#Anthony J. Ingargiola

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Gail Burns reviews Oldcastle's mind-changing musical "Big River"

Gail Burns reviews Oldcastle’s mind-changing musical “Big River”

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REVIEW: "Brighton Beach Memoirs" at Oldcastle

REVIEW: “Brighton Beach Memoirs” at Oldcastle

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by Gail M. Burns

The minute that Sarah Corey makes her entrance as Neil Simon’s indomitable matriarch, Kate Jerome, Oldcastle Theatre Company‘s production of Brighton Beach Memoirs you know who’s in charge here. This is Corey’s second Oldcastle turn as Kate, having played an older iteration in Broadway Bound in 2017, and for those of us lucky enough to have seen both productions, it is like coming home. Even if your mother wasn’t Kate, Kate is your mother for the two and a half hours you will spend with her.

  Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first in Simon’s trilogy of plays about the Jerome Family. It is September of 1937, and Eugene (D. J. Gleason), our narrator, is 15, while his brother Stanley (Anthony Ingargiola) is 18, just out of high school and into the work force. Their father Jack (Eli Ganias) is a garment cutter for a manufacturer of ladies’ raincoats, who also takes on other odd jobs to support his family in the Great Depression. Their mother Kate is a homemaker, and for the past three years their home has also included Kate’s widowed sister, Blanche Morton (Sophia Garder), and Blanche’s two daughters, Nora (Kate Kenney), 16, and Laurie (Kristen Herink), 13.

  The family owns a three bedroom house in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. They are Polish and Jewish and they worry daily about family back home as Hitler advances through Europe. Everyone scrimps and save and true poverty is always kept just at bay, but at heart the Jeromes are proud that they can manage on what they do have.

  All of that managing falls on solidly on Kate’s shoulders. In addition to corralling four teenagers, she is the emotional prop for her depressed sister and the physical shield for her over-stressed and ailing husband.

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Corey’s performance is absolutely solid and immediately appealing. She gets this woman, her considerable strengths and her failings. Simon has crafted the character with tremendous love, and Corey channels it beautifully.

  Gleason’s Eugene is bursting with the sexual and physical energy with which a boy of that age is possessed, and his antics provide most of the comic relief in what is otherwise quite a sober family drama. I often have a hard time with adults playing children, and I felt that a bit with Herink’s Laurie, but Gleason had me completely convinced that he was still in high school and torn between his love for baseball and ice cream, and his new found frenzy for the female form.

  Ingargiola brings a warmth and genuineness to the role. His Stanley is a terrific Big Brother and a loving son, even though he is also just barely an adult and subject to the failings of his age. Ganias’ Jack connects well with the rest of his family – even his sister-in-law – providing a strong father figure even as he struggles to stay healthy enough to fulfill his bread-winning role.

  Garder’s face is just a mask of tragedy as the bereaved Blanche, a woman who invested her whole self into her marriage only to be left rudderless at its sudden demise. But like her sister Kate, she is devoted to her children, even though she lacks the strength of her convictions to guide them towards adulthood. I felt Kenney was miscast as Nora. She didn’t look like she could be Garder’s daughter or Herink’s sister, and she looked to mature to pass as 16.

  At a time when we are hearing a lot of rhetoric about who is “an American” with various unflattering stereotypes being pinned to different ethnic groups, it is hard to hear Kate’s disgust and anger at the Irish family who lives across the street and their son who hopes to date her sister. Earlier in the 20th century discrimination was strong against both the Irish and the Italian, and to a lesser extent the German, immigrants to New York City. It is interesting that Kate, who understands so clearly what discrimination has done to her ancestors, cannot understand that she is perpetuating an identical violence against another ethnic group.

  Richard Howe’s manages to pack an awful lot of distinct rooms into the Oldcastle performance space, creating the cheek-by-jowl intimacy that the two families sharing one home must feel. Stith and his actors are careful to use each doorway at the appropriate time for the appropriate purpose, so you soon catch on to the condensed floorplan of the house. Ursula McCarty’s costumes are good, but they veer heavily towards purple, particularly in the second act, which is puzzling.

  Like Tennessee Williams’ A Glass Menagerie, Brighton Beach Memoirs is a memory play, a family seen through the eyes of the son. While it is generally accepted as a semi-autobiographical work, there aren’t actually many direct parallels to Neil Simon’s own family. He said himself that the Jeromes were “the family I wished I’d had instead of the family I did have.” So we can’t look at them as direct representation of the Simons, but it is clear that Simon loved the Jeromes like family. Oldcastle loves them too, and it is wonderful that they have brought them back to Bennington in this strong and proud production,

  Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon, directed by Nathan Stith, runs July 12-28, 2019, at the Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, VT. Set design by Richard Howe; lighting design by David V. Groupé; sound design by Cory Wheat; and costume design by Ursula McCarty. Stage Manager Liz Raymond. CAST: Sarah Corey as Kate, D. J. Gleason as Eugene, Anthony J. Ingargiola as Stanley, Eli Ganias as Jack., Sophia Garder as Blanche, Kate Kenney as Nora, and Kristen Herink as Laurie. The show runs two and a half hours with one intermission. For tickets and more information visit http://oldcastletheatre.org/ or call 802-447-0564.

  REVIEW: “Brighton Beach Memoirs” at Oldcastle by Gail M. Burns The minute that Sarah Corey makes her entrance as Neil Simon’s indomitable matriarch, Kate Jerome, …

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by Gail M. Burns

From his perch in 1986, Neil Simon looked back to 1947 and wrote a play about the future. All the characters in Broadway Bound, the final installment in his quasi-autobiographical trilogy of plays about the Jerome family, is teetering on the verge of the precipice of change. The young people, sons Eugene (Anthony J. Ingargiola) and Stanley (Robbie Rescigno), are reaching eagerly for their future, filled with the promise of romance, adventure, and success as comedy writers. Their father, Jack (Jason Asprey), is about to leave his wife and family, something their mother, Kate (Sarah Corey), knows and may or may not be ready for. And Kate’s father, Ben (Richard Howe), is clinging to his life in Brooklyn as his wife prepares to move to a retirement community in Florida.

It is a joy to see Ingargiola return to the Oldcastle stage after his thoroughly winning portrayal of Huck Finn in last season’s musical Big River. His Eugene is kind and caring. He has a believable brotherly bond with Rescigno’s much more aggressively ambitious Stanley, and a truly warm rapport with Corey as his mother. The scene late in the play where Kate recounts her teenage adventure of running off to the Paradise Ballroom (when she should be sitting shiva) in order to dance with movie star George Raft requires Ingargiola to listen with love and wonder as he gains a deeper understanding of Kate as more than just his mother. That is not an easy trick to do. And when they dance – Eugene says later that he couldn’t hold his mother close because the moment was just too intimate – there is magic on the stage.

Which brings us to the delicate subject of casting. Corey is a fine actress and she gives a wonderful performance, but she is too young to play Kate. There is a time to play a role like Kate, and you need to live a while to earn that right. It took me about half an hour to be able to put this problem out of my mind and accept her as the 50-something matriarch. That I did accept her and was able to move past the age issue is a tribute to her talent and commitment to this role, but there are so many fine actresses of the right age – Oldcastle regular Christine Decker springs instantly to mind – for whom meaty roles like this are hard to find, that I still question director Eric Peterson’s choice.

Asprey, however, is perfectly cast. His portrayal of the genuinely tortured Jack is haunting and powerful. There are no laughs in this role. Jack is a man who sees his future clearly, and he hates it, but he knows it is inevitable. He will leave. He must leave. And he knows that it will hurt Kate and Stanley and Eugene, and him. That hurt will shape all of their future paths in life. The second act scene between Jack and his sons is frightening and heart-breaking as Asprey takes all of Jack’s self-loathing out on his sons, ruining their moment of triumph and leaving them reeling.

The role of Ben offers a little bit of the comic relief that Simon provides so easily through his older characters – most notably in The Sunshine Boys – but Ben is not an aging cantankerous comic. He is a man who has worked hard and done his best by his wife, his daughters, and his grandchildren and has come to a point where he is scared of what comes next. Moving to Florida is one step closer to…what comes after retirement? What comes after your 70s? Maybe your 80s, maybe not. Howe gives a solid performance offering real insights into a character who could just be a geriatric punch line.

Rescigno provides the real comic energy in the play. Stanley is well past the age when he wants to be living at home with Mom and Pop. He knows he has talent and ambition, but Simon makes it clear that even while he can’t wait to get to his future, he finds the prospect of change as daunting as the rest of the family. Rescigno carries the frenetic scenes where Eugene and Stanley struggle to come up with their audition sketch for their big break in radio.

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There is a sixth character, Kate’s sister, Ben’s other daughter, Blanche (Amy Gaither Hayes), whose second husband has surprised everyone by becoming quite rich and installing Blanche and her two daughters on Park Avenue. Blanche is the one who is ready and financially able to move her parents down to Florida, a climate that will be beneficial to her mother’s health, and Ben’s refusal to accept her “charity” and join his wife perplexes her.

Blanche and her daughters are key characters in Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first play in this trilogy, which is also set in Jack and Kate’s home, and I understand Simon’s interest in completing their story arcs, but unless you have a chance to see these two plays in close proximity, those aspects of her scene are awkward.

Set designer Carl Sprague has cleverly reworked his set for Oldcastle’s production of A Comedy of Tenors, which ran immediately before this production, and it works surprisingly well. There are well defined areas for the living room, the dining room, and Eugene and Stanley’s bedrooms upstairs. …Tenors is a six door farce which leaves the Jerome’s dealing with about two doors too many in their house, but Peterson, Sprague, and the actors make it work.

Ursula McCarty has crafted another fine set of costumes. Except for Blanche’s Park Avenue finery, the Jerome’s are not a stylish bunch, and her costumes clearly define the period and the socio-economic strata of the household.

Creating clearly audible sound that emanates from a radio and synchs with on stage dialogue is not easy and Cory Wheat’s sound design executes it well. My only problem with David V. Groupé’s lighting design was the jarring transitions when Eugene broke the fourth wall to act as narrator. Something much more subtle and less blinding would have been more effective.

I see a lot of plays – many of them very well written and many much more innovative in style and structure than Broadway Bound – but I have to say that it is a pleasure to attend the work of a playwright who just knows how to do it. Who knows how to create three-dimensional characters you care about, who knows how to structure scenes and advance plot, and who writes in clear, lucid language that flows. This is what is called a Well-Made Play, and with this fine cast it is just a joy to behold.

Broadway Bound by Neil Simon, directed by Eric Peterson, runs September 29 – October 15, 2017, at the Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, VT. Set design by Carl Sprague; lighting design by David V. Groupé; sound design by Cory Wheat; and costume design by Ursula McCarty. Stage Manager Gary Allan Poe. CAST: Sarah Corey as Kate, Richard Howe as Ben, Anthony J. Ingargiola as Eugene, Robbie Rescigno as Stanley, and Jason Asprey as Jack. Radio voices provided by Gary Allan Poe, Timothy Foley, and Jody June Schade. The show runs two and a half hours with one intermission. For tickets and more information visit http://oldcastletheatre.org/ or call 802-447-0564.

REVIEW: “Broadway Bound” at Oldcastle by Gail M. Burns From his perch in 1986, Neil Simon looked back to 1947 and wrote a play about the future.

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Big River at Oldcastle Theatre.

Big River at Oldcastle Theatre.

Big River at Oldcastle Theatre.

Big River at Oldcastle Theatre.

Big River at Oldcastle Theatre. Photo by Scott Cally.

Big River at Oldcastle Theatre. Photo by Scott Cally.

Black Lives Matter in “Big River” at Oldcastle Theatre Company Theatre Review by Gail M. Burns

I am on record several times over with my loathing of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I generally refer to as “two-thirds of a great novel,” and I didn’t like Big River the first time I saw and reviewed it many years ago, but Oldcastle has done the impossible and CHANGED GAIL BURNS’ MIND!! Thanks to the directorial vision of director/choreographer Tim Howard and his very talented cast, I finally see and accept this story for the ground-breaking piece of anarchy that it is.

The last third of Twain’s novel remains an embarrassment, but the reason the rest of the story soars is the central relationship of Huck and Jim as they glide down the Mississippi on that raft. Two outsiders – a runaway slave and an orphaned lower class boy who are, as composer/lyricist Roger Miller so aptly writes, “Worlds Apart” – on a grand adventure. And while all of this production is fine and entertaining, the show really takes wing during the song “Muddy Water” when Huck and Jim hit the river. Here Howard and lighting designer Scott Cally bring Dan Courchaine’s previously spare set to vivid life as the raft rolls and the waters of the Mississippi swirl around it and Huck and Jim’s hopes are so high and yet so close that they can reach out and touch them…

Anthony J. Ingargiola simply IS Huckleberry Finn, portraying the character’s vulnerability as well as his much touted tough and mischievous sides with energy, humor, and a fine voice. Huck has not had an easy life, and, now that he is about 14, society is expecting him to start taking on adult responsibilities. Reji Woods is a gentle Jim, patiently schooling Huck that “Slaves Lives Matter” while steadfastly focused on his goal of gaining his own freedom and reuniting his family.

Big River arrived on Broadway in 1985, but librettist William Hauptman and composer/lyricist Roger Miller astutely avoided all temptation to update Twain’s story and make it “politically correct.” Miller, who by his own description grew up “dirt poor” in Oklahoma, had never read Twain’s book but when invited to consider turning it into a musical saw immediate parallels to his own childhood a century later. In other words, he approached it from a personal level without the burden of the “civilizing” opinions of education. Big River cleaves closely to Twain’s original and its language and characters reside squarely in the mid-19th century. That means they use the “N Word”…a lot…because that was exactly how people spoke back then.

With a cast of sixteen, this is the largest show Oldcastle has mounted in its new Main Street venue, and Courchaine has wisely opened the performance as wide as it will go. John Foley and his small band of musicians are tucked neatly in one corner, and everything else – a few crates, an old trunk, one large multilevel set piece, and Huck and Jim’s requisite raft – all roll in and out only when needed, allowing the talented cast plenty of room to bring Howard’s lively direction and choreography center stage. There is not a lot of bright color on the set or in Roy Hamlin and Ursula McCarty’s costumes, as there wouldn’t have been in Huck and Jim’s life. The color is provided by Cally’s lighting design, and by the larger than life performances of the actors.

Howard is Professor of Theatre and Coordinator of Musical Theatre at Western Connecticut State University, and many of the young performers in the cast are his students there, including Thomas Bergamo (Ben and others), Jillian Caillouette (Joanna and others), Alana Cauthen (Alice and others), and Matt Grasso (Simon and others). Oldcastle regulars Christine Decker (Widow Douglas and others), Peter Langstaff (The King and others), and Richard Howe (The Duke and others) delight, as usual, in some of the showier peripheral roles. John Fitzpatrick is a real live wire as the overly imaginative Tom Sawyer. And Bennington native Sarah Solari, a recent graduate of Mount Anthony regional high school, makes a fine OTC debut as Mary Jane Wilkes with a strong solo in the second act.

Miller was a prolific songwriter, winner of many, many Grammys. He even took home a couple of Tonys for this, his only attempt at musical theatre. His most famous tune is “King of the Road” (although I confess a penchant for his lesser known opus “You Can’t Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd”) which could easily be the ballad of a late 20th century Huck Finn. The score of Big River is redolent with the sound of country, bluegrass, and gospel music, and here musical director John Foley, has augmented the typical line-up of guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard with the cello, harmonica, and Jew’s harp for an authentic sound.

Mark Twain set Huck’s tale in the 1840’s when slavery was the legal norm, but he wrote it in the 1880’s and 1890s, post-Civil War, post-Emancipation Proclamation, post-Darwin, when both laws and ideas were changing, and yet even people like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln could not imagine an integrated American society. That is what Huck and Jim show us in miniature, the two races face to face grappling with each other’s realities and coming to an understanding. Despite the current turmoil and tragedy, this country by and large IS integrated, and it is good to look back at where we were and where we are, so we can set course for where we need to go.

Black lives matter. This is the startling truth Huck Finn stumbles upon during his and Jim’s odyssey down the river. Towards the end of Big River, Huck prays for his soul because he cannot find it in his heart to do the right and legal thing and return Jim to slavery. And he comes to the conclusion that he is just damned and going to Hell because he wants to help Jim gain his freedom. It is a liberating moment for Huck, who, at the play’s end, rejects “civilization” entirely and strikes off alone for the frontier. We may be coming to a point in history where we need to look to Huck’s example and cast off the old ways for bold, new ideas about “civilization.”

Oldcastle Theatre Company presents Big River, music and lyrics by Roger Miller, book by William Hauptman July 8-24, 2016. Directed and Choreographed by Tim Howard; Musical Director, John Foley; Set design, Dan Courchaine; Costumes, Roy Hamlin and Ursula McCarty; Lighting, Scott Cally; Sound, Cory Wheat; Stage Manager, Kristine Schlachter. Cast: Anthony J. Ingargiola (Huckleberry Finn); Reji Woods (Jim); Gary Allan Poe (Mark Twain and others); Christine Decker (Widow Douglas and others); Sarah Robotham (Miss Watson and others); Drew Davidson (Judge Thatcher and others); John Fitzpatrick (Tom Sawyer); Thomas Bergamo (Ben and others); Matt Grasso (Simon and others); Sarah Solari (Mary Jane and others); Heather Farney (Susan Wilkes and others); Jillian Caillouette (Joanna and others); Alana Cauthen (Alice and others); Jordan Tyson (Betsy and others); Peter Langstaff (The King and others); and Richard Howe (The Duke and others). Band: John Foley, harp and guitar; Matt Edwards, keyboard; Robert Zimmerman, bass, and Jeff McRae, drums. The show runs two hours with one intermission. At Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main St., Bennington, VT. oldcastletheatre.org (802) 447-0564

Gail Burns reviews Oldcastle’s mind-changing musical “Big River” Black Lives Matter in "Big River" at Oldcastle Theatre Company Theatre Review by Gail M. Burns…