Reviewed by Will
Stackman
First
the stats. This year's Theatre Marathon had 50 10 minute (+/-) performances
credited to 51 writers and featured over 250 Boston-area actors. The charity
event, held a month later than usual, was moved to the Wimberly, a new 300+
seat proscenium theater with continental seating at the BCA. This downtown
location is far more staid and comfortable than the rough and ready studios
over at Boston Playwrights where this benefit for the Actors' Benevolent Fund
has been staged previously. Authors ranged from established to neophyte, with
25 past participants in the roster, including 5 of the 14 women. Boston's
professional actors appeared alongside community theatre veterans and up and
coming students. While the house was not full to overflowing much of the time,
as in the past, the day was well attended by friends and supporters of local
theatre. Now for the credits.
Things
started off seriously with Playwrights' Platform's production of
writer/anthropologist Hortense Gerado's "In the Wake of the Horsemen" directed by Jerry Bisantz Merle
Perkins played
an American nurse compelled to return to Darfur to keep a promise to a dead
woman. This tense scene, backed by a Koto drummer, could well be part of a
longer work. This piece was soon followed by Joyce Van Dyke's "The Earring" which featured IRNE
winners Bobbie Steinbach and Ann Gottlieb. The former is currently appearing with the Actors'
Shakespeare Project in "Julius Caesar." Neil A. Casey, who got his first IRNE this
year, was at the center of actor/television personality Ted Reinstein's "The Interrogation" sponsored by the Lyric
Stage, before heading next door to play Mason Marzak in Speakeasy's "Take
Me Out", which was recently extended into July at BCA's Roberts Studio.
The first hour wrapped up with two ASP members, Sara Newhouse, who was Lady Ann in
"Rich.III" last fall and Greg Steres, currently in the title role of
"Julius Caesar" playing a heart-wrenching domestic scene in John
Shea's "The
Bar Stool.", directed by fellow ASP member Doug Lockwood. The remaining nine hours had
similar moments, with only a few unsuccessful pieces.
The
next hour included Robert Pemberton and Bill Mootos as a difficult clueless movie star and his
harried personal assistant in Andrew Clarke's "Breakfast with Harvey" directed by Centastage's Joe
Antoun. Mariela
Lopez-Ponce,
recently seen at the Lyric, was directed by Brandeis' Daniel Gidron in Roseanna Yamagiwa Alfaro's quirky marital drama "The
Other Ocean",
another script ready for expansion. Then A.R.T.founder Robert Brustein discovered his inner-clown
parodying a reading of classic verse in Beacham's Last Poetry Reading, ably assisted by ART veteran
actress Karen MacDonald as the professor's voluble wife afflicted by Tourette's syndrome,
directed by Boston Theatre veteran, David Wheeler.
Queer
Soup, North Shore Music Theatre, Chelsea's TheatreZone, Company One, the Sugan,
the Wheelock Family Theatre, Providence's Perishable, Boston Theatre Works,
Shadowboxing, Theatre Offensive, the Theatre Coop, the New African Company, and
Provincetown all sponsored pieces during the afternoon. Sugan's featured Rick
Park and Ciaran
Crawford, last
seen in their "Gagarin Way", and Irene Daly a Rough & Tumble and Mill6
regular, in Joshua Rollins ' "...Capt. Normal". Wheelock's production of Candace
Perry's "Sorry" featured Jane Staab and Harold Withee. Shadowboxing Theatre Workshop
had the most unique staging of the Marathon with three mountain climbers at the
end of their ropes, literally, in BU grad student R. Brad Smith's "The Lemonade Stand at
the End of the Earth"
directed by Michelle Aguillon, president of the Vokes Players. Deanna Dunmeyer was a hit in Peter Shelburne's fantasy Gus Penelope
Syberson playing
a sentient GPS/computer phone., while Cheryl Singleton and Keith Mascoll did good work in Frank
Shefton's "The
Place We Met"
with an uncredited mime appearance by director Vincent Siders, New African's honcho.
The
5-6pm slot saw IRNE winner Will McGarrahan as a day laborer who wants to sing in John
Andert's "Summertime" supported by Candace
Brown and Brian
Abscal and
directed by Julia Jirousek, sponsored by the new suburban Village Theatre Project.
Rough and Tumble revived a scene from last fall's Mondays and Other Days with words by William
Donnelly,
featuring the master of the slow burn, George Saulnier III and company co-founder, Kristin
Baker.
Gloucester Stage Company's Israel Horowitz made his annual contribution with "The Fat
Guy Gets the Girl"
featuring rotund Rick Doucette and petite Emma Shaw in a bedroom farce directed by Paula
Plum. During the
6-7pm slot, Ed Bullins offered a bit of bio-drama in "Black Caesar" sponsored by Our Place and
directed by their artistic head Jacqui Parker. Boston Playwright's got Richard
McElwain to
direct Tug Yourgrau's "Just the Two of Us" which featured IRNE winner Alice Duffy, a Marathon regular. This gentle
comedy was followed by a mini-opera monodrama "The Story of an Hour" by Eliz. Elior and Stan Hoffman, ably sung by Mary Ann Powers with music director Jeffrey
Goldberg at the
piano. New BC grad Crystal Gomes' farce "Clam and Herschel Go To Market" featured Jeremy Johnson and Lonnie McAdoo in the title roles with cameos
by Helen McElwain
selling mackerel and Steven Barkhimer selling Cadillacs.
Between
7 and 9pm, Turtle Lane sponsored Michael Collins' drama in the current Irish
mode, "The Playground", directed by James Tallach. Stoneham Theatre brought in
UMass Boston student Zachariah Wieler's marital drama "Crazy Horse" with artistic director Weylin
Symes putting a
fellow director Robert Jay Cronin and Caitlin Lowans on the spot. QE2 had Ed Peed playing a computer in Kathleen
Rogers' satire, Sylvia
Angell's Driving Test , while the Huntington put Ken Flott and Nathaniel McIntrye, who'd just finished the matinee
of "Take Me Out", in Charles Evered's "Ted's Head", the only Red Sox related
piece in this year's Marathon. Coyote's Courtney O'Connor, who just did Janet Kenney's "My Heart and My
Flesh" at BPT, explored more family dynamics in Kenney's "The
Space Beside Me."
John Kuntz
made his annual appearance in "Kix", playing a disturbed matron who collects
cereal boxes as a way to stay relatively sane, while Foothill's gave another
outing to Robert Mattson's "famous, small f " seen in last year's Playwrights' Platform
Festival at BPT. William Donnelly got serious with Deprivation Diary in Industrial's presentation
featuring Heather McNamara and Kevin LaVelle.
In
the home stretch, there were two playwriting specific pieces; first Dana
Yeaton's farce
"The Missing Bagel Factor" about the peril of regionalism with Elaine
Theodore as the
hapless playwright and IRNE winner Maureen Keiller as sardonic Nurse
Stebbins,followed by Marathon veteran Jack Neary's "The Rewrite" featuring IRNE winner and
crowd favorite, Ellen Colton. Underground Railway Theatre presented BU Playwrighting
gradMolly Smith Metzler's "Decoding Fruit" featuring Underground's Debra Wise opposite John Kuntz playing her
troubled brother. Vineyard Playhouse's Jon Lipsky premiered "Walking the
Volcano", a
two-hander involving Vietnam journalists. The evening ended with Judy Braha directing Jeremiah Kissel and Ken Baltin, two stellar local actors, in BU
Visiting Professor of Playwriting Richard Schotter's New-Age comedy "The
Spot", presented by the Jewish Theatre of New England. Once again, the BTM
was a highly successful memorable, if somewhat tiring, day in the theatre. The
event continues to bring together diverse performing entities, from major
University-based high-budget stages to shoestring operations with limited
production schedules, while continuing the venerable tradition of the
"quality" presenting benefit performances for their own. Additional
comment has been collected on the Theater
Mirror,
the official archive for the IRNE's, under Reviews.
If
next year's "running" could be scheduled closer to the actual
Marathon, there might be a larger student audience. With a lot more lobby
space, the actors' and directors', and even crew, bios should be posted
somewhere. While this is a celebration of playwriting (and even playwrighting),
the three hundred plus creators of the actual event deserve more credit. A full
list might also be added to the schedule posted on BPT's website.