Arts

Although rare, there were once American musicals that talked about politics and even acknowledged that poor people existed. Bertolt Brecht was their father. Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, written in 1937, was a fable about workers and corporate greed so outspoken that the House Un-American Activities Committee tried to shut it down; 1957′s Fiorello dramatized New York mayor LaGuardia’s reformist efforts and his support for factory workers. These days, though, Cradle is looked on as a historical oddity, and despite a killer score, Fiorello doesn’t get produced. This is a shame, because I’d really like to go to the theater some night and hear a group of operatives comparing “Politics and Poker”: “If politics seems more predictable/That’s because/Usually/You can stack the deck.” Or strikers singing: “Must we sew and sew/Solely to survive/So some low so-and-so can thrive?/No!/He’ll fry in Hades if it’s up to the ladies/Waistmakers Union Local 25!”

Slow Dance With a Hot Pickup isn’t a rabblerouser like Cradle, and it doesn’t have the overriding wit of Fiorello, but it is an engrossing and intriguing show about real people in desperate circumstances, and it most definitely has its heart in the right place. This is a completely original work by John Pielmeier, who wrote Agnes of God, and composer Matty Selman; this production at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre is being presented as a workshop in preparation for a national tour, so the show is still fluid. It’s also a big risk for BDT, whose clientele tends to expect old chestnuts and family-friendly outings.

The plot involves eight people competing in a radio contest: There’s a shiny new truck in the middle of a car lot, and the contestant who can keep a hand on it the longest will win it. Like the wretched dancers in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, these people hang on for days, becoming more tired and quarrelsome by the hour — and also more concerned about each other and more empathetic. The contestants include a Vietnam vet; an Asian woman who wears a cowboy hat, wants to be a country singer and is secretive about her country of origin; an out-of-work ex-con; a tough-talking, hard-praying female auto mechanic; a young girl with a secret; a rather innocent teenage guy; a good-natured waitress; and a middle-aged man worn out with caring for his illness-ridden ex-wife. The off-stage voice of a sadistic radio announcer (Scott Beyette) issues directives and makes arbitrary judgments: Someone returned from break a second late, someone’s hand slipped momentarily from the side of the truck.

Twining together eight narratives isn’t easy, and the script needs shaping. Sometimes it’s a little obvious, too: Does the harried waitress have to be ill on top of everything else, and if she does, does it really have to be breast cancer? Why not something a little more original, like multiple sclerosis? But there are still many moving and resonant moments. The music ranges from okay to excellent; the song that sticks in my memory is a funny, hummable ode to coffee. And overall, the production is low-key and straightforward, with everyone in regular clothes and a sparse set that highlights the glossy, inhuman power of the huge truck in the center of the stage.

The cast is full of talent — both vocal and thespian — and the members rise brilliantly to the challenge of making ordinary people riveting. Alicia Dunfee’s auto mechanic is as touching as she is tough — and a profound departure from the actress’s last manifestation here, when she glided elegantly across the stage as the title character in Hello, Dolly! John Scott Clough is entirely convincing as the ex-con, and Dwayne Carrington exudes decency as the vet. There’s gentle warmth from Passion Lyons, who plays the young woman with a secret, and charm from the show’s other youngster, Brett Ambler. Leonard Barrett always knows how to seal the deal on stage, and his passionate breakdown as he sings about the burden of caretaking is an emotional high point. I’ve seen Barb Reeves perform many times before, but I’ve never seen her like this; the sincerity and integrity she gives the waitress represent everything that’s right about this gentle-hearted show.

By Andrew Gans
24 Mar 2011

Ann Harada

An industry reading of the new musical Slow Dance With a Hot Pick-Up will be presented in Manhattan March 28 at the Peter J. Sharpe Theater.

The reading will feature the talents of Ellen Foley, Ann Harada, Thursday Farrar, Robert Petkov, Michael Holland and Tom Riis Farrell.

Slow Dance With a Hot Pick-Up was penned by John Pielmeier (Agnes of God and Boys of Winter) with a score by Emmy Winner Matty Selman.

“The characters, of all ages, ethnicities, and temperaments, strut, scrap, fall in love, and, along with the audience, collapse in laughter, excitement and exhaustion,” press notes state, “while still holding on to and hoping to take home their dream of a hot pick-up truck.”

“It’s a slice of the American Pie,” states John Pielmeier, “just not too neat a slice.” “There is something for everyone to love in this celebration of the American hero, and the American musical,” adds Matty Selman.

 This musical will open at the Boulders Theater in September.

THEATER REVIEW | Mary Johnson, The Baltimore Sun | March 12, 2008

Having suffered through too many The Glass Menagerie performances dated by flowery language and gloomy Depression-era struggles, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bay Theatre’s new production invests freshness and an emotional relevance to connect the audience to the characters, all on an amazingly authentic set.

Every role is so well cast that we recognize aspects of ourselves in this family from 70 years ago. Some mothers still want their children to conform to social dictates and may fantasize that they excel, while some sons and daughters, afraid to disappoint them, may help foster such illusions while longing for freedom to establish their own lives.

Tennessee Williams’ first major success, The Glass Menagerie premiered on Broadway in 1945 and is set in 1930s St. Louis. Tom Wingfield relates through flashbacks the lives of his mother – Southern belle Amanda, abandoned by her husband years before and now existing in her idealized genteel past – and his crippled, shy sister Laura, who shrinks from the real world and fills her imaginary one with glass animals and music from old phonograph records.

The family struggles to survive on Tom’s meager $60-a-month warehouse salary. Amanda sells magazine subscriptions to fellow Daughters of the American Revolution members, while Laura has secretly quit business school.

The play has autobiographical touches: Tom is a writer who, like Williams, worked a menial job in a shoe factory. Laura might have represented Williams’ mentally ill sister, Rose.

Here Bay Theatre’s co-founder and artistic director, Lucinda Merry-Browne, defines anew the role of Amanda Wingfield. So immersed – and transformed – is Merry-Browne in the role that my husband, Bud, commented, “That woman can really act,” unaware that this was a woman he’d photographed several times.

Not only does she look and sound different with her Southern drawl, but she has become a multi-dimensional Amanda who clings to her illusions as tightly as to her beloved jonquils. She badgers her children because she knows they are moving away from her – Tom escaping through the movies and Laura embracing the fantasy of a gentleman caller.

Ben Russo as Tom Wingfield opens the play with a passionate poetic soliloquy that sets a high standard for what follows. Russo is always believable as he communicates Tom’s frustration and longing to flee the warehouse and his mother’s badgering. Russo also interjects unsuspected humor and conveys a protective sense of duty to Laura.

Kristen Calgaro makes a memorable Bay debut as Laura. Her singing “There are smiles that make us happy” is potent in expressing her contentment in her imaginary world – a joy that Amanda shatters with inquiries about her whereabouts when she was presumably attending business school. Calgaro conveys the intense pain of an awkward young woman who had a high-school crush on the man soon to arrive as her Gentleman Caller.

Judson Davis completes the perfect four-person cast as the likable Gentleman Caller, who refuses to be discouraged by his menial warehouse job, happy to be remembered by Laura as a fine debater and singer. Davis’ Caller treats Laura with the sensitivity he’d use in handling one of her fragile glass animals. But he also sweeps Laura into his arms for a dance that seems as close as she’ll ever get to dreamed-for romance and happiness.

Perfection doesn’t end with the cast – it is seen in the work of director Nancy Robillard and in the set design of Dave Buckler and costumes by Eric Langmeyer with effective lighting by John Burkland, all who together evoke the era and the family’s shabby gentility.

The set, on the tiny confines of the stage, is a particular delight. It incorporates a realistic, subtly lit fire escape strewn with ticket stubs and cigarette butts inside the gratings to become an ideal exit and entry point, complete with sound effects. Not only does it heighten drama, but it also serves as a porch setting for important explanatory soliloquies.

The Glass Menagerie continues on weekends through March 29 at Bay Theatre, 275 West St. in Annapolis. Ticket information is available at 410-268-1333 or www.baytheatre.org

Naomi Siegel
The New York Times

• Ella Reney
  Argus Champion

Potomac Stages

Jayne Blanchard
Washington Times

A river courses with painful memories and damaging secrets yet beckons to the troubled duo at the center of Anton Dudley’s new play, “Honor and the River.” Its icy waters are a kind of baptismal font on the way to spiritual renewal.

Luna Stage’s production of Mr. Dudley’s riveting, if at times manipulative, work is a stunner. Directed lyrically by Nancy Robillard, it is performed without a false step by a superb cast. This is one of the more rewarding evenings of New Jersey’s current theater season.

Robert Monaco’s setting is in itself worthy of bravos. Framed by rough-hewn beams to suggest the boathouse of a prestigious New England prep school, a graceful racing shell hangs suspended by pulleys, ropes and rigging awaiting its “odd couple” teaming of two crew hopefuls, Honor and Eliot. Before the play has ended, the shell will become a dining table and a rowboat. Its repetitive raising and lowering into the “water” has the choreographed solemnity of an ancient and mystic ritual and lends the play an aura of gravitas that contributes to its power.

As a coming-of-age memoir, the play finds voice in the musings of Eliot, a young man haunted by his morbid fear of water after the death of his father, a marathon swimmer, and by his own search for personal and sexual identity within a competitive macho world. “I’ve always had a winter sensibility,” Eliot (played with heartbreaking vulnerability by Andy Phelan) confides to the audience. “There’s safety in the knowledge that the world is sleeping.”

Eliot’s nemesis and the object of his adolescent passion is Honor Roberts, the school’s outstanding jock and everyone’s idol. Honor (in an equally engaging, shatteringly cruel performance by David Michael Holmes) has been assigned to the same shell as Eliot and is forced to work with his ungainly, terror-stricken partner as both fight to make the spring rowing team. When Honor charges Eliot with a secret mission — delivering a gift to his would-be girlfriend across the river — things get treacherous. The two young men are forced to confront their demons and to find a way to move forward with their lives.

A counterpoint to Eliot and Honor are their parents, each recently bereaved (Honor’s mother is dead) and struggling to overcome aching loneliness. Eliot’s mother, Wawa (Carolyn Popp), all aflutter with concern for her beleaguered son, finds comfort in her blossoming relationship with Honor’s father, Alcestis (Reathel Bean), an overbearing, pompous, yet decent man determined to coach his son to a berth on the team. Ms. Popp and Mr. Bean, though cast in roles that are more cliché than character study, are touching in their portrayals.

“Honor and the River” was originally commissioned by the Manhattan Theater Club in 2004, yet is only now receiving its world premiere, at Luna. After experiencing the play in all its intensity and richness, I would suggest that this is New York’s loss and New Jersey’s gain.

“Honor and the River” is at Luna Stage, 695 Bloomfield Avenue, Montclair  through Feb. 25th. Information: (973) 744-3309 or at lunastage.org.

Honor and the River: Solid Coming of Age Drama with Substantial Potential

What does it take to be “a real man?” Well, educated, sophisticated theatregoers know that it requires something more than athletic exploits and bravado. In fact, when unaccompanied by deeper, more important virtues, these qualities can be inimical to true manhood. In his new play Honor and the River, author Anton Dudley elucidates this truth. More impressively, Dudley succinctly and convincingly illuminates elusive inner qualities which underpin true maturity and manhood. Honor and the River tells the story of two disparate, troubled adolescents who are thrown together, and intuitively are able to help each other while helping themselves to grow into maturity and self awareness.

The story is narrated by its main protagonist Eliot, an introverted and delicate New England prep school student who has gone out for crew in order to fulfill the school requirement for sports participation, even though he cannot even swim. Eliot has a crush on Honor, his muscular and more socially popular crew partner. The boys are brought into further contact when a romance develops between Wawa, Eliot’s widowed mother, and Honor’s widowed father, Alcestis Roberts. Although he treats Eliot derisively and cruelly, Honor is oddly attracted to him.

It seems that Honor had gotten into trouble by violating school rules in “visiting” a student on the girls campus across the river. He wants Eliot to row there after dark in order to bring the girl a small sculpture that he has made for her. Honor offers to teach Eliot how to swim so that he will be able to perform the task. When Eliot’s act on his behalf becomes known to his father, Honor lies in order to place the entire blame upon Eliot. Eliot acquiesces to the lie rather than allow any consequences to befall Honor.

Andy Phelan anchors the entire play magnificently by totally inhabiting Eliot. Phelan has to deliver extended monologues in which he explores and probes Eliot’s developing, ever-changing psychological mind set. He does so in a totally naturalistic manner, always remaining an awkward and uncertain adolescent. Narrating events, Phelan enhances the short story memoir style which author Anton Dudley has effectively employed here.

David Michael Holmes is also effective as the jock-like Honor. As Dudley fills in Honor’s complexities, Holmes’ performance manages to contain the many facets of Honor’s character and personality remarkably well. There are colors here that require examination in order for the viewer to accept them all in one person, but it is worth the effort.

Carolyn Popp delivers an emotive performance as Wawa. Popp’s line readings unfortunately come across as … line readings.

The veteran Reathel Bean delivers a solid, straightforward performance as Alcestis. However, the role itself is a bundle of contradictions that author Dudley fails to integrate into a recognizable human being. The lack of any consistency in his character from moment to moment weakens the play. Dudley allows Alcestis to be seen as a decent gentleman when he acknowledges to Eliot (and provides an alibi for) his destructive behavior toward his son. When he then does nothing to undo the damage that he has caused, Dudley still gives him a pass. It is as if Dudley had based Alcestis on someone close to him whom he cannot go too far in consciously criticizing.

Director Nancy Robillard has nicely captured the storytelling feel of the play. Aided by Robert Monaco’s simple, but imaginative set design which incorporates the use of a (racing) shell suspended by ropes from overhead which when suspended upside down becomes a dinner table, and Dave Feldman’s evocative lighting, Robillard has given the production a fluid, cinematic feel.

Although this Luna Stage production is a world premiere, the play has been workshopped at Vassar and was presented as part of Ariel Tepper’s first Summer Play Festival on Theatre Row. As presently revised and crisply and imaginatively staged, Honor and the River makes for entrancing storytelling. With some clarification of character, it could be even more special.

Honor and the River continues performances (Thurs. 7:30 p.m./ Fri. & Sat. 8 p.m./ Sun. 2 p.m.) through February 25, 2007 at Luna Stage, 695 Bloomfield, Montclair, NJ 07042. Box Office: 973-744-3309/ online: http://www.lunastage.org/.

Honor and the River by Anton Dudley; directed by Nancy Robillard

Cast (in alphabetical order)
Mr. Roberts…………………Reathel Bean
Honor…………..David Michael Holmes
Eliot……………………………Andy Phelan
Wawa………………………..Carolyn Popp
Photo: EJ Carr
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- Bob Rendell

Fraternity row
Oarsmen in drama grapple with bonds of affection
Tuesday, February 06, 2007 BY PETER FILICHIA, Star-Ledger Staf
NEW JERSEY STAGE
If “Honor and the River” were to move from Montclair to Manhattan, Andy Phelan just might become a much-awarded theatrical star. He’s that exceptional in Anton Dudley’s solid new play at Luna Stage Company.
Phelan is the main reason why it’s the sleeper hit of the season. The young actor hasn’t been handed an easy challenge. He’s portrays Eliot, the type of teenager whose favorite pet is a turtle, not a dog. The shy, unathletic lad is certainly not one of the popular students at Masterson Academy. When asked if he belongs to a social circle, he mutters, “A half-crescent at best.”

Phelan plays the role with sensitivity, yet never emerges as effeminate. His slight smile betrays his nervousness, but shows a sense of wonder, too. When he turns to the audience to narrate the action, he speaks in a way that never begs for sympathy.

As a result, he gets plenty of it from the crowd.

To change his status, Eliot joins the rowing team — surprising, because he doesn’t know how to swim and wasn’t inclined to learn, even before his father drowned. Here, too, Phelan scores as a teen who yearns terribly for his father, but is trying to be brave — and “masculine” — about it.

Eliot’s reason for choosing rowing could be a handsome, rugged teammate, atypically named Honor. Says Eliot, wistfully, “Honor is the type of kid who gets everything he asks for.” How Eliot wishes Honor would want him, too.

Honor will get what he wants from Eliot — and by dishonorable means. How this impacts Eliot’s mother and Honor’s father, who are romantically intertwined, complicates matters.

There has been no shortage of plays about the gay yearnings of youth. Dudley’s drama, though, avoids the maudlin and contains some beautiful poetic imagery. That alone would separate it from the pack. Nancy Robillard’s excellent direction, which creates a haunting mood, helps immeasurably.

David Michael Holmes is excellent as Honor, the arms-crossed, annoyed brute who spends a good deal of time squinting in disapproval at Eliot’s “strangeness.” Holmes’ smile is a bit crooked, revealing something between mischievous and sardonic.

Reathel Bean plays Honor’s father with a charming crustiness. Carolyn Popp captures the delightful cluelessness but well-meaning qualities of Eliot’s mom. Along the way, she gets the chance to center herself and become intent on finding personal happiness; Popp makes the transition with ease.

The playwright did some work for set designer Robert Monaco by describing the look of the show in his stage directions. Dudley decided a racing shell should be hung from the rafters by thick rope and could be lowered halfway between ceiling and stage. Then the boys would climb in and row (albeit without oars), moving the floating shell back and forth in a simulation of a crew racing.

Even though the playwright carefully envisioned his show, he couldn’t have imagined that someone as perfect as Andy Phelan would play Eliot.