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| JAVA JIVE | THE LAST FALCON | LOWENSTEIN
| MORDECAI'S MIRACLE | AND NOW, DIRECT
FROM THE CONDO ACROSS THE STREET | NO WAY OUT
| PLAY REVIEWS
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Murray had spent a life on the road as a stand-up comic. Although never
a 'big name,' he thrived on the 'rush' of performing and the freedom to
travel. But now, as the play begins, Murray has had a stroke and must
deal not only with his present situation, but also with a past that makes
his present more complicated and problematic.
Life has become complicated for his second wife, Helen, as well. Aware
that Murray was no angel when she married him, she was trading the risk
Murray would bring to any relationship, let alone marriage, for the excitement
of the gamble. Helen was willing and able to adjust to Murray and his
new limits (as Murray puts it, 'for a comic having a stroke is not a good
career move). But the stakes are raised when her sister, Gladys, just
to set the record straight in case Murray should die, tells Helen that
she and Murray had been having an affair.
So now Helen is left on the horns of dilemma: how to be a nurturing caretaker
for a man who has deceived her; how to fulfill her sense of responsibility
and obligation for a man she loves while knowing he is unworthy of that
love.
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JAVA JIVE
JAVA JIVE, an evening of six integrated one-act plays
set in a coffee café, asks the question: is coffee the answer?
Interchanging partners through the evening (occasionally teaming up
as a quartet), two male and two female actors explore sex, fear, friendship,
Siamese twins, caffeine, and a prune Danish.
One play, in which the prune Danish plays a critical role, deals with
two frightened people testing each other's tolerance before committing
to a relationship. Another play shows the obsessive length to which
a loser in love will go to confirm his loss. In a third play, it take
a father's death for two of his children to discover they had been Siamese
twins born attached at the head, and for the third child to discover
he had been found in a Burmese rice paddy. Another play explores the
dark side of male bonding and the joys of blackmail. Still another play
demonstrates that a marriage built on a strong foundation of S&M
can work anywhere, even over a cup of coffee. And finally, we discover
what made Ethel Merman sing, "I feel swell, I feel great…
REVIEW OF "JAVA JIVE"
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THE LAST FALCON
THE LAST FALCON is placed in "Casablanca," but the story is
from "The Maltese Falcon." As might be expected from such
a fusion, characters from both films overlap, are joined by characters
unique to each, and all struggle to fight off a rebellious audience.
And so we find Rick, Renault, Ugarti and Ferrari all scrambling to find
a black falcon that is little more than a shaggy dog.
Although Rick, Jr. comes to Casablanca to uncover his past and discover
his father, little did he know he was being set up by Ferrari, Ugarte
and Renault to help them find the last falcon. Little did they know
they all may have been Jr's. father. And little did the audience know
when they bought their ticket they might be boarding the Titanic. All
of this is immersed in mayhem reminiscent of the Marx Bros., Olsen and
Johnson and This Is Your Life.
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LOWENSTEIN
LOWENSTEIN is a story of a man who sought to give a voice
to the politically powerless, to bring into the center of American life
those on the margin, and to create a world based on humanity rather
than brutality.
Allard Lowenstein was in the inner council of Martin Luther King's civil
rights movement in the '60's. He was instrumental in the voter registration
drive in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. He single handedly initiated
and led the 'Dump Johnson' movement in 1967, recruiting Sen. Eugene
McCarthy to run for President, ultimately forcing President Johnson
into retirement. After winning a seat in the House of Representatives,
Lowenstein was one of the first and strongest voices leading the movement
to end the Viet Nam War. His credo was that one man could make a difference.
His life proved that he was often that man.
His story, and the story of the Nation at the time, is told through
Al, his wife, Jennie, and Dennis Sweeny, his protégé and
eventual assassin. Al's father, White Woman and Black Man provide a
chorus of voices reflecting the conflicts and tensions of the times.
At the age of 51, as he was seemingly about to take an active part in
the gay rights movement, Lowenstein was killed by his mentally ill protégé.
Allard Lowenstein remains all but a footnote in history, either forgotten
or never known. It is the intention of this play to make the public
aware of Lowenstein's legacy.
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MORDECAI'S MIRACLE
Mordecai, at sixty, is not a happy man. True, he has a loving wife and
daughter, Rachel and Marcia, but Mordecai feels something in his life
is missing. He seeks solace in tenderly caring for his houseplants,
but as Rachel points out, they never sent even one card on his birthday.
Now on the eve of retirement, Mordecai enters a funk, fueled in part
by Rachel's refusing to leave her family behind and retire with him
to Florida, a dream that has sustained him at his unfulfilling job.
So Mordecai begins a twenty-year quest to find a solution to his feelings
of despondency. And so it shouldn't be a total waste of time, he also
looks for the meaning of life. With Rabbi Gershon as his mentor, Mordecai
explores the Kabbalah and Talmud seeking answers. Along the way he also
looks for a quick solution with a woman he meets by chance. While this
doesn't help much, at least Mordecai finds pleasure in helping her grandchildren
with their homework.
And then, one night, the solution to Mordecai's dilemma comes to him
in a dream, a dream that Mordecai, now 82, sees as a Divine manifestation:
like Abraham before him, Mordecai, in his old age, is to be a father
once again. Despite Rachel's initial reluctance, Mordecai perseveres
and achieves his miraculous destiny.
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AND NOW, DIRECT
FROM THE CONDO ACROSS THE STREET
JOEY GREEN (formerly Greenberg) has been a stand-up comic for nearly
fifty years. Now, at 72, he is working the condo circuit in Florida
struggling with an audience that either cannot hear him or is falling
asleep. To make matters worse, his ex-wife, ARLENE, now deceased five
years, has returned to help him cope with the news that he is dying
of lung cancer.
Joey's life was a series of small clubs and small rewards. Yet, while
he always felt he traveled to better support his wife and kids, they
were always angry that he was never around. So now, life's end in sight,
in an effort to make it right with his kids and with Arlene ever at
his side, Joey returns to New York to visit his son, HOWARD, and daughter,
BRENDA.
But, as with most of their lives together, any interaction within the
Greenberg family is confounded by Joey's insistence on going his own
way and is fraught with sarcasm and jokes, the mother tongue of the
family Greenberg.
Although ultimately, if only in his own mind, Joey does redeem himself,
he remains, in the words of his son Howard, a pain in the ass then,
now and forever.
The production is for a single living room set and a cast of two male
and two female actors.
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NO WAY OUT
NO WAY OUT is a set of three comedic plays that explore
our attempts to cope with the inevitability of death. A game of chess,
a 'dooms day box', and a game of 'Pop Goes the Weasel', are used to
depict our reliance on diversion, our quest to understand forces outside
our control, and the randomness of our eventual end. Murray, a silent,
but interested, party, who also happens to move the furniture, actively
oversees all.
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In addition to the above full length plays,
my work includes twenty One-Acts, with casts ranging from two to six.
REVIEWS:
JAVA JIVE:
www.oobr.com/top/volSix/twentysix/0324java.htm
POP GOES THE WEASEL:
www.botz.com/nytheatre/harbor.htm
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