visitors, but others needed a little revitalizing, a little gimmickry. Rock City, Ga.-- where climbers of Lookout Mountain can see seven states--started passing out little cardboard versions of its famous birdhouses. They came with a ridged piece of plastic linguine that fit through a slot in the house, and when you pulled the plastic strip through, the ridges made the thin cardboard vibrate and say "See Rock City!" 

A legend, like South of the Border or the falls or any number of caverns that lured folks in a simpler time. 

Except the times weren't all that simple, as "See Rock City," on stage at Alliance Repertory Theatre in Linden, will attest. This comedic drama by Arlene Hutton, a sequel to "Last Train to Nibroc," continues the story of Raleigh and May during the waning years of WWII. 

The play stands on its own, with ample references in dialogue to events from "Nibroc," so it can be appreciated alone or as part of a set. 

Raleigh (Matt McCarthy) and May (Carla Francischetti) are married, living with May's folks in eastern Kentucky. They've just returned from their honeymoon to Rock City, except they wound up in Cincinnati instead. Not to disappoint Raleigh's mother, Mrs. Brummett (Terri Sturtevant), they acquired a "See Rock City" birdhouse. 

May's mother, Mrs. Gill (Janet Aspinwall), gets a tea towel. 

"See Rock City" is a rich character study in which the action takes place away from the house and away from the people. There's an extra layer to this. Raleigh, because of a medical condition, was discharged from the Army duty he volunteered for. Since then, he has had to endure job losses because of the condition and catcalls and cries of "Coward!" from simple-minded townsfolk who think he's faking. 

Folks like his mother, a Minnie Pearl-style bumpkin who aspires to civil society but knows only a caricature of it. 

May and Mrs. Gill (and the unseen Mr. Gill) are more sympathetic. May, in a role little-seen in that era, is comfortable supporting her husband as a career educator. She and Raleigh, a published writer, have the book smarts and the intellectual savvy to see things in ways the hidebound miners and sharecroppers cannot. They need to bind to each other; they need to break free from their circumstances. 

Several events outside their control conspire against them. Their reactions shape the conclusion of this chapter. 

Director Michael J. Driscoll has shaped the roles in a 1940s movie fashion, using the formality of the age to bring crisp and visually interesting staging. 

Sturtevant makes Mama Brummett the buffoon she is, the kind of well-meaning idiot people tolerate, but only for so long. That she disparages her son and husband so readily is a sign of the times. 

Aspinwall's Mama Gill is the great leveler: loving, discreet, unsurprised by much of what life throws her way and content with her lot. Aspinwall delivers with clarity and subtlety. 

McCarthy plays Raleigh with appropriate emotional spikes, letting him seethe and flounder and sink into depression, only to break free every now and then with joy and enthusiasm. 

Francischetti gives May a heads-up, chins-up strength. She is poised, loving, a joy to watch. Her emotional transformations roll over the audience like a wave. 

Alliance Rep, in its modest digs, delivers high production values with an excellent set by Tom Korner and imaginative lighting by Bob Murray. 

These are characters to care about.

Heartfelt comedy delivers more than just laughs

09/27/06

Being a genius isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when you're a teen. There are boys with a zit or two asking you out in their cracking voices, homework that's far from challenging, and a parent or two embarrassing you.

Life is tough, especially in a podunk coal-mining town.

Say your mom is a flake, that she fancies herself an artist but slings hash at the diner to pay the bills . . . well, some of them. Say she has a boyfriend you don't know anything about. Say you are the glue that holds this quirky little family together.

Yes, being a teen prodigy is no day at the beach.

It is, however, the fodder for a tender yet hilarious play, "Moon Over the Brewery," now on stage at Alliance Repertory Theatre Company in Linden.

Amanda Waslyk (Kate Fallon) balances the usual adolescent issues with the fact that she arguably is the only adult in the house. Yes, she's old for her age, which is why she breaks out of the role every now and then with the help of her longtime friend, Randolph (Gus Ibranyi). Randolph is perfection embodied, and as such he can be a brat. He goads Amanda into trying to sabotage the budding romance between her mother, Miriam (Tracey Randinelli), and Warren Zimmerman (Stuart Marshall).

Warren is a local letter carrier and a student of human nature; he qualifies for a doctorate in people-watching. For a childless man, he handles teenagers, and himself around them, brilliantly.

The first act delivers the yuks, as Warren appears on Amanda's doorstep to deliver wine for that evening's dinner party. She grills him — and he still comes back for dinner.

The second act, in two scenes, reveals the characters' deep feelings and deeper needs: Warren, for love; Miriam, for security; Amanda, for something bigger than buildings surrounding a hole in Pennsylvania; Randolph, for his very existence.

The play is heartfelt yet never heavy.

Ibranyi makes you just plain want to slap Randolph. His movements are catlike, agile; he has no shame. He brings out the worst in Amanda.

Randinelli gives Miriam a lovability that is genuine, making her quirks seem more like golden threads in a tapestry than warts on a witch's face. Even Miriam's fundamentally selfish desire for a companion to care for her is forgivable.

Marshall exudes a mensch quality through Warren. This is a man who probably is ignored as he makes his postal rounds, just a machine wrapped in human flesh. Yet without intruding, he incorporates his customers' lives into his own, celebrating with them the mundanities that far outnumber the spectacular events.

Speaking of spectacular, Fallon's Amanda is a performance for the books. This young actress speaks, moves and expresses herself with the best of them. Nothing, nothing at all rings false with this portrayal of a gifted girl. Inner strength, petulance, the slow but sure warming to Warren: Fallon has the goods and she uses them.

Alexandra Stein's set design could be used as an example of how to decorate the stage on a budget.

Stage direction by Douglas Brautigam makes the most of the actors and the space, leaving "Moon Over the Brewery" always interesting, always entertaining.

Acting, direction shine in riveting character study

06/20/06

Sometimes a little bit of theater can go a long way. If it's "Last Train to Nibroc," it can go across the country, across generations. It can take you places you've never seen. It can take you home.

"Nibroc," the oddly named romance set during World War II, is an emotional trip taken by two people unlikely to fall in love. The stripped-down production by Alliance Repertory Theatre Company, newly in residence at the Linden Presbyterian Church, is pure theater, pure feelings, pure reality.

Raleigh (Matt McCarthy) meets May (Veronica Friedman) in a railroad coach heading east from California. The spot next to her on the aisle is the only seat available; she coolly agrees to let the soldier sit there. He tries to chat her up, friendly-like, but is there more to his line of jabber?

They soon learn they have much in common, despite her church-lady prissiness that serves as a dike holding back her inner self. Arlene Hutton's script captures the manners, the formality of the 1940s, when people comported themselves in word and action with a reserve and stiffness unseen today. Curiously, in introducing himself, Raleigh offers his hand for her to shake; in those days, a man always waited for a lady to extend hers first. Was this script or direction?

As with real dams, figurative dikes leak when what they're holding back overwhelms them. May reveals she's heading home to Corbin, Ky. (a real place), after a disappointing visit to her fiance at his military base. Raleigh — who, it turns out, is from the town next to Corbin — likewise is heading away from that California Army base. But home holds no allure for him; he feels he is a disgrace. Big-city lights beckon.

He and May talk about Corbin's Nibroc Festival (a real event, still held annually), which she regards as sinful and he sees as great fun. A chasm, yet can they reach across it?

In the second of this play's three scenes, they meet again, this time at Nibroc. It's been a year and a half; their lives have changed, and circumstances and wartime have thrown roadblocks between them and their dreams.

Finally, about nine months after that, their lives seem to be on track. But their tracks are diverging, their trains heading in opposite directions. Did they ever have anything in common besides their addresses?

Friedman and McCarthy deliver their characters with grace and appropriate intensity.

McCarthy is affable, lovable, stoic in a resigned-to-his-fate way. He channels well the frustration of a '40s man barred by a medical condition from fighting in The Big One, the shame of a man at whom everyone points. McCarthy delivers the struggle of a man reaching for an alternative self-worth at a time when there was only one measure of it.

Friedman must leave the theater exhausted after every performance. She gives her all in a show that keeps her on a tight rein. Her acting and Michael J. Driscoll's direction sculpt May as a deeply feeling, caring person constrained by the norms and mores of her church, her family, her profession. Friedman inhabits the character every moment, acting and reacting, reflecting and deflecting.

She and McCarthy, in the final analysis, have only each other with whom to create their two characters plus a coterie of family and friends. Their conversations do a great job of introducing the fiance, their respective parents, her joker brother.

The staging is simple, with only a train seat/park bench/porch swing as the major set piece. The stage itself is draped in black; lighting is rudimentary but elegant.

The actors, director and script paint vivid colors.

Catch this train.

Heartfelt Salute to 9/11 Victims
Writer bases 'The Guys' on talks with fire captain who lost 8 men.

Friday, September 24, 2004

By Peter Filichia
Star-Ledger Staff

The third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has come and gone, but Alliance Repertory Theatre Company doesn't want us to forget that easily.

This weekend and next, the Bloomfield troupe is presenting "The Guys," Anne Nelson's highly autobiographical play about the effects of that terrible Tuesday.

Days after the attacks, Nelson was asked to meet with a New York fire captain who had lost eight men at the World Trade Center. He was not skillful with words, so he needed a scribe to help him write the eulogies that he would deliver for each victim.

In drawing out the captain to describe the character of each man, Nelson was also able to coax him to lower his macho guard, and let his tears flow. Both learn about the type of person they never get to meet. Life goes on for the firefighter -- no matter how much survivor's guilt he bears.

While Nelson changed her name to Joan in the play, for the past three years she's never divulged the identity of the fire captain.

She wrote the play in a mere nine days. More amazingly, it premiered in New York a scant 12 weeks to the day after the World Trade Center fell. In 2002, it became a feature film with Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia.

Now Angela Della Ventura and Jerry Marino (Alliance's managing director) play the roles in Paul Zeller's production. It's effective, even though Zeller stages it too far from the audience.

Marino looks appropriately shell-shocked as Nick, suggesting that he'll never again know a minute's peace. The burly actor, with his Buddha-like body, looks uneasy even as he holds a piece of paper in his meaty hands. They're so much more conditioned for carrying an ax or wielding a hose.

The actor shrewdly avoids eye contact with his interviewer, for Nick feels personally responsible for "killing" eight men. There's power in his delivery of the doleful lines, "In a bad year, the New York Fire Department might lose six men. That day, we lost 350."

Marino shows the struggle of a man who's trying to share information about "the guys," but finds his emotions getting in the way. He occasionally emits a laugh when he remembers a funny characteristic about a certain firefighter. Immediately afterward, though, he pulls his face into a sober mask, for he's embarrassed to feel even a second's worth of happiness.

Della Ventura is equally accomplished at playing a compassionate woman who's there to offer him coffee and sympathy. She's not used to being a secretary -- let alone therapist -- but she must take on those roles when conversing with Nick, and is surprised by her adeptness. She slowly, but ever-so-surely, guides Nick from mourning his comrades' lives to celebrating them -- and must keep perspective when he makes them seem too good to be true.

While dramatic works are ideally supposed to show action rather than describe it, "The Guys" nevertheless succeeds in spite of its documentary nature. Nelson's accomplishment is allowing an audience to feel as if it's eavesdropping on a sacred conversation. Along the way, the playwright shows the dignity and eloquence of the working class

Is "The Guys" a great play? No. However, it nobly honors people who should never be forgotten. So it has its own level of greatness.

Opening Doors: Alliance Repertory's Tale of Optimistic Loser is a Winner

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

By Peter Filichia
Star-Ledger Staff

How can a play about a guy in a dull, dead-end job be so entertaining?

Yet Kenneth Lonergan's 2001 off-Broadway hit, "Lobby Hero," indeed is, in a solid production at the Alliance Repertory Theatre Company in Bloomfield.

When the play starts, Jeff is a zero, not a hero. He's a doorman at a ritzy Manhattan high-rise -- the type of job he certainly didn't envision for himself. That's what happens to a guy who buys all the self-help books but doesn't read them.

"I've just had a little bad luck, that's all," he insists, but there are those who might see the situation differently. After all, not everyone owes money to loan sharks, or has asked out a woman who turns out to be a prostitute. Now Jeff is coming off a relationship that tested his feelings of inferiority because his girlfriend has, at least to him, a better job. (Though many of us might not feel the same way about the profession of toll collecting.)

Jeff has his eye on Dawn, a cop who patrols the neighborhood. She's romantically linked with her partner, Bill. Once again, Jeff is a loser -- as his boss, William, is all too willing to remind him. Jeff's hair isn't all that's receding -- so are his opportunities.

Of course, Jeff doesn't see himself that way because his comparative youth -- he's not yet 30 -- still allows him to be optimistic that things will right themselves. Before Lonergan's 110-minute comedy comes to an end, they will indeed. The playwright also offers a wry commentary on how crimes get solved, and how the truth can emerge from the strangest of motivations. Lonergan underlines that most people are so lonely that they have a great need to talk about their problems. That can, in turn, bring other people even bigger problems.

Jeff is deliciously played by Daniel J. Scott. Think of Eddie Haskell, when Ward and June Cleaver aren't around. At one moment, he smirks as if to say, "I'm something special," but when he faces reality, he's appropriately pathetic.

As William, Carl Barber-Steele scores, offering many world-weary sighs between his dialogue, which he delivers in a prematurely gray voice. He has a pivotal moment when he must show vulnerability, and he manages the transition from cool boss to frightened citizen with great aplomb.

Charles F. Wagner IV makes Bill a flatfoot with an Achilles heel: a desperate need for approval. He's particularly funny when he shrugs with false modesty after he's paid a compliment.

Marcie Occhino is a heartbreaker as Dawn, a cop who displays the longing of a woman who desperately wants to fit in a male-dominated profession. Alas, she loves neither wisely nor too well, but her hard shell of denial will keep all three men from knowing how much she's hurting. Only Occhino's haunting, doe-like eyes reveal what's going on inside her.

Bart Rolfes' set design, with its unglamorous front door, doesn't quite suggest the requisite posh setting. The "All Visitors Must Be Announced" sign is particularly pathetic. It's actually no more than a piece of paper glued to Jeff's desk.

Still, Driscoll has directed slickly, even in those second-act patches where "Lobby Hero" gets a bit talky. With four good actors on hand, that talk is mighty entertaining.

Play Heats Up As Couples Get 'Closer'

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

By Peter Filichia
Star-Ledger Staff

Over the icy cold weekend, Alliance Repertory Theatre Company gave Bloomfield a most hot and steamy show.

"Closer," the 1997 comedy-drama by British playwright Patrick Marber, is a heterosexual lust fest. That's apparent from the opening scene, in which young Alice sits with her legs wide open. They'll return to that position several times during the evening.

Alice has been grazed by a passing car and is waiting to be treated in a hospital. A doctor walks by, but doesn't offer aid -- he's a dermatologist. That consternates Dan, who witnessed the accident and wants Alice helped.

Dan discovers that Alice is a stripper and eventually writes her story as a novel. When he goes to get his book jacket picture taken, he's also taken with Anna, the photographer. So that night, when he's on the Internet looking for cyber sex, he pretends to be Anna. The person to whom he's writing -- "RandyDoc" -- is the aforementioned dermatologist, Larry.

Too much of a coincidence? Here comes a bigger one. After Dan tells Larry to meet "Anna" at the aquarium the next day at 1, Larry shows up -- and the real Anna just happens to be there.

These four will eventually become two couples, then split, then couple with someone else and want to switch back again. Considering the nature of current relationships -- when people have an increasingly tough time getting "closer" -- this is definitely a play for our time. But it may make some theatergoers wish they were living in other times.

There isn't enough soap on the average supermarket's shelves to wash out the mouths of the characters in this obscenity-laden script. Marber may have missed one or two profanities, but a better guess is that he got them all. Even more coarse is the language projected on screens buttressing the stage during the Internet chat room scene. The play does carry a parental advisory to keep kids away, but parents and grandparents should be advised, too.

Director Michael Driscoll meets the play's challenges head-on and delivers an erotically charged production. His actors aren't afraid to express sexuality, and all are comfortable no matter in what positions the play puts them. The actors aren't ever naked -- though Lilli Marques as Alice comes darned close -- but all the characters' emotions are certainly stripped raw.

Marques can even make the words "Wall Street" comes across as a sexy expression. But there's more to her than a fascinating face and stunning body. When she's scorned, she beautifully expresses pain in a powerful monologue.

As Anna, Sara Peters knows how to give astonishing come-hither looks. She over-emotes, though, in the scenes in which she must play distraught.

Will Jarred does decently by Dan, the bookish character that is the least interesting role. But Wayne Harris is a wonder as Larry and makes the play his. How well this lantern-jawed actor expresses the nervousness of looking at cyber porn at work, yet not capable of staying away. Later, when he must confess to a wrongdoing, he's reduced to a mere child -- but then when he finds that he's been wronged, he delivers his explosive speech with great conviction.

But even Harris can't save the show when, as the play passes the two-hour mark, the script turns into soap opera, and a most tedious one at that. When steam evaporates, what's left?

Lapin Agile delivers 20th century fare

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

BY PETER FILICHIA
Star-Ledger Staff

Alliance Repertory Theatre Company has opened its new and temporary home in Bloomfield with a decent showing of Steve Martin's 1995 comedy "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." The play is more successful than the playhouse.  On the second floor of a former Masonic Hall, six rows of seats have been placed in a space that would accommodate 60 rows. With the rest of it empty, there's something starkly depressing in the ambience.

Under Kate Schlesinger's direction, the production is no world- beater, but it does justify the modest $15 ticket price.

The play that bears Martin's name could be vexing to some theatergoers. For this is not the Steve Martin audiences know and love from "Bringing Down the House," "My Blue Heaven" or -- especially -- "The Jerk." Here he wrote a most cerebral play -- though he did add a drollery or two in lines like, "A yo-yo is a terrific thing to play with, but a terrible thing to be."

For in this absurdist farce, Martin's heart belongs to Dadaism. That's apparent right away when, in 1904, Albert Einstein shows up at the Lapin Agile Café, stating that he's expecting a woman to show -- even though they'd actually arranged to meet at another bar.

That causes the bartender to snarl, "Real smart, Einstein" -- which wonderfully mirrors how people today use the scientist's name when they want to sarcastically chide a person for a mistake. But of course, time and space is all relative to someone like Einstein.

Arriving next is Suzanne, a young vixen who brags about her very sexual relationship with Pablo Picasso. Einstein is unaware of the man, but when Suzanne hands him a casual drawing the artist had dashed off, Einstein regards it with awe. "I hadn't thought the 20th century would be handed to me so casually," he says.

When Picasso arrives, he picks up a shot glass and looks at everyone through its bottom. For he's much more interested in seeing them refracted in another light. Together, Picasso and Einstein will form their own personal academy of arts and sciences.

Then there's Charles Dabernow Schmendiman. Audiences can be pardoned for not recognizing his name, for Schmendiman isn't the genius he thinks he is. But eventually he'll make his own unique contribution to our lives, something that nearly a century later we still use.

Finally, there's someone whom Martin simply terms "A Visitor," because he doesn't want audiences to know this 20th century icon's identity in advance. While Carmine Covello doesn't much resemble this world-famous luminary, he does perfectly replicate his voice.

David Foubert overdoes Picasso's continual angst, but everyone else does adequately, with Lilli Marques' Suzanne a bit better than that. She has a bubbly voice that's so rich it pours out like champagne. Steve Pearlmutter has a smidgen of style as Einstein, and the others who play barflies and barkeeps do their jobs. It's an affable evening.

Still, there is a profound problem with the upstairs space. Granted, Alliance had to find a new theater in a hurry, once its landlord in Bound Brook decided to renovate the space it was occupying. So artistic director Jeff Streger and managing director Jerry Marino moved to these temporary quarters with no fly or wing space, and -- much more problematic -- no handicap accessibility whatsoever. Theatergoers should know that to see this play about the 20th century, they must literally climb 20 stairs.

Comical Companion One-Acts are Venus-and-Mars Hoot at the Brook

June 12, 2003

By Sujata Parida
Courier News Staff Writer

If washing away our problems was as easy as doing the laundry, than we would all have been rid of our problems long ago. In the Alliance Repertory Theatre Company's production of the comical companion one-acts, ``Laundry and Bourbon'' and ``Lone Star,'' the audience at Brook Arts Center in Bound Brook doesn't necessarily shed their troubles, but they are lighter in mood. Bursts of laughter are a sure sign that the two related one-acts James McLure will be a hit in Central Jersey.

Set in Texas in the 1970s, the combination of similar plays from the perspective of each sex is not bound by any time constraints. The theme of male-female relationships holds up.

The opening one-act ``Laundry and Bourbon,'' which stars Lisa Streger, Sara Peters and Jennifer Hutten, is a story of three women, friends, acquaintances bound to each other by small town with a need to belong. Perhaps they all share the same underlying battle within themselves: to be happy with what they have and who they are. The small town wives' lives have turned out to be less than what was hoped for. While the audience can feel for them, McLure inspires us to laugh rather than lament.

The story opens in the backyard of a pensive Streger, who plays Elizabeth Caulder. One gets the sense that she is strong and wise even though her life may fall apart if her husband, Roy, doesn't come back home soon. Her friend and neighbor, Hattie Dealing, played by Peters, brings her friend the gift of laughter, but there is a sensitivity and vulnerability underneath her humor, and most of the time, she is not afraid to show it.

Between the bourbon drinking, reminiscing and insults, the ladies reveal more than their own secrets, while McClure reveals the life and lifestyle of a small town.

Directing the three women of ``Laundry and Bourbon'' is Stephanie Youngman. As a woman directing women in work that involves many women issues, the match works out well.

The men's perspective is in the Joel Stone-directed ``Lone Star.'' Roy, played by Jonathan Wierzbicki, and his brother, Ray, played by Jeff Maschi, demonstrate the poignancy between brothers. Maschi's Ray in particular, shows depth and sensitivity,while delivering comic relief with ease. David Neal plays Cletis Fullernoy, who aspires to be so much like the ``cool'' Roy, that he lives under the shadows and fear of him.

Instead of being home with Elizabeth, Roy has been out back of a honky-tonk, drinking bottles of Lone Star beer and drowning in self pity and memories of the Vietnam War, while Hank Williams pines on the jukebox.

It's apparent that Roy loves his 1959 Pink Thunderbird convertible. But he eventually realizes that his brother and wife are even more important.

McLure's bitter humor and sensitivity, entwined with the actors' delivery, demonstrate that laughter is good medicine even when you think things can't get any worse.

'Laundry & Bourbon' and 'Lone Star'
Alliance Rep offers an evening of James McLure one-acts, originally titled 'The 1959 Pink Thunderbird.'

June 11, 2003

By Stuart Duncan
Packet Publications

In 1979, an evening of one-act plays had a world premiere at Princeton's McCarter Theatre. The playwright was James McLure, a graduate of Southern Methodist University, where he has a classmate of Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart). Like Ms. Henley, McLure based his chracters on Southern types and, in fact, both of the one-acters in that Princeton debut were set in the uncomfortably small town of Maynard, Texas.

That evening was titled The 1959 Pink Thunderbird, but has been re-issued under a new title — Laundry & Bourbon/ Lone Star. It is being staged at the Brook Arts Center in Bound Brook, under the aegis of Alliance Rep. The plays are mirror images: In the first, Elizabeth Caulder (played exquisitely by Lisa Streger) waits anxiously on the back porch of her ranch house on the outskirts of town for her husband, Roy, who has been gone for three days.

And old friend, Hattie Dealing (Sara Peters, in another of her patented comic turns), drops in, as much to escape for a few hours from her rambunctious kids as to gulp the offered bourbon and help fold laundry. Later Amy Lee Fullernoy (Jennifer Hutten, who knocked us out in Oleanna here at the Brook) appears to push charity tickets, gloat a bit about her station in life and join the boozing.

Since all three actresses are among the best in the state, the hour may well be the funniest you will see all year. Stunningly directed by Stephanie Youngman, it is a gem in an unusual setting.

The companion piece, Lone Star, refers to the name of a local beer, not the state of Texas. The setting is the rear of Angel's Bar (again in Maynard) and the hour is one in the morning on a summer's night. Roy Caulder (that's Elizabeth's missing husband, remember?) is in the process of working his way through a 12-pack of the beer while he attempts to engage his somewhat dull brother, Ray, in conversation.

Jonathan Wierzbicki, making his debut with Alliance Rep, is no stranger to area theater. He recently played Marco in the Villagers' staging of A View From The Bridge. Jeff Maschi, who plays Ray, usually sticks to heavy-handed villanous roles. The pair (with some help from David Neal, who makes a cameo appearance as Cletis Fullernoy, Amy Lee's husband) manage to take on many of the sins of the world, including a few commandments, and get hearty laughs from them.

Roy has been having troubles climbing back into civilian life after Vietnam and it's been two years now. He has news for his brother that won't help anybody very much. That is especially true when we learn that Cletis has "borrowed" Roy's beloved 1959 Pink Thunderbird convertible and wrecked it against the only tree in the town of Maynard. More than another Lone Star may be needed.

The men are as good as the ladies, and just as funny. Sadly, Alliance Rep, who this season have staged some remarkable productions at the Brook (Spinning Into Butter and Oleanna, for two) will be housed in Bloomfield next year while construction at the Brook completely renovates the old movie theater (at 4 million dollars plus). Bloomfield is a long ways away.

Deft Production With or Without Pauses

Monday, April 14, 2003  

By Peter Filichia
Star-Ledger Staff

Most productions of David Mamet's "Oleanna" only have one intermission. So why has Alliance Repertory Theatre Company in Bound Brook added a second unnecessary one in its production?

Perhaps the troupe feels it needs twice as many opportunities to sell food and make a quick buck. In the program, there's the blatant suggestion, "Might as well visit the concession stand" in the middle of the announcement of the two intervals.  But if Alliance Rep keeps doing works as splendidly as this "Oleanna," it will eventually thrive on ticket sales alone.

Mamet's 1992 play takes a look at a student-teacher conference. John is a sincere professor who's giving dense student Carol some extra time -- even though his wife keeps calling and reminding him that they must keep an appointment if they're going to buy their new home.

The poor guy would have been better off if he had just left the office and let the kid fend for herself. For Carol will later twist some of what he said, misinterpret a few of his gestures, and turn his words and deeds into a nightmare situation for John.

It's Mamet's wry look at how political correctness and "evidence" of wrongdoing has gotten out of hand. The play retains the power it had in its original 1992 off-Broadway production and 1994 film, thanks to director John Correll's harrowingly effective production.

At the outset, Jennifer Hutten is all sweet, apple-pie innocence, with a wholesome little-girl face, eyes as big as 25-cent gumballs and a pigeon-toed stance. Yet she also shows the desperation of a superficial student who is much more worried about what she'll score on a test than what she actually learns. "I did everything you told me," she wails, not appreciating that there's a difference between doing an assignment and doing it well. In the second (and third) acts, though, Hutten fully captures Carol's knowledge that the best defense is a good offense.

As John, Jeff Streger has the tired eyes and hunched-over shoulders of a long-suffering teacher. When at one point he sees that a good analogy he has just used is lost on Carol, he starts to sigh, but holds it in lest she be hurt by his thinking she's dim-witted. He's tender in the way that he tells her of his long-ago failures, in hopes she'll see that one setback does not necessarily mean the end of her academic world.

Mamet always has his characters interrupt each other -- just as people do in real-life (which is why he makes so many other playwrights look artificial with their well-honed sentences). Streger and Hutten do superbly in managing these staccato exchanges. But extra credit goes to Streger, who must also constantly interrupt himself when he's on the phone, first with his wife, then with his lawyer. After all, there's no one on the line to play off.

Linda Correll's set is amazingly similar to the one J.C. Gibriano did for Alliance's previous production of "Spinning into Butter" -- which also took place in a teacher's office. Both designers committed the mistake that usually is made by a community theater -- by putting copies of Reader's Digest condensed books in their bookcases. Granted, these books are easy to come by, what with so many people ridding their houses of them. But no self-respecting university professor would ever have even one of these displayed on his shelf, and John has seven of them.

But just as the time will come when Alliance Rep won't need to add an intermission to sell wares, so too will it someday be wealthy enough to buy the right tomes.

'Oleanna'
Alliance Rep concludes its 'learning experience' trilogy with this in-your-face David Mamet play, on stage in Bound Brook.

April 9, 2003

By Stuart Duncan
Packet Publications

Oleanna is like most David Mamet plays — passionate, vitriolic and manipulative. It is getting such a strong production by the Alliance Repertory Theatre Company at the Brook Arts Center in Bound Brook that the adjectives seem palliative.  

Mamet's plot is simple: A college professor, a bit sure of himself, is meeting with a female student who is clearly having trouble in his course. The professor is at the top of his game; he is up for tenure and as a result of the promotion is closing on a new house. In fact, his mind is very much divided as we sit in on the conversation — partly to his wife and lawyer on the phone, partly to the distraught student. He opts to help the student.  

By Act II (of three, that actually are three scenes rather than full acts, all together lasting under two hours with two intermissions) the situation has become reversed. Now the student, no longer helpless it seems, has control. She is accusing the professor of acts of sexism and worse, easily recalling terms she couldn't understand previously.  

By Act III, ugliness has replaced civility, and the relationship veers dangerously close to violence. "Freedom of thought" has turned to "thought control." It is vintage Mamet, and one's reaction is both mental and visceral.  

Alliance Rep never takes the easy course. Oleanna follows Children of a Lesser God and Spinning Into Butter in a trilogy of "the learning experience" plays. Director John Correll has found a pair of actors who fit the roles brilliantly. There have been productions in the past in which the director clearly has balanced Mamet's arguments so that the audience is offered a choice. Not so here. The script makes it painfully evident as to what the playwright's intentions were; Correll follows that thread.  

Jeff Streger has worked with Correll previously, most notably in American Buffalo, another Mamet play Alliance Rep brought to the area in 1999. (It was staged in the basement of the Monument Park Plaza Hotel, since razed.) Jennifer Hutten, a Rutgers student, plays the devious undergrad. The on-stage chemistry is electric. Mamet requires fierce concentration — sentences are left unfinished, sometimes hardly begun. A pause is as common as an expletive, and there are plenty of both. The actor must treat desperation and ecstasy with the same cynicism. Watching the action demands the same. The opening Saturday-night audience was literally shaking by the curtain call.  

It is not a show for everyone. See it with someone you can lean on.

Black and White
New play takes a brutally honest look at race relations.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

BY Peter Filichia
Star-Ledger Staff

What may turn out to be the most harrowing and painfully honest scene of the New Jersey professional theater season is occurring in a small theater in Bound Brook.

Alliance Repertory Theatre Company, which recently took up residence in the town, is introducing theatergoers to Rebecca Gilman, one of the newest, most powerful voices in contemporary theater. She proves it in "Spinning Into Butter," which is receiving an excellent production under Michael Driscoll's taut direction.

In an age when people have been carefully taught what's politically correct and what isn't, actress Angela Della Ventura delivers a truly shocking monologue. She says she's so frightened of African-Americans that she avoids them on buses or trains. She even has a plan to first choose a white woman for her seatmate, then a white man. She details a few more races that make her feel decreasingly comfortable, until she reaches her last resort: a black man.

Some audience members may feel compelled to cover their ears, but more likely they will be riveted to each word. That's partly because Gilman's writing is so pungent, but also because Della Ventura is delivering those words with a frankness leavened with guilt.

But here's the thing: Della Ventura isn't playing a redneck; she's Sarah Daniels, dean of students at a Vermont college.

The school is about to get a feverish wake-up call. Black student Simon Brick has been receiving death threats and the deans are aghast. In reality, they're less interested about Simon than they are about getting bad publicity.

On the other hand, Sarah is much more concerned about Simon. But she's having problems with another student, the gifted Patrick Chibas. She helps him with a scholarship application, and though he wants to write in his race as Nuyorican, she tells him the powers-that-be would better understand Puerto Rican. He gives in, because he wants the money.

But he's only assuaged for a while. While Patrick gets the scholarship money, he believes he has compromised himself and displaces his hostility on Sarah, blaming her for making him "change his race." It's a sad moment, for Della Ventura has been totally convincing in showing Sarah's compassion for her students.

But Gilman doesn't see the race issues as cut and dried. Daniel B. Utset potently makes Patrick's points, capturing the anguish of a young man who is not true to himself and sells out for money. Throughout his solid performance, he seems to be crying out in pain at his inability to function in a world where he is a member of a minority.

Jim Morgan and Noreen Farley are properly unctuous as the deans. (As for Simon Brick: He never appears in the play.)

"Spinning into Butter" isn't presented in the Brook Arts Center's 1,000-seat auditorium. That's still in disarray from the ravages of Hurricane Floyd three years ago, so Alliance simply uses the lobby, where a makeshift stage faces three rows of comfortable armchairs. The company plans to convert the warehouse next door into a 200-seat theater, but if it keeps presenting works and performances of this caliber, it may need the larger auditorium after all.

'Spinning Into Butter'
Alliance Rep offers Rebecca Gilman's provocative drama about racial hatred, set on a Vermont college campus.

February 12, 2003

By Stuart Duncan
Packet Publications

Alliance Repertory has been a theater company in search of a home base far too long. It has operated on second stages around the area, even in the basement of a hotel in New Brunswick condemned to the wrecker's ball. Happily it has found a permanent home at the Brooks Arts Center in Bound Brook.

With the next-door warehouse still months away from construction, the stage and audience are both confined to the mainstage lobby area which, in turn, demands ingenuity from actors and directors. The latest offering — Rebecca Gilman's provocative drama of campus life in almost lily-white Vermont as it confronts racial hatred, "Spinning Into Butter" — presents blistering concepts in an up-close-and-personal setting.

It is the perfect project for director Michael Driscoll who has developed a stunning reputation for matching actors to roles ideally suited to their talents, and for courageously taking on difficult themes that disturb the mind and leave welts on the soul.

Spinning Into Butter (the title refers to an image in a children's story about Little Black Sambo) revolves around Sarah Daniels, an acknowledged liberal dean of students at a school with Establishment ties and mindset. She has been hired for her empathetic concerns for minority students, but hides personal fears. When one of the college's few black students begins receiving hate mail, Sarah's commitment is challenged, as indeed are her colleagues. The show premiered at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and later at Lincoln Center Theater in New York.

Director Driscoll has found a few freshmen of his own to join the cast of veterans. Daniel Utset plays a Hispanic student with seething intensity. Darren Ross is a well-intentioned student with "do-good" instincts who finds himself more and more disillusioned.

Art Hickey, who has appeared on local stages for 20 years, makes his Alliance Rep debut as a college security guard. Noreen Farley, who has done most of her work on the West Coast — films and commercials as well as regional theater — also is new to the company.

Another veteran of area stages, Jeff Maschi, is a professor and (semi) love interest. Jim Morgan, in his fifth Alliance Rep show, portrays the haughty dean of the faculty with polished ease.

But the evening clearly belongs to Angela Della Ventura as Sarah. She brings to the role a lovely aura of vulnerability. Playwright Gilman makes the mistake many new writers do of overwriting the message. In particular, right in the middle of act two, everything stops while we must listen to four full pages of the playwright's thoughts once more — after we all have heard them and digested them in the 90 minutes leading up to the moment. Miss Ventura handles the dialogue with aplomb.

But this minor quibble aside, Spinning Into Butter is an important work by a playwright from whom much can be expected in the future.

Spinning Into Butter continues at the Brook Arts Center, 10 Hamilton St., Bound Brook, through March 1. Performances: Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $15. For information, call (732) 469-7700. On the Web: www.alliancerep.org and www.brookarts.org.

The Comedy Cafè

December 12, 2001

By Stuart Duncan
Packet Publications

Alliance Repertory stages an evening of eight short pieces.

While it continues its peripatetic wanderings to find a permanent theater site, the Alliance Repertory Theatre Company is happy to accept invitations to stop in, even for brief periods, at alternative spots. The Villagers had two open weeks in its Black Box space, so the repertory company is staging what is being called The Comedy Cafè or Friends. Take your pick.

It is an evening of eight short pieces, some amusing, some provocative, none dull. It is a good opportunity to show off talent, both of actors and directors. It's fun for the audiences, too.

We begin with a pair of potato peelers, presumably in a restaurant basement, with bags of potatoes ready for the paring knives. One is clearly a novice, somewhat unprepared for the pace needed to really achieve; the other is a real pro and has the plaque on the wall, next to the executive bathroom, to prove it. Of course we can expect to have changes in this set-up and we get it - in spuds.

This is followed by a piece written especially for the troupe by Joel Stone and expertly acted by Jerry Marino and J.C. Gibriano. The duo play fisherman in a small rowboat on a fully stocked lake, on a morning when the fish are not biting, but the wind is.

And so we go - a short piece by John Patrick Shanley, the only author whom you may recognize by name, about a young lad who is smitten by a mermaid who lives in the lake in Central Park.

A nifty monologue, titled The Night I Spent With Elvis, is directed by the aforementioned Joel Stone and acted nicely by Angela Della Ventura, complete with hair with "unassisted bounce."

By the finale we are ready for a real ta-bum ending, involving a couple, each wearing half of a Santa suit and putting the finishing touches on an office holiday party.

Among the actors not yet mentioned were: Peter Schuyler and Jack Reiling; James Fiorello and Jaime Kimberlin; Jay Leibowitz and Jeff Streger; Tracy Fama and Rich Sibello. The directors include: Cynthia Wiese, Mike Driscoll, Jay Leibowitz, Jeff Streger and Rich Baker.

Drama Reigns Supreme
TimeOFF's theater critic looks back at 12 stellar performances.

December 19, 2001

By Stuart Duncan
Packet Publications

One of the sad things about drawing up a year-end list of the best productions is the realization that the work already is in storage. Unlike a good book that can be re-read for pleasure, a superior film that becomes available on tape or a fine restaurant that will probably be open that very night, once closed, a stage show is gone forever - the sets stored or broken up, the actors scattered.

Discussing "best of," one is reduced to trips down memory lane, armed perhaps with a few clippings. I call my personal trip "The Twelve Days of Christmas" for the dozen nights I spent on the aisle during the year that I would most relish reliving. The year 2001 was unusual in that, for the first time in a long time, most of the shows on the list are not musicals but "straight" plays, some very serious indeed.

I list them in no particular order.

Shadow Box at Theatre Intime, Princeton University

Three Sisters at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Drew University, Madison

A Chorus Line at Papermill Playhouse, Millburn

Painting Churches at Langhorne Players, Langhorne, Pa.

Romeo and Juliet at McCarter Theatre, Princeton

Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? at Actors' NET of Bucks County, Morrisville, Pa.: 

Master Class at The Villagers, Somerset

Gross Indecency presented by Alliance Rep. at The Brook Theatre, Bound Brook: Another triumph for director Michael Driscoll, this time with a play based on The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. The events took London society through spasms of scandal. This production, seamlessly acted by a superb company, showed it all. Alliance Rep. is still searching for a permanent home; meanwhile, it is worth following them around. Again, sadly, audiences were sparse.

Turandot at The Opera Festival of New Jersey, McCarter Theatre

Talley's Folly at George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick

Hamlet at Actors' NET of Bucks County

A Christmas Carol at McCarter Theatre

There you have it - my wish list for Christmas. Nine dramas and three musicals (well, OK, one is technically an opera.) It was a very fine year indeed. But with the schedules already out for much of next season, who knows? Perhaps 2002 will be even better. Join me as we find out together. I'll be the one on the aisle.

Theater review: 'Three Tall Women'
Not an easy evening, this is a play that demands complete attention

Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1999

By Stuart Duncan
Princeton Packet Theater Critic

It is not uncommon for a playwright to write about his or her family, often to assuage guilt about family disfunctionality. Eugene O'Neill, Neil Simon and, more recently, A.R. Gurney all have used family backgrounds and events to great effect. But Edward Albee has had a lifetime passion with the art.

In reality, Albee left his foster parents at an early age and never again spoke to his father. Among all his works (and he most certainly can be said to be prolific) Three Tall Women is perhaps his most personal — an intimate portrait of his mother. Albee himself directed the play at its world premiere in Vienna, in part because he said it was the only way of assuring it would be done correctly. Albee has ever been the supreme egotist.

Three Tall Women is being revived superbly by Alliance Repertory, a fledgling group that already has given us American Buffalo and Burn This. Working without a permanent place to call home, it is staging this play at Circle Playhouse in Piscataway.
The show is written in bifurcated style. There are indeed three women; the program (and Albee) calls them A, B and C. A is an older woman, more than 90 by her own admission. She is a widow, comfortably off, even rich, opinionated, headstrong, although now forgetful, and certainly demanding. B takes care of her. She is about 52 and seems remarkably well adjusted to A's moods and contradictions. C is only 26, trained to be a lawyer and already slightly arrogant. She is attempting to get the older woman's affairs in order, both legally and financially.

In keeping with Albee's trademark, the conversation is brisk, blatantly profane and unusually sexual.

But Act One ends with A comatose from a stroke. And Act Two is very different: Now A, B and C all are playing the same woman — at different stages of her life. Incidentally, a dummy is used to portray the woman in her present state, lying in bed under an oxygen mask. Now we hear all of the gory details which brought her to her present state of being. Some of the statements from Act One come back to haunt us. "I was very good at everything," A had concluded; now we begin to question that assertion.

C now insists she will never grow up to be B and then A, but of course she will. And with undisguised glee, the latter two explain what she has in store: a loveless marriage, an occasional affair with the stable groom, the boredom of life.

It is all brought brilliantly to the stage by Elaine Wallace as A, in her finest role and strongest performance; by Doris Dunigan as B, in the toughest transition of the evening, stunningly handled, and by Janie Haddad as C, wonderfully sure of herself and therefore vulnerable.

Jerry Marino has directed with extraordinary depth of understanding. Albee himself might not approve because Marino has taken risks. Don't expect an easy evening. This is a play that demands complete attention. And let's all hope Alliance Repertory can find a theater worthy of its exciting work.

Theater review: 'American Buffalo'
A stunning beginning for new Alliance Repertory

Friday, January 22, 1999

By Stuart Duncan
Princeton Packet Theater Critic

"American Buffalo" is David Mamet's best play.

True, the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded its Drama Prize to Mamet's next work, "Glengarry Glen Ross," but that was only because the committee, like many, was slow to recognize Mamet's extraordinary talents, especially his use of the English language to form a sort of gutter poetry.

The show is being revived by a new theater company in a new theater setting. Alliance Repertory is staging a white-hot version of American Buffalo in a theater at the historic Monument Park Hotel, on Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick, directly across the street from The State Theatre.

The play is simplicity itself. Donny, the owner of a basement junk shop, has sold a Buffalo nickel for 90 bucks to a customer who wandered in off the streets. Belatedly Donny realizes that the coin was "probably worth five times that." He and his two low-life buddies plan to retrieve the coin by the method they understand best - they will ascertain an address, break in and steal it. Plus anything else that might just be of value.

Donny (Jerry Marino) is joined by Bobby (Kevin Carr), a hop-head druggie who has trouble focusing on the subject at hand, and Teach (Jeff Streger), a firecracker, popping and sparkling, twitching and noxing. The beauty of Mamet's language is the rhythm, a rat-a-tat of ugly phrases and gerundives, scraping at the gutter, bubbling as if at an overworked drain. Interestingly, it is Bobby's pauses that bring it to the consciousness, interrupting the flow, ruining the rhythm as he tries desperately to find the subject at hand.

But it is Donny who is at the center of the evening, its grounding in reality. It is a skewed reality, to be sure, about 15 degrees off true north, but he is the glue that holds the trio together. The sheer beauty of Mamet's play is that we know it wouldn't take much to outmaneuver these penny-ante operators. Yet we have to respect their commitment to a job - and to each other. When at the end, they resort to ugly physical brutality, it is because they can't express their emotions.

The theater offers bar service (a waitress will take your order and serve.) The space itself has both small tables and chairs, sort of cabaret style. But it is the three strong performances of Mamet's hard-diamond play that commands attention. It is clearly courageous for a new company to begin with such a risky piece. And it is a stunning beginning.