#charles schoonmaker

REVIEW: “Bar Mitzvah Boy” at Chester Theatre Company

REVIEW: “The Night Alive” at the Chester Theatre Company

REVIEW: “On the Exhale” at Chester Theatre Company

  A college professor relates the story of one of her students demanding that she raise his grade.  When she refuses he takes out a gun  and shoots her.  This is a dream after which she takes several non-violent and inconsequential steps to prevent such an event.

  Next she tells us that her seven-year-old son was slain in a school shooting.  This is not a dream.

  Martin Zimmerman’s play On the Exhale currently at the Chester Theatre Company in Chester, Massachusetts, traces the slow evolution of the professor’s emotions as she confronts the pain and the need for vengeance that have overtaken her life.  She traces the path of the rifle to the seller and then testifies to government officials who ignore her pleas to stem the tide of violence engulfing the country.

  Skillfully performed by Tara Franklin, one of the area’s most accomplished actresses, the Woman, as she is identified in the program, tells us of how she received the news of the shooting, then waiting behind police barriers at the school followed by the horrendous announcement that her son Michael was one of the victims.  Franklin’s objective narration doesn’t obscure the intense determination to avenge Michael.  Wherever she goes she sees him and is inspired to pursue those responsible for her agony.  It would be easy for the telling of the story to become maudlin or filled with hysteria, but Franklin’s Woman is always under control.  She holds the stage, not by being the only character in the play, but by the power and sensitivity of her performance.  Her work is a model of acting technique and emotional discipline.

  Director Colette Roberts has paced the production in gradual, well-conceived increments,  avoiding the temptation to indulge in over-acting, giving the Woman’s actions credibility while building the play’s tension moment by moment.

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Travis George’s dramatic set surrounds the playing area with a wall of white fabric slats and a simple black vinyl utilitarian bench.  The slats absorb and reflect the light design by Lara Dubin that suddenly enhance the myriad moods and emotional moments.  Rumbling sounds designed by James McNamara unobtrusively segue into and out of the production giving resonance to its changing tones.  Charles Schoonmaker has dressed Franklin in a very simple yet elegant blouse and pants, further emphasizing the straightforward quality of the play.

  Zimmerman’s script is tight… no wasted words or moments.  The play is a condemnation of rampant carnage and the ineffectual attempts to control it.  He also delves into the mind and heart of Woman who has decided to wreak revenge on those responsible for not controlling the mayhem and mitigating the agony of those who must exist with the horror.

  Everything is of a piece in this taut, profound production.  If you wish to experience an intelligent and provocative play, Chester is the place to be.

  On The Exhale by Martin Zimmerman; Director: Colette Roberts; Cast: Tara Franklin (Woman); Set Design: Travis George; Costume Design: Charles Schoonmaker; :Lighting Design: Lara Dubin; Sound Design: James McNamara; Stage Manager: Keri Schultz; Assistant to the Director: Shanna Gerlach; Running time: 75 minutes; no intermission; 7/25/19-8/4/19; Chester Theatre Company, 15 Middlefield Rd., Chester, MA 01011; 413-354-7771

Chester Theatre Company Presents Martin Zimmerman’s “On the Exhale”

Chester, MA – Chester Theatre Company (CTC) is proud to present Martín Zimmerman’s On the Exhale July 25-August 4. First preview is July 25 at 2:00pm, and the opening is July 25 at 8:00pm. Written in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the play takes a unique look at the issues surrounding guns and gun violence in America. The production stars CTC Associate Artistic Director and Berkshire…

  The Night Alive by Conor McPherson is the story of five Dubliners bumbling through life and often at odds with one another.  McPherson, the award winning playwright of Shining City, The Seafarer, The Weir and many others, has an ear for realistic dialogue full of incomplete sentences, broken phrases and the lilt of his native Irish intonations.  The play’s New England premiere at the Chester Theatre Company in Chester, Massachusetts, is respectful of McPherson’s expressive style in this haunting work.

  The play opens as Tommy (Justin Campbell) assists Aimee (Marielle Young,) into the thoroughly unkempt room he rents in his uncle Maurice’s (Nick Ullett) house.  Her face has been bloodied in an altercation with a man she says she doesn’t know.  Tommy tenderly cleans her up and insists she spend the night there to recover from her trauma.  The one night turns into several days.

  The next day Doc (James Barry,) who is described as being “disabled,” arrives asking for a place to live since his sister’s boy friend has, once again, thrown him out of their house.  After bantering back and forth Tommy gives Doc 30 pounds and we are assured of the warmth that exists between the them.  Several days elapse as the play settles into a domestic comedy/drama, then Kenneth (Joel Ripka) appears and lives change.

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While  several scenes in the play are somewhat episodic and have a tenuous relation with the preceding or following scenes the events build the arc of the play into an ambiguous and provocative conclusion.

  The acting is uniformly excellent.  Campbell as the sensitive Tommy lumbers around his  room displaying a latent sensitivity toward Aimee and Doc and intense anger as he argues with his ex-wife about their two children.  He gets laughs and empathy as he deals with the frustrations of his life. James Barry assumes the mien and physicality of Doc’s mental disability.  In a touching performance he has the audience laughing with him, not at him, as he receives their compassion.  Aimee, a sometimes prostitute, is a difficult character to like as she is very private, but Ms. Young has found qualities that allow us to understand her.  Her performance is subtly textured.

  Nick Ullett’s Uncle Maurice is pompous and irascible when sober and almost pleasant when inebriated.  Actually, the uncle is of minor importance to the major incidents in the plot, but Ullett makes the most of his several scenes by supplying information of Tommy’s past.  When Joel Ripka’s Kenneth enters it is obvious that, despite his charm, there is an aura of danger encompassing him.  His transition from bonhomie to violence is smooth and occurs incrementally.

  Direction by Chester’s artistic director Daniel Elihu Kramer is economical; there are no wasted movements or moments.  His actors bring their characters to life with sensitivity and insight.  The grimy room designed by Ed Check is claustrophobic, adding to the conditions that govern their actions and emotions.  Charles Schoonmaker’s costumes identify the social status of the characters and the lighting and sound by Lara Dubin and Tom Shread respectively underscore the various tones of the play.

  The Night Alive is an interesting play on many levels and this production is perceptive in interpreting McPherson’s script and is intelligently directed and acted.  Chester opens its 30th season with the excellence that has become a hallmark for this intimate theatrical space.

  The Night Alive by Conor McPherson; Director: Daniel Elihu Kramer; Cast: James Barry (Doc) Justin Campbell (Tommy) Joel Ripka (Kenneth) Nick Ullett (Maurice) Marielle Young (Aimee); Set Design: Ed Check; Costume Design: Charles Schoonmaker; Lighting Design: Lara Dubin; Sound Design: Tom Shread; Stage Manager: Leslie Sears; Fight Director: Alexander Sovronsky; Assistant to the Director: Hero Hendrick-Baker; Running time: two hours; one intermission; 6/20/19 – 6/30/19; Chester Theatre Company, 15 Middlefield Rd., Chester, MA 01011; 413-354-7771 http://chestertheatre.org

Chester Theatre Company Announces Complete Casting for 30th Anniversary Season

Many Audience Favorites Returning to the Town Hall Theatre, Onstage and Off Chester, MA–Co-founded by Vincent Dowling and H. Newman Marsh in 1990 with the belief that every town should have a professional theatre, Chester Theatre Company (formerly The Miniature Theatre of Chester) prepares to celebrate its landmark 30th Season with four works, each a New England Premiere. Chester Theatre…

Metaphor:  the oft-repeated word describing Rabbi Michael Levitz-Sharon (Tara Franklin)’s view of biblical stories in Mark-Leiren-Young’s Bar Mitzvah Boy.  The Creation of the World in 7 Days, the Burning Bush, Noah’s Ark, the Binding of Isaac—all metaphors, not to be taken literally, according to the Rabbi.

This modern view of the Hebrew Bible is not Leiren-Young’s only attempt to keep us off-balance in his prize-winning play receiving its American Premiere at the Chester Theatre Company.  In an apparent role-reversal, Rabbi Michael (yes, her name is Michael) makes her way to the stage in a running suit as the play opens, while the other character in this two-hander, Joey “Yosef” Brant (Will LeBow) is dressed in a Rabbi’s traditional garb:  a suit, yarmulke and tallit.  In an ironic twist on the play’s title, Brant, a middle-aged, divorced divorce attorney, begs the Rabbi to prepare him for an adult Bar Mitzvah before his grandson undergoes the same rite in the same synagogue the following week.  After much protestation (“This is not Hogwart’s,” says Rabbi Michael, observing that only a magician could pull this off in such a short time), she agrees to tutor him.  The eighteen scenes in this intermissionless play chronicle these sessions as a relationship develops between the Rabbi, who is dealing with her daughter’s terminal illness, and the attorney, who tries to reconnect with the faith he lost 52 years ago.

Mark Leiren-Young won the 2017 Jewish Playwriting Prize for this play, which received its world premiere at the Pacific Theatre in his native Vancouver, British Columbia, where Leiren-Young was Bar Mitzvahed.  In addition to writing for the theatre, Leiren-Young, a journalist, writes for film and television, including his award-winning TV special, Greenpieces: The World’s First Eco-Comedy. 

Bar Mitzvah Boy is thin on plot, but instead focuses on the two characters, their lives and the interaction between them.  Although the opening scenes are comic, filled with punch-lines perfectly delivered by these two talented actors, the play gradually tugs at our emotions as the illness of the Rabbi’s daughter, Rachel, takes its toll.  This can feel manipulative, as the audience is caught between laughter and tears.  That is what life does, of course, but it becomes obvious that the playwright is the one pulling the strings, rather than allowing the story to unfold organically.

Some of the characters’ motivations feel manufactured to fit the structure of the play:  for example, even after Joey’s big reveal, when he finally explains his need to be Bar Mitzvahed, we don’t feel the immediate urgency, despite LeBow’s brilliance in this role.  His reasons for abandoning his religion years ago don’t stand up to scrutiny.  And notwithstanding Leiren-Young’s desire to balance each character’s need for the other, the Rabbi’s need for Joey, except as a friend and perhaps as an attorney, is not clear, compared to Joey’s obvious reliance on the Rabbi for his Bar Mitzvah training.

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However, setting aside flaws in the play, the work of the artists, both onstage and off, is impressive.  From the moment we view Will LeBow, a self-described atheist disowned by his Jewish family, we are convinced that Joey Brant and Will LeBow are one person.  In a beautiful melding of character and actor, we follow his journey of rediscovery as he revisits the Jewish traditions he left long ago.  Challenging the Torah portion he is assigned to explicate (the story of Abraham and Isaac) he decides that only Al Queda or a paranoid schizophrenic would ask a father to sacrifice his son.  Yet, somehow, when it is time for him to “become a man” we are moved by his acceptance of the power of community.

Tara Franklin’s portrayal is more problematic.  Her costume changes alone must be distractions for her as she switches from running clothes to different dresses in the course of the production.  And the necessity to absorb a whole culture along with its language in the time it takes to rehearse a play is daunting.  Nevertheless, because of her superior acting skills, we eventually come to believe in her character.

Director Guy Ben-Aharon, the Founder and Artistic Director of Boston’s Israeli Stage, uses both the small proscenium as well as the auditorium to create the world of the play.  As Joey leaves and enters each scene, he descends the few steps to the audience, engaging with the Rabbi from there.  Ben-Aharon is aided by a talented design team:  Scenic Designer David Towlun, constructs the Rabbi’s office, displaying a highly unusual horizontal space on the wall for what seems to be hundreds of books, surrounded by a circular backstage area visible through milky double doors that resemble the Ten Commandments.  Lighting Designer Lara Dubin, the resident lighting expert, provides gorgeous pastel lighting emanating from  that circular area, and original overhead lighting instruments that look like open books facing downward with small bulbs inside, including an orange one representing the synagogue’s Eternal Flame.  Sound Designer David Reiffel offers a wonderful collection of Jewish music, both singing and instrumental, that matches the mood of each scene; while Costume Designer Charles Schoonmaker meets the challenge of dressing the Rabbi, though it might have been better if the process could have been simplified.

Bar Mitzvah Boy will certainly appeal to a Jewish audience, who will recognize themselves and their traditions in the play but because of its exploration of faith and the role of religion this play can serve as a universal metaphor that reaches out to diverse audiences as well.

BAR MITZVAH BOY runs from June 21—July 1.  Tickets may be purchased online at chestertheatre.org or call 413-354-7771.

Chester Theatre Company presents BAR MITZVAH BOY by Mark Leiren-Young.  Directed by Guy Ben-Aharon.  Cast:  Tara Franklin (Rabbi Michael Levitz-Sharon) and Will LeBow (Joey “Yosef” Brant).  Scenic Design:  David Towlun; Costume Design:  Charles Schoonmaker; Lighting Design:  Lara Dubin; Sound Design:  David Reiffel; Stage Manager:  Laura Kathryne Gomez.

Running Time:  80 minutes, no intermission; Chester Theatre Company, Chester Town Hall, Middlefield Street, Chester, MA.; from June 21; closing July 1.