Suppose they gave a "War' . . . and "Two Jews" walked into NJ Rep premiere
by Tom Chesek for The Asbury Park Press

As the days counted down to Hanukkah and now to Christmas, the ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to present a situation in which the numbers are the news.

All hopes for a community are in the hands of Reathel Bean of Montclair (left) and John Pietrowski of Long Valley, in "Two Jews Walk Into a War" at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. (STAFF PHOTO: BOB BIELK)

While a nation argues the efficacy of committing tens of thousands of new troops to that rocky and forbidding land, over at New Jersey Repertory Company the focus falls upon two souls in particular.

As delineated in "Two Jews Walk Into a War," the elderly men named Ishaq and Zeblyan are the last two surviving members of the Afghani Jewish community, holed up in the last synagogue standing during the last days of the Taliban regime.

One would think that these men of unwavering faith would have each other's backs — but this being NJ Rep, it's more a matter of them having at each other's throats.

"It's a little bit "Waiting for Godot'; a little bit "Odd Couple,' " says director James Glossman of the play opening in Long Branch this weekend. "Anything that's like oil and water."

In the script by Seth Rozin (a "rolling world premiere" from the National New Play Network, an organization once headed by the playwright), Ishaq and Zeblyan are bunkered down for the noble purpose of recreating the sacred texts of the Torah, but a little thing called lifelong acrimony keeps getting in the way.

"There's an upper-class, working-class thing going on — they haven't liked each other their whole lives," explains Glossman in reference to the story that's reportedly based in fact. "The play is very traumatic, but very funny at the same time."

Glossman, a sought-after and nationally renowned director who previously helmed "Tour de Farce" and "Circumference of a Squirrel" at NJ Rep (and who once brought his friend Stephen Colbert to Long Branch for a script-in-hand reading), has worked closely with actors ranging from Ed Asner, John Astin, Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss to Jack Klugman, Priscilla Lopez, Fred Savage and Vin Scelsa — yes, classic rock radio fans, that Vin Scelsa.

For "Two Jews," Glossman has called upon a couple of players with whom he's collaborated repeatedly in the past — busy stage and TV actor Reathel Bean (who worked with the director in the Arthur Miller dramas "Death of a Salesman" and "The Price") and the actor-director-educator John Pietrowski, acclaimed star of Glossman's "Sedition" at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey.

It should be noted that Pietrowski, in addition to being a classmate of Glossman at Northwestern University, is also Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre — and that the Madison-based Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey (PTNJ) is co-producing this show with NJ Rep.

It's a "very happy partnership" for Glossman, who's slated to follow up the Long Branch project with a chance to direct Alley Mills in a rare fully staged production of Noel Coward's "A Song at Twilight" in Los Angeles.

"Places like NJ Rep, PTNJ, care about developing new plays," he explains. "If it weren't for these theaters, there'd be no place for playwrights to bring their work."

As to the question of how he's come to have so many famous friends at his beck and call, Glossman tends to view himself as a matchmaker between people and projects.

"All the best actors are always wanting to do more interesting work," he says. "Give them the chance, and they will find a way to make it happen."

The title implies comedic overtones, but "Two Jews Walk Into a War...", a new play by Seth Rozin that will run at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch through Jan. 10, 2010, offers a mix of comedy, tragedy, hope, faith, and compassion.

The two-character play, which features Reathel Bean as Ishaq and John Pietrowski as Zeblyan, the only surviving Jews in Afghanistan during the final days of Taliban rule, takes place in the ruins of synagogue in Kabul. While sporadic gunfire can be heard on the streets, the two men decide that the only way to preserve their religion for the next generation of Afghani Jews is to recreate the text of the Torah, which Ishaq has committed to memory -- complete with correct spelling and proper punctuation.

The project would be challenging under the best of circumstances, but the pious Ishaq and the skeptical Zeblyan have another hurdle to overcome -- they detest each other and must find a way to co-exist in order to complete their Herculean task. As Zeblyan begins transcribing the text dictated by Ishaq, the two engage in general name-calling, argue about who suffered worse torture at the hands of the Taliban, and which family led a more oppressed life.

The play, which is co-produced by NJ Rep and Playwrights Theatre in Madison and is directed by James Glossman, is inspired by a true story, said Rozin, who has written several other plays and is the founder and producing artistic director of InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia. (He also has directed more than 45 productions at InterAct and received a 2002 new play commission from the Foundation of Jewish Culture).

"A friend and colleague came into rehearsal one day with an article he'd read about the last two Jews in Kabul," Rozin told The Jewish State. "These two extraordinary men had seen their once-thriving community dwindle down to just themselves. They had survived the Russians and the Taliban, and, to make their true-life story even more ripe for dramatization, they hated each other."

The circumstances were rich with comedic potential and offered the chance to explore a truly existential relationship, he added.

"I imagined a kind of Near Eastern 'Waiting for Godot'," Rozin said. Though he discovered that two other playwrights had read the same article and wrote similar plays, those works had been released to tepid reviews.

"But after learning that their dramatic impulse was limited to a story about two old Afghan Jews hurling insults at each other, I decided to depart from the facts and consider what might actually come of this relationship," said Rozin. "It occurred to me that the only thing that could hold these two rivals together in pursuit of their common cause of rebuilding the Jewish community in Kabul was recreating a Torah."

The result is an existential comedy that subtly evolves into a human drama about faith, friendship, and community, he said.

"With all my plays, I'm interested in why people believe what they believe and what would rock the foundation of that belief," Rozin said. "In this play, both characters have endured a lifetime of extraordinary challenges in war-ravaged, politically dysfunctional, religiously oppressive Afghanistan. But Ishaq devoutly believes in God's higher purpose and plan, while Zeblyan has become increasingly skeptical.

"I wanted to explore whether Ishaq's faith will crumble in the face of all of Zeblyan's boorish and provocative questioning of the Torah, or will Zeblyan discover a reason for his suffering," Rozin added.

Although the play starts off on the comedic side and then takes a more serious turn, the two actors achieved the transition through the evolving circumstances of their characters.

"In Ishaq's case, I think the secret is exhaustion that weakens his resolve to be right, and heightens his need for others and consolation of his faith," said Bean. "And the issue of affirmation of faith is very relevant in today's world. For too many people, faith has come to mean fundamentalism. Thus, you hear about the 'Christian vote' and it means 'right-wing nuts.'

"There is something legitimate there, though, but I fear it will always be a minority position, as it has so often been for Christians and Jews," he continued. "And maybe that's what it ought to be. I don't think triumphalism is appropriate for any faith."

And Zeblyan's natural intelligence and abundance of curiosity are among the traits that enable him to move through the play, said Pietrowski, who also is the artistic director of Playwrights Theatre.

"Zeblyan has not been formally trained in the lore of the Torah, so when he's actually forced to confront it, as he is in this situation, his readings are new, funded by his experience and not driven by old assumptions," he said. "He's literally hearing it for the first time as he writes it, so it's an intimate connection. I feel his confrontation with God is on a very pragmatic and physical level, and that pragmatism turns into a profound respect. He's wrestling with God and it's a good match."

STOP US IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE (Red Bank Orbit)

"Dead Ringer' is a thriller

by TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT • October 21, 2009

Of all the things that can be adapted to either the screen or the theater, the scenario commonly called the "psychological thriller" is surely the toughest to pull off on the stage. A staple genre of most moviegoers' diets (even if things skew a bit toward the "psycho" more often than the "logical"), it can be a tricky thing to manage in a setting where the camera's selective eye is absent, and where pinpoint timing is of the essence.

In other words, they can't all be "Wait Until Dark" — not even, as we're often reminded, a lot of productions of "Wait Until Dark." With "Dead Ringer," however, playwright Gino Dilorio and the folks at Long Branch-based New Repertory Company have crafted a piece in the "thriller" genre that wears the clothes of an altogether different genre — the Western.

The "cowboy creds" of director SuzAnne Barabas and her husband, executive producer Gabe Barabas have long been established. (They presented a festival of short plays with the theme "The American Cowboy" and authored a guidebook to TV's "Gunsmoke.") But the NJ Rep co-founders are also enthusiastic fans of spinetingling stories, and this love of a good scare makes itself evident in this twisted tale of the bizarre interplay between three characters in the high-lonesome setting of nineteenth century Texas.

As the play opens, a young man named Dwight (Christian Pedersen) has come to see a man about a horse — literally. Dwight (or "Dewey") has traveled to the home of trainer Tyrus Cole (Michael Irvin Pollard) for advice on how to break an uncooperative mare, when he has a tense encounter with Mary (Natalie Wilder), Ty's sister and an invalid who spends her days and nights behind padlock and chain in a detached root cellar alongside the house.

Born with a "knotted head" and useless legs, Mary is glimpsed almost entirely as hands through the bars of her little prison of stone and earth — and heard throughout as a voice that recites poetry, sings like an angel, spins the origin of the phrase "dead ringer," and cajoles Dewey into a murderous plot against her brother.

Given over to drunken benders and flashes of abusive behavior, Ty has his own rationale for doing what he does — as well as his own contradictory take on his familial relationships. He even raises the notion of having Dewey do away with Mary — a prospect that the hapless farmboy, who's apparently unable even to fire a warning shot over the head of a horse, finds particularly distressing.

Things quickly get complicated against this simple landscape of wide open spaces. Secrets are revealed (including one that ways heavy upon Dewey), oaths are sworn to, and we hear mention of a large sum of money stashed away somewhere, although exactly where seems to be at issue. As the "web of intrigue" tightens, we begin to wonder just who that lock and chain are designed to protect.

The freestanding cellar with the barred wooden door sits at the center of the characteristically detailed set by Jessica Parks (this is one time when the "postage stamp stage" at NJ Rep could surely have benefited from a touch of Texas scale), becoming an extension of the deformed shut-in's personality. With a little dressing up it might have passed for a forest creature's home in the Hundred Acre Wood (and in silhouette it looms like Winnie's big pile of dirt in Beckett's "Happy Days"), but as lighting director Jill Nagle and sound designer Merek Royce Press turn day to night and back again, the maddeningly vague glimpses we get of the structure's interior only serve to reinforce it as a cool, dark place of mystery and secrets.

Wilder, a performer we've known largely in comic situations, takes on the challenge of this deceptively "easy" role with an intelligence that keeps pace with the complex machinations of the self-schooled, inscrutable woman behind the door. Pollard — another graduate from comedy parts, and now one of the finest dramatic actors in the NJ Rep stock company — lends authority to a conflicted character who dwells in his own prison of promises. In his Rep debut, Pedersen recalls the gangly 1960s Western actor Will Hutchins in his portrait of the seemingly nave and kind-hearted Dewey.

SuzAnne Barabas has wrangled a set of intense turns from her cast, a trio of characters trapped in a claustrophobic corner of big sky country. While there are any number of ways in which this tale (expanded by Dilorio from a 10-minute piece that premiered in Long Branch five years ago) might have played out, the production's violent, unsettling final moments make clear the director's intentions — NJ Rep has delivered to their audience a hell of a Halloween surprise.

NOT YOUR DADDY'S WESTERN By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT • October 16, 2009

From left, Dwight (Christian Pedersen) and Ty (Michael Irvin Pollard), during a dress rehearsal of 'Dead Ringer' at the New Jersey Repertory Company. Long Branch, NJ. (Asbury Park Press/Michael Sypniewski)

Now here's a right peculiar notion — a drama set in 1885 Texas, on the porch of a horse rancher's house, making its world premiere in downtown Long Branch, New Jersey.

If you're wondering what business the founders of New Jersey Repertory Company — Hungarian-born Gabor Barabas and his Brooklyn-bred wife SuzAnne - have galavanting around the big sky country, look no further than "Gunsmoke: The Complete History," their still-in-print guidebook to TV's longest running Western series and a volume that has seen the West Long Branch residents recognized as the ultimate authorities on the subject (we are not making this up).

Then again, there's the historic home in Long Branch that NJ Rep uses to house its out-of-town actors during the run of a show — a place known familiarly as the "Buffalo Bill House," having once been owned by the business manager of Wild West showman William Cody.

It's even said that Sitting Bull himself stayed there overnight.

Of course, SuzAnne and Gabe may have tipped their hand five years ago, when they presented a festival of short plays organized under the theme of "The American Cowboy," and branded "My Rifle, My Pony and Me."

A three-night affair that drew upon the Rep's deep stock company of actors and writers, the event featured a playlet by Gino Dilorio, an odd little pocket drama by name of "The Hard Way."

An exercise in personal dynamics between the rancher, a young stranger who comes seeking his assistance with a horse, and the rancher's sister — an invalid who's confined by her brother to the root cellar of the house throughout the day — the well-received sketch became the basis for a full length script by Dilorio entitled "Dead Ringer." The play in its expanded form makes its debut on the Rep mainstage on Saturday, Oct. 17.

According to SuzAnne Barabas, the play's director, Dilorio "was originally reluctant even to write a 10-minute piece for us, in addition to not being interested in westerns."

Other members of NJ Rep's extended family — prominent among them actress and writer Natalie Wilder — were able to convince the playwright that he had the germ of something special, and later in 2004 Dilorio, Wilder and the Rep crew were able to do a staged reading of the new, longer "Hard Way." Somewhere along the line the title changed to the current "Dead Ringer," and elsewhere on the timeline the script was adapted for a prize-winning BBC radio drama.

Related 'Dead Ringer' at NJ Rep "It's changed quite a bit since then," says Barabas of the ever-evolving script. "But the basic story of the brother, the sister and the stranger remains at the heart of it — the dynamic among these three people is what makes it interesting."

Also of interest is the fact that Wilder, a frequent presence on the Long Branch stage and a performer of comic gifts and expressive range, is onstage throughout as a character who's locked away and largely unseen.

"There's a challenge to having one of your actors in a root cellar," the director says matter-of-factly. "Natalie has to work entirely with her voice, and her hands."

In another interesting bit of casting that speaks volumes about NJ Rep's propensity for shaking up expectations, the brother rancher is being portrayed by Michael Irvin Pollard, the very capable player of comic 'nebbish' parts who showed his considerable dramatic depth in last year's "Apple." The young stranger is played here by West Long Branch native Christian Pedersen in his first mainstage role for the Rep — but, despite the comedic skillsets of the cast, the director points out that the play tells a straightforward, dramatic story that unfolds over the course of a few days.

"I think it's a dark piece, with a fair amount of humor in it," Barabas maintains. "We're still discovering things about it, still exploring it - but it remains a linear story that everyone will be able to follow."

Rahaleh Nassri and Mark Hairston

A sixteen-year-old black youth has been fatally shot by a police officer on the porch of his parental home in the East New York section of Brooklyn. The shooting was followed by a riot during which neighborhood residents threw rocks at police officers on the scene. Lila Mahnaz, an investigator for the civilian Department to Investigate Misconduct and Corruption, is conducting an inquiry into the incident. Sgt. Clark, the white officer who shot the boy, retired shortly thereafter. The boy's mother, Denise Reeves, tells Mahnaz that she saw a black policeman, Charles Simmons, hold her son down on the ground while Clarke shot him. Simmons, Clarke's driver, tells her that he never left his police vehicle and did not witness the shooting. Mahnaz, who believes Reeves' version of events, leaks her interview of Reeves to a newspaper reporter in the belief that its publication will bring this injustice to public attention and force the police department to uncover its own criminality.

This is the set-up for The Rant, the new play by Andrew Case which is being presented by the New Jersey Rep, a member of the National New Play Network, in one of three "rolling world premiere" regional theatre productions. What sets The Rant apart from run of the mill policiers is the complexity of the characters and its insightful exposition of the social foment and injustice promulgated by the deeply ingrained prejudices which poison too many of us. If you think that those of any particular race or political persuasion are immune to this poison, then The Rant will likely make you uncomfortable (and you need to see it).

Author Case has written an excellent, extended rant/monologue for the cynical newspaper reporter which begins by informing us that the Amsterdam News took a position when white Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping a black woman diametrically opposite from the position they took when Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a white woman. An all too true description of the no win situation that racial and gender animosities place us in is part of his monologue :

Tell me what you believe about these two cases and I will prove you are a bigot. If you believe that despite Ms. Faber's bruises Kobe was framed; and DNA be damned, the lacrosse players are guilty, you have decided ... that black voices are to be trusted more than white. If you believe Kobe is the rapist, if the semen from three different men in Ms. Faber's underwear gives you no pause; and you think the Duke lacrosse players hired two strippers for their drunken brawl and behaved like perfect gentlemen, you are a racist, believing the white accuser and the white accused. If you think both women are lying, you are a sexist, and if you take both women at their word, you are biased against men. That's it—there is no answer to get you off the hook. You believe the women, you believe the men, you believe the whites, or you believe the blacks.

Under the swift, sure-handed direction of Jesse Ontiveros, all of the performances ring true. Rahaleh Nassri as the Iranian-American investigator projects an honest, enthusiastic naivety which convinces us that she is unaware that her attitude toward the police is rife with prejudice. Maconnia Chesser plays the mother with a forthrightness and dignity that tells us that the bad decisions that she has made and her prejudice are the result of the rough road that she has had to hoe as a member of two under classes. Mark Hairston as Officer Simmons projects the anguish of everyone who has had to make a difficult, untenable decision. His decision (blue over black) offers us a thought-provoking conundrum which author Case presents nonjudgmentally. Bob Senkewicz nicely modulates the role of Alex Stern, the amoral, opportunistic reporter who has so found that he can get by with self-deprecating honesty and a casual smile.

Scenic Designer Jessica Parks has designed an arresting all-purpose set whose walls are covered with newspaper articles reporting on the people and events relevant to the play. Patricia E. Doherty's costumes and Jill Nagle's lighting complete the seamless design work.

The Rant is a very complex and tightly written play. The events under investigation are tailored to demonstrate that various witnesses can see the same events differently, and that there can be innocent reasons for witnesses not being fully forthcoming. The play is also constructed as a mystery in which audiences are likely to make assumptions which will be upended as the play races rapidly to its climax.

Much of what passes for serious socio-political theatre today is simply old-fashioned agit-prop which massages and stokes the preconceived prejudices of its audience. Such plays often present their villains as cruel, evil, venal, bigoted and stupid hypocrites with poor social skills and hygiene. However, The Rant is a thought-provoking and engrossing play in which hot button social issues and the people caught up in them are portrayed fairly and honestly. Still, the play has a clear point of view and is infused with passion. With The Rant, author Andrew Case has brought a welcome breath of fresh air to American socio-political theatre.

I have been afraid for my safety. — Investigator Mahnaz
You have. — Police officer Simmons You put my name on the Rant (a website blog). You said someone should kill me. Someone should rape me. Just for asking -- just for doing my job. — Mahnaz
So now you know what it's like.— Simmons

MaConnia Chesser (Photo: SuzAnne Barabas)

'The Rant'

NJ Rep premiere "an indictment of what truth is"

By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT • August 21, 2009

RANTING AND RAVING AT NJ REP (Red Bank Orbit)

'Evie's Waltz' offers a perceptive, if harrowing, look at teenage rebellion

by Peter Filichia/For the Star-Ledger

Tuesday June 23, 2009, 5:38 PM

(Suzanne Barabas) Kate Kenney, Warren Kelley and Andrea Gallo star in Carter W. Lewis' new play "Evie's Waltz" at the New Jersey Repertory Company.

 

As Ira Gershwin wrote long ago, "Summertime, and the livin' is easy." But that's not the case at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, where a most harrowing play will be on view for the next month.

Carter W. Lewis' "Evie's Waltz" quickly grabs the audience's attention, and director SuzAnne Barabas keeps the tension at swine flu fever-pitch for the last 70 of its 80 minutes. But if Hollywood ever gets around to filming this tale, don't look for it to be released as a summer movie.

It's the story of Clay and Gloria Matthews, whose teenage son, Danny, has become, to say the very least, a problem. He's been suspended from high school, and not for smoking in the boy's locker room. His infraction was so horrible that the police had to be brought in.

Lewis smartly orchestrates the parents so that Clay is indulgent and forgiving, while Gloria has all but washed her hands of the lad. As the embattled Clay, Warren Kelley sports a glassy smile and soothing voice when trying to convince his wife - and himself - that "He's only a kid," while Andrea Gallo, playing Gloria, is drop-dead frank when she announces, "I want to smother him in his sleep."

Many a parent who has suffered with an incorrigible child will recognize the look of anguish that floods Gallo's face, and the wild, unsubstantiated hope that finds its way onto Kelley's.

Then Evie arrives. She's Danny's girlfriend, and an unholy terror, from her cherry red-streaked hair to her combat boots. Tattoos abound, and her ears are pierced with more than mere earrings. Kate Kenney brilliantly brings to life this adolescent who believes herself both omnipotent and omniscient. She snarls, sneers and, of course, snarkily says, "Whatevvvvverrrr" to indicate her impatience with these two adults whom she regards as dolts.

Sarcasm is what Evie does best, though blame is only a whit behind. Lewis makes the point that children are quick to remind parents about an isolated incident that hurt their feelings years ago and how they'll never forgive it. And yet, they rarely hesitate to hurt parents' feelings now and forever.

Needless to say, through all of Evie's accusations and profanities, Clay and Gloria must seem unnerved, lest they be accused of what a teenager considers the worst of crimes: losing their cool. Watching both Kelley and Gallo struggle to stay calm and negate what they're actually feeling is one of the more heart-wrenching aspects of Lewis' play. "We need to keep everything normal," Clay says as he serves a light summer meal under very dark circumstances.

Lewis establishes that Danny has been harassed by classmates because of his funny looks and his voice. Issues of school bullying are more and more in the news, and Lewis was shrewd to indicate that a teen's peers are partly to blame for anti-social behavior.

But near the play's end, Lewis also includes a plot twist involving Clay that doesn't help his script. It does startle, but had this event happened to Clay, he would have acted very differently during the previous hour. This is not Kelley's fault, but Lewis'.

While Danny himself never appears, a theatergoer will know what he's up to through a clever stage device. In essence, he's there all the time, though a theatergoer may wish that he would just go away.

For that matter, some theatergoers will wish that the play had an intermission so they could go away, too. "Evie's Waltz" is admittedly effective theater -- for those who want to put themselves through such an emotional wringer.

Kate Kenney finds her inner troublemaker in 'Evie's Waltz' at the N.J. Repertory Company

by Peter Filichia/For the Star-Ledger

Thursday June 18, 2009, 1:31 PM

(Suzanne Barabas) Kate Kenney, right, stars with Andrea Gallo and Warren Kelley in Carter W. Lewis' new play, "Evie's Waltz."

Kate Kenney had to do community service. "Not because I broke any law," the diminutive actress hastily says. "It's just that a teacher at my high school in Southwest Harbor, Maine, thought that students should do 30 hours of community service as a requirement for graduation."

Kenney estimates she wound up spending more than 1,000 hours at the place of her choice -- the Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, Maine.

Her interest in theater only grew from there. She attended the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and has been acting ever since. Now she's starring in Carter W. Lewis's "Evie's Waltz" at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.

The irony is that she's playing a character who probably will wind up doing community service before long.

"Evie is one tough cookie," says Kenney. "She's only a junior in high school, but already she's got herself in a lot of trouble at school and with the police."

Thanks to her relationship with the easily led Danny, Evie's not well regarded by the boy's parents. They're surprised when Evie shows up in their backyard dressed in army fatigues and sporting a militant attitude.

"Evie's the type of kid who loves to challenge people, because she believes she's invincible," says Kenney. "She's able to make Danny's father feel bad for her, because she's the daughter of an alcoholic mother and an absent father. Danny's mother, though, feels that Evie has no excuse for the way she's been influencing her son."

Kenney, 26, knows that she has little in common with today's teenagers, so she's kept a keen eye on the adolescents in her Washington Heights, N.Y., neighborhood. "So many of them think they're so worldly, while they're really not," she says. "Maybe that's why they feel the need to do so many things to prove they're worldly."

It's a very different life from the one she experienced growing up in Maine. "I think one reason I was cast in this play is because I look like the girl next door," she says. "And this character is definitely not the girl next door."

While Kenney was growing up, she planned to be a jockey, because some relatives owned a horse farm. "But then I grew to be 5-foot-2," she moans. "That's too tall."

Suddenly, Kenney had no idea what she'd do with her life. So when her high school teacher invoked the community service clause during Kenney's junior year, it spurred her to look hard. She considered day-care centers and nursing homes, but felt drawn to the local theater. "I still don't know why," she says, shaking her head back and forth quickly, as if trying to rattle her brain for an explanation.

The powers-that-be at the theater told her that 30 hours wouldn't help them much, but they offered an internship. "Soon I was hanging lights, running follow-spots, costumes and sound boards," she says, still sounding excited by the tasks.

But Kenney confesses that being so near yet so far from center stage was a little frustrating. That problem was solved the next year, when the theater produced Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour." She played Mary, the lying, manipulating adolescent who tries -- and succeeds -- to ruin her teachers' reputations.

"Playing Mary was good practice for Evie," Kenney says. "You can even say that Evie is Mary all grown up. Well, not all grown up. Who knows what Evie will be like when she reaches adulthood -- if she even makes it that far."

Evie's Waltz' addresses big issues

Three characters, big issues in NJ Rep premiere

By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT, APP.com • June 19, 2009

On the back patio of Clay and Gloria's suburban home, there's more heating up than just the chicken kebobs — there's a slew of long-simmering domestic tensions between the two parents and their troubled teenage son Danny, and an uninvited visitor is about to pour lighter fluid on the embers.

In "Evie's Waltz," the play by Carter W. Lewis now in its world premiere engagement at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, the smoke emanates from the strained relationship between Clay (Warren Kelley), Gloria (Andrea Gallo) and their son — a bullying victim whose increasingly antisocial behavior has escalated into threats of violence and a police investigation. The sparks come from Danny's girlfriend Evie (Kate Kenney), an angry, sociopathic child of an alcoholic single mother — and the focus of much of the exasperated parents' blame.

Clay and Gloria's idea is to meet with Evie's mom, Sandy, to discuss their kids' increasingly out-of-control relationship. But it's Evie who shows up in advance of her mother, promising to help and carrying an obscure agenda that suggests she's not there simply to talk. Danny, who remains offstage throughout, manages to hover over the action, aiming for the center of attention with some fairly emphatic ways of making a point.

It's a dark comedy, according to the show's marketing — and if the above described doesn't seem so funny, bear in mind that NJ Rep's productions often take in a lot of mayhem and moral turpitude in the name of comedy. NJ Rep artistic director SuzAnne Barabas directs the production, which is being presented without intermission (and is not recommended for anyone younger than 16).

The director, who also helmed the company's acclaimed and successful previous production "The Housewives of Mannheim," calls this "Waltz" a "kind of energized piece" that "brings up a lot more questions than it answers."

"It's like a five-character play, really," Barabas says. "You learn a lot about Danny and Sandy, the mom — those unseen people move things along."

Lewis has seen his latest work produced as a "rolling world premiere" by theatrical troupes across the continent, with at least one reviewer of an earlier production calling it a "tense, frightening thriller."

"There's a mystery that unfolds in front of your eyes," says Barabas' husband, NJ Rep executive producer Gabor Barabas. "It's like an alienated Romeo and Juliet."

You don't have to brush up your Shakespeare to know that things ended harshly for the Bard's star-crossed lovers, but the director stresses that the playwright's pitch-black comic sensibility manages to manifest itself, albeit in some peculiar ways.

"It's certainly a drama, a thriller, but I can't say that it's not fun," SuzAnne Barabas says. "It's fun to watch the dynamics of the characters — to watch things come to a climax."

A GARDEN OF GOOD AND ‘EVIE’

It’s not a waltz per se, but Evie (Kate Kenney) has some moves to put on Warren Kelley and Andrea Gallo, as EVIE’S WALTZ takes over the stage of New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.

By TOM CHESEK, Red Bank Orbit

You want edgy? Something in a more sophisticated cut than the run of suburban stripmall culture? Something that tells you that you’ve made the right decision by planting it here in the greater Red Bank orbit; that it’s not all about the Crispy Orange Chicken Bowl at Applebee’s and a Special Edition Blu-Ray of Stepbrothers?

Edgy you got — in fact, you’ve had it in your back yard for some ten years time now, courtesy of New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. That’s the little professional stage company dedicated to spawning, developing, experimenting with completely new, completely untested, often very weird works for the stage — none of which you’ve ever heard of before. Which is precisely the point.

No, you never quite know what to expect from a “typical” NJ Rep production. We’ve been to nearly everything they’ve done and we’re still reeling over some of what we saw on that little shadow-box of a stage, embedded deep in the heart of lower Broadway. Sailor-blue language that’d peel the paint off Jackie The Joke Man. Adult situations and sights that we never thought feasible within 50 kilometers of a school zone. Enough full-tilt surrealism to choke a Rhinoceros. Things like full-frontal male nudity with onstage prostate exam (Love and Murder); bawdy vaudeville spun from a real-life murdered-nuns story (Whores); priests behaving badly, people killing themselves and each other.

Also seen on the NJ Rep stage? Emotional honesty; sweetness and uplift; hard-earned laughter and tears; absolute dedication to craft and invention, and that jolly nagging notion that none of this is even supposed to make any sort of economic sense — otherwise get ready for opening night of Nunsense 2!

Don’t believe us? Check out some of the people who went out of their way to be able to say they’ve performed there. Guess you must have missed that night.

Anyway, among the many specialties of the NJ Rep stock company is a vaguely defined genre known as “dark comedy;” a brand that sounds like the sort of snickering satire and headline-hustling irony that currently wins Emmys. Only in the hands of Rep founders SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas, “comedy” can get very dark indeed; taking in all manner of pain, abuse, and spiritual devastation. 

In fact, the recent (extremely successful) offering The Housewives of Mannheim was marketed as a “comic drama” — when in fact what audiences saw was a sensitively acted, even tender study of friendships torn asunder and alliances thrown off balance, when a woman professes her longstanding love and desire for a beautiful, dutiful wife and mother who lives in her building. And Zayd Dohrn’s Sick was a bloody, negative “black comedy” about an isolated family whose hyper-allergic kids have made them prisoners in their unhappy home. Not a “laff” in either of them.

This week sees the opening performances of Evie’s Waltz, a play by Carter W. Lewis (whose Women Who Steal was a successful part of the 2008 season) in which the frustrated parents (Warren Kelley, Andrea Gallo) of a sullen, antisocial teenage son are drawn into the obscure schemes of the boy’s girlfriend — a diminutive sociopath in camo pants named Evie (Kate Kenney), whose apparent talent for head games is the stuff of budding genius. It’s a script that folds in violent interludes, heavy-duty adult themes and a general fish-in-a-barrel sense of hopelessness — and it’s being marketed as, you guessed it, a dark comedy.

It’s also a “rolling premiere” work; one in which several stage companies across the country get together to each present their own production of a highly touted new script. That means there have been a few stagings of this material already — and, if you don’t mind spoilers, you can see reviews of those other productions here and here and here.

If spoilers tend to spoil things for you, however, stay with us and Continue Reading for our talk on Evie’s with director SuzAnne Barabas.

RED BANK ORBIT: Here it is summer, and New Jersey Rep is once again preparing to put on another downer of a play, when by rights it ought to be a summer-stock revival of THE MUSIC MAN...

SUZANNE BARABAS: It’s not that much of a downer! It’s a kind of energized piece, about the alienation of a kid who doesn’t get along with his family or peers. It’s a play that brings up a lot more questions than answers — in fact, we’ll be having a talk-back with the audience after the 2:00 preview on Friday.

It’s also one that we’re not recommending for anyone under 16. It’s being done without an intermission — and we’ll be having a barbecue for the opening night.

Now, even though this play is “about” the kid and his relationship with his parents, we actually don’t ever see the character of the son onstage?

No, but you learn about Danny, the son, as well as Sandy — Evie’s mother. It’s like a five-character play really; those unseen people move things along. 

Sandy is a single mom who drinks and works at a hair salon; when the play opens we see Clay and Gloria, who are the parents of the boy, getting ready to meet with Sandy at their home. They’ve invited her over because their kids have gotten involved in a police matter — Danny’s been suspended from school, and they blame Evie for a lot of what’s been going on with their son.

So Evie is someone who they regard as a bad influence on their son; the idea is that he was a good kid before she came along and led him astray?

They’ve actually known her since she was a sociopathic little kid — they watched her do things like shave her head and get a pierced lip, and Clay and Gloria, who are good parents that love their son, are just exasperated by this long series of events involving Danny and Evie.

They’re waiting for Evie’s mom to arrive, when Evie herself shows up, on her own. She’s there basically to talk about what happened before her mom gets there.

From what we’ve been able to pick up about the play, it seems more of a drama, even a thriller, than anyone’s idea of a comedy…

It’s certainly a drama, a thriller — but I can’t say that it’s not fun! It’s fun to watch the dynamics of the characters — to watch things come to a climax.

GABE BARABAS (joining the conversation): There’s a mystery that unfolds in front of your eyes — it’s like an alienated Romeo and Juliet. Although I suppose you could say that Romeo and Juliet were alienated themselves.

As were the two main characters in HOUSEWIVES OF MANNHEIM, and arguably every character who’s ever stepped out onto your stage!

SUZANNE: We did very well with that play — I was actually surprised that so many people accepted it. Young people in particular loved it; they accepted the characters’ actions — I know a young man, a sophomore in college who told me, ‘That’s my story — I was Billy (the female character who comes out to her friend); I was in love with my best friend and that’s exactly how everything happened.’

Well, HOUSEWIVES, which of course you also directed, SuzAnne, hit just the right pitch from the start. It resonated in some way with just about everyone who saw it. But here you are starting work on another challenging script, while the other one was still playing. Did you realize all that you were taking upon yourself when you put together this schedule?

Directing two in a row is not something I would normally want to do. But this year, of course, economic factors are even more of a concern than they usually are with everyone in the arts, and you’re seeing more companies assigning directors from in-house rather than hiring freelancers.

But the real reason I took on both of these projects, is that I really felt for these plays. When I read them, I just had to be the one to do them — and once I make that decision, I can’t let anybody else talk me out of it. I don’t want to give away my babies!

At NJ Rep, a great play grows in Brooklyn

By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT, Asbury Park Press • April 22, 2009

Defying expectations is kind of what it's all about, or ought to be anyway.

In the case of "The Housewives of Mannheim," the world premiere drama now onstage at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, what looks to be a nostalgia-infused ensemble piece of World War Two-era Brooklyn takes off in some fairly unexpected directions, even while keeping its footing in the Waldbaums-and-clotheslines world of its city kitchen setting.

This correspondent admits to having approached the play by Alan Brody with some wariness. After all, yet another script set in the greatest-generation days of home-front rations and make-believe ballrooms is hardly the way to attract a younger clientele to the theater. Some of the other themes at work here — the character who escapes a humdrum existence through the healing powers of art and culture; the quest for one's sexual identity set to a piped-in hit parade soundtrack — are straight out of the playwright's playbook.

Something happens here, however, between Brody's sharply etched characters and the keenly choreographed direction of SuzAnne Barabas. The story takes flight on the efforts of a quartet of skilled actresses, and the clothesline is set high for the honor of the year's best play on the local stage.

In last winter's "Cupid and Psyche," at NJ Rep, Pheonix Vaughn was merely bright and gorgeous and fun; here, she's equally radiant (while showing real depth and emotional complexity) as May, a young wife and mother who's as aware of her own good looks as she is cognizant that something is missing in her life, with or without the presence of her serviceman husband, Lenny. It's a performance that's all the more impressive when you consider that Vaughn was an 11th-hour replacement in the play's lead role.

May, who muses sometimes about what it would be like to be a man, has a friend named Billie (Corey Tazmania), a tart-tongued, entrepreneurial sort who runs a linens business out of her apartment, sports masculine-style hats, goes to bohemian parties and makes no effort to disguise her contempt for her dentist husband. Even if you can see where this is all going from the get-go, there are countless variables at work here that make this play's central story line — the radically changing relationship between two close friends — a compelling thread that seldom falls just where we'd expect it to be at any given point.

The catalyst that sets things in motion is the arrival of new neighbor Sophie (Natalie Mosco), an older, more sophisticated Jewish refugee from Europe who offers a tantalizing glimpse of a larger world beyond the fire escapes of Flatbush. Sophie's polar opposite, building busybody Alice (Wendy Peace), rarely if ever leaves the neighborhood, and is apt to invite herself into her neighbors' homes, seeing as to how she's in the business of everybody else's business.

While the characters of Sophie and Alice aren't quite as fully delineated as May and Billie, they are nonetheless not drawn in black and white. Alice isn't played as an evil schemer, and Sophie is more of a representative emissary of the outside world than simply a lady who introduces May to things like the "Vermeer" painting from which the play takes its name. Peace and Mosco each do fine work with their roles, eliciting laughs and tears and all that good stuff.

At heart, though, the story is that of May and Billie — and returning NJ Rep players Vaughn and Tazmania do the sort of work here that elicits not cheers but the sort of priceless silences that indicate an audience that has become completely engrossed in the story. May's too-late insistence that she is "just a housewife," one who "can't afford to go around thinking all the time," is as heartbreaking to watch as tough-gal Billie's confessional breakdown, a strong woman nearly pulled apart on the rocks of her own raw honesty.

There are times when "Housewives" veers toward preaching its points rather than trusting the finely tuned instincts of its cast, but by and large, Brody and Barabas have crafted the sort of intimate drama that this company does best, with a perfect little ending that leaves you wanting more.

And it just so happens that the playwright has penned not just one but two sequels: a "Victory Blues Trilogy" that we're anxious to see take shape on the NJ Rep stage.

'Housewives of Mannheim' takes provocative look at female bonding

by LIZ KEILL/Independent Press

Saturday May 30, 2009, 5:11 PM

Issues of propriety and raw emotions are entwined in this moving drama set in Brooklyn in 1940.
"The Housewives of Mannheim" is completing a successful run at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. It deserves an after-life and will, hopefully, come to a theatre near you.

The four women in the play show their fangs as well as their gentler qualities. May is the central character, a pretty wife and mother, who wants to do everything the 'right' way. But there is a part of her yearning to break free of her self-imposed, safe existence. She invites a new resident, Sophie, into her apartment and is drawn to her love of art and music, her European view of the world.

Then we have May's neighbor Alice, easily shocked and offended by anything beyond the status quo. That leaves Billie, a married but independent woman who runs her own business. She's not afraid of the hard sell, but her emotions are continually on edge. In the long run, she challenges May and forces her to acknowledge depths she had denied.

The crux of the matter, and a searing revelation, is playwright Alan Brody's ability to show how a few generalizations can lead to distortion and cruelty.

The cast in the small, 65-seat theater is superb. Phoenix Vaughn gives May the innocence and excitement of someone just reaching out for life. Natalie Mosco is stunning as Sophie Birnbaum, a Jewish immigrant who had been a concert pianist in Europe. She has lost much, yet fully understands what these young housewives are going through.

Corey Tazmania as Billie Friedhoff demonstrates the hurt and anguish of someone who riles against the constrictions of accepted behavior.

Wendy Peace, as Alice Cohen, has the least sympathetic, and least complex, role. Yet the contrast is startling, as she refuses to acknowledge change among her friends.

This play, directed by SuzAnne Barabas, is fascinating on every level. The title is taken from a Vermeer painting of four Dutch housewives in the 17th century. A simple sheet on a clothesline, at the beginning and end, becomes the background for an image of the painting, implying that life was just as complex in earlier centuries as it is today.

Quinn K. Stone's scenic design and Jessica Parks' properties are a trip in nostalgia themselves, with a real sense of a 1940s kitchen, from the gas stove to the sink with spigots, open shelves for dishes...and none of the sleek appliances that came along later or for those who were wealthy enough to afford them. Music and sound design by Merek Royce Press bring back those big band melodies of the era. Costumes by Patricia E. Doherty reflect the period, right down to the hats, gloves and seamed stockings. Jill Nagle's lighting enhances the late night scene between Billie and May and provides smooth transitions from scene to scene.

And for those who haven't ventured to Long Branch in recent years, the excursion makes for a lovely day of boardwalks, restaurants and Pier Village shops.

Solid Drama In Long Branch
"The Housewives of Mannheim" at New Jersey Rep

By Philip Dorian, Two River Times

Corey Tasmania (left), Wendy Peace, Pheonix Vaugn and Natalie Mosco, (seated) are the Housewives of Mannheim at New Jersey Repertory Company.

For the cover art of Alan Brody's The Housewives of Mannheim at New Jersey Repertory Company, some skilled techie digitally blended four Jan Vermeer paintings of different women into a single image that captures 17th Century Dutch housewifery. Brody's play does the same for four apartment-neighbor women in Brooklyn in 1944.

Housewives covers a multitude of topics, but it's not scattershot. Its themes of loneliness, frustration, tolerance and love are all distinct, but each influences the others. It's the same with the women. They could not be more different from one another, nor could they mesh more smoothly, both characters and actors. May Black (Pheonix Vaughn) is the play's center; how Alice Cohen (Wendy Peace), Billie Friedhoff (Corey Tazmania) and Sophie Birnbaum (Natalie Mosco) behave toward her - and vice versa - makes for a solid drama. (Not without its share of laughs, I might add.)

May and Alice's husbands are away at war; Billie's is at home, but is "missing the part of the brain that sustains human conversation." May is a restless beauty who is torn between enjoying her independence and pining for her husband's return; Alice is an openly nosy gossiper; Billie is the brash potty-mouth stuck in an empty marriage. Into their comfort zone pops Sophie, a widowed refugee from Nazi-dominated Eastern Europe, whose experience and outlook have a profound effect on May and the others.

Brody's play succeeds on two levels. The story line holds interest throughout, and the relationships elevate the play well above soap opera. Under SuzAnne Barabas's finely tuned direction, the production gives equal weight to both components. She and her cast are under the skin of these housewives. (And Quinn Stone's set, May's kitchen, could not be more realistic.)

The women change - grow - in the course of the play, and it is remarkable what the actors accomplish in the two-hour two acts. Rising like a phoenix from the vapid Cupid and Psyche, Vaughn is a marvel. Pulling off the line "I'm a beautiful woman" without alienating at least half the audience is a feat in itself. It's true of the actress, no question, but via her sensitive interpretation, May Black is even more beautiful than Pheonix Vaughn.

There's a lot more to Billie than her brassy exterior, and Ms. Tazmania lets us in on it all. Her performance is every bit as layered as her character. Newcomer Sophie is guarded at first, but May wins her over. Playing the refugee's gradual thaw from remote coolness to open-hearted warmth, Ms. Mosco wins over the audience as well. Alice resists change, but as craftily acted by Ms. Peace, sympathetic qualities peek through the rigid-minded busybody, indicating that Alice will eventually make peace.

Brody's play is not perfect, of course. (Is any?) There are a few lapses into melodrama, and the final scene wraps everything up too easily. Also, equating some of the women's behavior toward one another to the Holocaust diminishes the horror in Sophie's past and diverts attention from emotional aspects, which we all share, to physical ones, which we can only imagine. The comparison would be better implied than stated.

What is implied as well as revealed (and so well acted) about the four housewives of Brooklyn brings them up close and personal - to one another and to the audience. Did I mention that this is the play's World Premiere? Good for NJ Rep.

Review by Bob Rendell, Talkin' Broadway
  It is early spring, 1944, and we are in a kitchen in an apartment house on Kings Highway in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. It is in the apartment of May Black. Here she schmoozes with her two long-time friends who also live in the building. Each of these thirty-ish women is very different from the other. Billie Friedhoff is a bit hoydenish; she buys and sells on the black market and is sometimes given to vulgar, straight-forward speech. Alice Cohen is a judgmental, self-appointed, moralist busybody. It is the warm, easygoing, not given to self examination, May who is at the center of this tripartite relationship. All are married, with May and Alice's husbands in the army overseas, and Billie's dentist husband, whom she despises, at home ... As The Housewives of Mannheim begins, Sophie Birnbaum, a 60-year-old concert pianist who had escaped Europe and lived with her artist husband in Connecticut until his recent death, is in the process of moving into the building. May is on the verge of expanding her intellectual horizons, having recently taken an interest in the paintings of Vermeer. Sophie will be drawn to her in a maternal way and encourage her to further educate herself.

With Glenn Miller's recording of "It's Make Believe Ballroom Time" leading off a hit parade of World War II popular music, references to contests for recipes and advertising slogans, food ration books and the black market, and war bonds, it seems that we are in for homey, nostalgic memories of the homefront in Brooklyn during World War II. As things turn out, this could not be further from the truth.

On a mundane, prosaic level, the central subject that will emerge in The Housewives of Mannheim is the female version of what Oscar Wilde's Lord Alfred Douglas called "The love that dare not speak its name". However, on a deeper and more exalted level, author Alan Brody has delivered a powerful play which, in a fully fleshed out, unpedantic, and dramatically satisfying manner, examines such matters as unexamined lives, personal growth, loyalty, friendship, prejudice, gender discrimination, self acceptance and education. Not to say that it is small potatoes to write a play which strongly arouses the viewer's empathy for those who had (and still have) to hide their sexual identities to survive among their family and friends. Author Brody is a professor at M.I.T. where he is the Associate Provost for the Arts.

Guided by the splendid, unobtrusive direction of SuzAnne Barabas, the four women are vividly brought to life. Natalie Mosco brings out enourmous depth and dimension in the newly arrived Sophie. The beauty, dignity and heartbreak brought Mosco brings to this role is quite rare. Corey Tazmania embraces the harsh edges and mannishness that author Brody has provided for the closeted and needy Billie, and makes us truly care for Billie's bruised soul. Pheonix Vaughn subtly conveys the turmoil which May is experiencing while maintaining, in so far as she is able, the mild, compromising persona that is being reduced to a façade. Wendy Peace does a fine job in bringing out the reality and humanity of Alice, the most ridiculed and least dimensional of the women.

Quinn Stone's richly detailed set and Patricia E. Doherty's period costumes contribute strongly to the production's feel for time and place.

The play's title comes from a composite "fictional" 17th century attributed here to Vermeer. It actually features paintings of four Dutch women "lifted" from four separate Vermeer paintings. These women appear to be living cloistered lives which would make it impossible for them to contemplate the relatively larger scope for growth which later generations of women would have. Unlike them, May wants to be able to contemplate the increasing freedoms which would be available to generations of women yet to come.

This world premiere production of The Housewives of Mannheim clearly demonstrates the importance of the New Jersey Repertory Theatre. It is outstanding

Women stretch limits in a wartime drama 'The Housewives of Mannheim'

by Peter Filichia/The Star-Ledger

Monday April 27, 2009, 12:06 PM

The Housewives of Mannheim. Where: New Jersey Repertory Company, 179 Broadway, Long Branch. When: Through May 17. Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m. Sunday at 2 p.m. How much: $40. Call (732) 229-3166 or visit njrep.org.

 
Novelist Ira Levin wrote "The Stepford Wives" in 1972, but playwright Alan Brody is here to remind us that subservient spouses existed long before that.

In "The Housewives of Mannheim," his incisive new play presented at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, Brody takes us back to the early 1940s, when wives not only "knew their place," but thought they felt comfortable in it. When the lights come up on May Black, note the satisfied smile she has on her face as she folds the laundry.

May's husband is overseas at war, and though she must tend to their son, Bobby, she now has more time to spend on herself, the most since she was wed. She's surprised how good this semi-freedom feels, and even dares ask her neighbor, Alice Cohen, "Don't you find yourself happy to be on your own?"

Alice has no idea what she's talking about.

However, another housewife, Billie Friedhoff, does. Billie has started her own black market business -- "a career, not a job," she stresses. May doesn't disapprove, but she can't understand why Billie doesn't want children. Doesn't everyone?

Billie is more interested in encouraging May to become her own person, but a Vermeer painting turns out to have a greater influence. May would have enjoyed it even more had she not felt so ashamed for going to a museum on a weekday. Nevertheless, the painting has allowed her to see life in a new way.

May will get many more chances to question her life -- whether she wants to or not. Sophie Birnbaum, a Viennese Jew who emigrated to America, becomes a new neighbor and another new catalyst. Until now, May has only assessed herself through her great beauty that made her quite the catch. As Sophie tells her, "People think that someone beautiful cannot do anything else."

In fact, Pheonix (yes, that's how it's spelled: Pheonix) Vaughn can do substantially more than just be beautiful. She turns in a stunning performance. No matter how much Brody's character vacillates, Vaughn beautifully maneuvers each twist and turn. Watch as she dares to feel good about herself, and then almost immediately feels bad for feeling good. Vaughn must also get through such tricky lines as, "I can't go around thinking all the time" and "I'm just a housewife." Delivered by a lesser actress, they could come across as trite and laughable. Not here. Only the hardest-hearted theatergoer won't be moved when Vaughn says them.

Given that Alice is the most satisfied of the bunch, Wendy Peace has the least interesting role, so give credit to the actress for getting us to pay attention to her. Far more compelling are Billie and Sophie, and director SuzAnne Barabas, who's staged the show with sensitivity and style and has found two excellent actresses to play the parts.

Corey Tazmania enjoys portraying the foul-mouthed, utterly unconventional Billie. But the character has her problems, too, and Tazmania does splendidly when she reveals them in a powerful second-act monologue.

Natalie Mosco excels as Sophie, who was born much too early for the concept of "tough love," but delivers a good deal of it to May. Mosco's best moment comes when she pulls herself up and says to May, "You cannot expect me to clap every time you have an idea."

We, though, can applaud Brody for the ideas he's given in "The Housewives of Mannheim."

NJ Rep premieres "Housewives"

Great group of women assembles at NJ Rep

By TOM CHESEK • Correspondent, Asbury Park Press • April 17, 2009

As Alan Brody sees it, it is possible for a man to be able to write some great roles for women.

"When you're a child, you're around your mother, and probably other women as well," explains the author whose play "The Housewives of Mannheim" sees its world premiere this weekend at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.

"At that age, you're not socialized to not see things — you see the relationships between women in a different way than you might when you're an adult."

While the playwright and professor concedes that the turn of the new century has seen some changes in regard to family dynamics and gender roles, it's his own childhood during the Second World War that serves as the inspiration for "Housewives." It's a "memory play" that draws from the people and events of a time that he describes as "a goldmine for me."

Set in 1944 Brooklyn, the ensemble comedy-drama — the first of a work-in-progress series called the Victory Blues Trilogy — takes place at a time "just on the cusp of when the men started coming home from the war," according to Brody.

As neighbors in an apartment building, May, Alice and Billie are part of an insular little world in which everyone knows everyone else — as well as everyone else's business. As bored beauty May and self-righteous gossip Alice count off the days until their husbands return home, Billie attempts to further her family's lot by starting a small business out of her home.

While life on the wartime homefront seems to exist in a sort of stasis for these housewives, the appearance of new neighbor Sophie — an older, more worldly woman and a war refugee from Europe — throws their small society for a loop. The "delicate equilibrium" of their routine is jeopardized, and their eyes are opened to the horrors that exist in the war-torn world beyond their building.

NJ Rep artistic director SuzAnne Barabas directs a four-woman cast divided between Rep veterans: Corey Tazmania (who co-starred in "A Child's Guide to Innocence") and Pheonix Vaughn (the stunning Psyche of last winter's musical "Cupid and Psyche"), as well as newcomers Natalie Mosco and Wendy Peace.

A professor of theater at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brody came to the famed science and engineering school more than 20 years ago to assist in the development of a drama curriculum.

"They needed to build up the humanities and arts there," says Brody of his responsibilities at MIT. "It's designed to introduce scientists to what it's like to be in the world as an artist."

The veteran academic, who confesses to be "still trying to figure out how to get young people into the theater," has nothing but praise for the Shore-based company that's developed and produced this personally significant work.

"This place is one of the few that can do a reading of a new work and then follow through each step of the way to a finished production," Brody says of the entity founded by SuzAnne and Gabe Barabas. "Their commitment to new plays, and to good writing, is terrific."

Play evokes memories of wartime Brooklyn

Jewish ‘Housewives’ face age-old issues of tolerance, gender

by Jill Huber
New Jersey Jewish News Bureau Chief/Monmouth

March 31, 2009

At the heart of a new play having its Garden State premiere this month at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch are issues that have transcended the centuries: anti-Semitism, sexuality, gender roles, friendship, and the stress of war on the families of soldiers in the thick of battle.

The Housewives of Mannheim by Alan Brody will open in preview on Thursday, April 16, and run through May 17.

The play takes its name from a mock Johannes Vermeer painting that depicts four 17th-century women enveloped in the warm camaraderie of shared domestic tasks. But this is 1944; World War II grinds on, and Jewish housewives May, Alice, and Billie, portrayed, respectively, by New York actresses Alexandra Eitel, Wendy Peace, and Corey Tazmania, reside in an apartment building in a working-class section of Brooklyn.

May is the neighborhood beauty, while Alice is the local yenta and self-proclaimed moral compass of the community. Their husbands are overseas battling the Nazis. Billie is a “bohemian” and entrepreneur who sells linens from her apartment. She is trapped in a loveless marriage; ironically, her husband is the only one of the three still at home.

The three women are part of a tightly knit community in which everyone knows everyone — and everyone’s private business. They care for their children, maintain their homes, gossip, and shop at Waldbaum’s and Loehmann’s.

But the introduction of Natalie Mosco’s Sophie, a European concert pianist who has escaped the Holocaust, changes the dynamic among the trio of Brooklyn housewives. The sophisticated Sophie brings a worldview of life from which the Brooklyn women have been sheltered. They begin to wonder if there is a more challenging and rewarding life beyond their familiar environment.

‘Respect for humanity’

The playwright is Alan Brody, a Cambridge resident, novelist, and theater professor at MIT whose many plays have won numerous awards — including the Rosenthal Award in 1989 and the 1990 Eisner Award from the Streisand Center for Jewish Culture. Housewives was cited as best play of 1995 at the Harvest Festival of Plays and subsequently won the Reva Shiner Award at the Bloomington Playwrights Conference.

He says The Housewives of Mannheim is a “memory play.”

“I lived in a Brooklyn apartment house that was an extended community very much like the one in Housewives until I was 12,” Brody told NJ Jewish News. “We were a Conservative Jewish family” in an ethnically, though not necessarily observant, Jewish neighborhood, “which was very common in those assimilating days.”

The play also evoked childhood scenarios for SuzAnne Barabas, NJ Rep’s artistic director, who is directing the play.

“My mother in Brooklyn was the same as these women,” said Barabas, a resident of Long Branch. “This was the life they lived, built around family and shopping at local stores. Who they are drives this story. But this community doesn’t exist anymore — it’s moved to the suburbs.”

Brody said he always wanted to capture the essence of the woman who was the model for Billie, who, despite outward appearances, harbors a dark secret.

The real-life “Billie,” he said, “was my best friend’s mother and I adored her. She was also the funniest woman I ever met.”

Tazmania, a Brooklyn native and third-generation Jewish New Yorker, told NJJN that although she did not grow up in a religious household, she is able to identify with Brody’s play.

“My upbringing gives me a familiarity with Alan’s play, but honestly, it was the character of Billie that inspired me,” she said. “She is written with such a strong lyrical quality.”

Housewives, she said, is about tolerance and learning to show respect for the essential humanity in everyone, despite issues of identity and self-determination.

“I can’t think of a better time to tell this story,” Tazmania added.

“I think the women in the play represent aspects of the ideological shift in American Judaism during the second world war,” she continued. “The resurgence of feminism, the fight against anti-Semitism at home and abroad, and the chance meeting of a survivor from wartorn Europe are all catalysts in helping these women redefine what it is to be part of the American-Jewish community.”

But Brody would rather leave the play’s interpretation to the audience.

“I don’t like to prescribe those things, whatever the impulse and ideas were that propelled me,” the playwright said. “I’d rather the audiences take away their ideas from the structure, action, and characters. But I found the years from 1944 to the mid-’50s were the root of any number of things we’re experiencing now, such as the spike in prosperity post-World War II that made us believe the economy and self-interest were invincible.”

ZAZZI, ZAYD AND ONE ‘SICK’ COMEDY

MORE SICK DAYS AT NJ REP (Red Bank Orbit)