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Review: Inis Nua’s “Pumpgirl”

Playwright Abbie Spallen

Northern Irish playwright Abbie Spallen was explaining how “Pumpgirl,” her award-winning play now in a two-week run at Philadelphia’s Adrienne Theater, can explore gang rape, infidelity, physical abuse, and suicide, and yet still get laughs.

“It’s the Northern Irish sense of humor,” said Spallen, a native of Newry, County Down, who appeared on the spare stage after the January 13 performance of her play, which is being produced by the Inis Nua Theatre Company. “People outside of Northern Ireland go, ‘Wow. That’s really mental.’ But it’s much darker than other humor, and it’s cruel. I have a friend who had a cold sore and had just had surgery on her foot. She walked into a bar with her crutches and then had to go to the bathroom. When she got back someone at the bar said, “Oh look, it’s hopalong herpes head’ and he didn’t even know her. There really isn’t any respect.”

But it’s clear that Spallen respects her characters, from the eponymous “pumpgirl,” Sandra (Sara Gliko), who works at the local petrol station in a Northern Irish border town, to her “pure class” lover, Hammy (Harry Smith), a part-time stock car racer whose moniker “No Helmet,” suggests that brain injury may be at least partially responsible for his oafish behavior, to Sinead (Corinna Burns), his long-suffering wife to whom Spallen gives her best lines. (“Sinead is me if I’d stayed in Newry,” Spallen confessed.) When Hammy slinks into bed beside her, Sinead notes that his lower lip puckers when he snores, something she used to find endearing but now makes her want to “put the hatchet through his head.”

In her monologue to the audience, Sinead wonders aloud: “How’s that for a country-and-western song, Hammy? I could call it, ‘And I’m Praying for a Female Judge.’” Spallen actually wrote two verses for the song which she sang for the Thursday night audience.

To Spallen, these three characters, who tell their stories in monologues, are “outsiders” in a place with a long history of intolerance for the different. The pumpgirl, described by one local as walking “like John Wayne” and looking “like his horse,” is frequently asked if she’s a boy or girl. (Gliko, who would never be mistaken for a boy, does manage to pull off “butch.”) Though his stock car wins ought to make Hammy the hometown hero, his name is butchered at the awards ceremony and his best mates ridicule him. One, an ex-con brute nicknamed Shawshank, is never seen but is an evil presence who orchestrates the ultimate betrayal. Sinead, the wife, is the sharpest of the three, funny, feisty, and full of potential that’s been snuffed by marriage to a callous, womanizing idiot.

The play is taut, made so by Spallen’s intent to reveal all to the audience before the characters themselves know what is happening. Spallen worked with the actors and with director Tom Reing during rehearsals, so this production may hit its mark better than some productions of “Pumpgirl” around the country. And it does hit its mark—as well as leave one.

Inis Nua Theatre Company’s “Pumpgirl” by Abbie Spallen will run through January 23, at the Adrienne Theater, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Go to
http://inisnuatheatre.ticketleap.com/pump-girl/ to order tickets. This play is one of eight Irish plays that make up Philadelphia’s first Irish Theater Festival. You can save 20% by ordering tickets to two or more plays at the website, http://www.theatrealliance.org/irish-theatre-mixtix .

January 14, 2011 by
Arts, News, People

“You Could Almost Feel the Sparks Crackling In the Air Around Her”

Melissa Lynch

Melissa Lynch

“When it’s over, I want to say all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
 if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
 or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

~ Mary Oliver

Melissa Lynch wasn’t here long–she died in a car accident on December 30 at the age of 27–but no one would ever call her a visitor to this life. She grabbed it, embraced it, and, on occasion, frog-marched it where she wanted it to go.

A prolific actress—she appeared in more than 17 productions in Philadelphia—the Mayfair native was poised on the brink of her best year ever. She was engaged to be married on June 18 to William Seiler, a man, friends say, “she adored.” She had roles in four major plays, including one in which she was to play 8 different characters. Directors had started calling her. Even when she played smaller parts, reviewers couldn’t help taking note of her performances. In fact, said a college friend, Rebecca Godlove, “she could have a nonspeaking role in a play and still get noticed. In college, she played a mute child in a play and got rave reviews.”

Critics called her “dazzling,” “sparkling” and “luminous,” descriptions echoed by those who knew her, a powerful reminder of why actors have come to be called “stars.” But a reminder, too, that there are those among us who harbor an unquenchable inner light.

“She just radiates,” says Kathryn MacMillan who directed Lynch in her last play, the highly acclaimed production of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” for the Lantern Theatre Company. In fact, MacMillan says, she hesitated inviting Lynch to audition for the role she played, the “plain” Sonya, because Lynch was “too beautiful.

“She shone and there’s no dimming that and there’s no way I would want to,” said MacMillan. But MacMillan had seen Lynch play against type before—as the matted-haired, dirty invalid in Inis Nua Theatre Company’s production of “Bedbound,” a powerful work by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. “I could barely breathe all through that show, and yet through all the perfectly awful, disturbed misery, I found myself thinking, ‘she’s so amazing, she’s so amazing.’ For the first time I started to appreciate the range of things she could do. And I thought, if [Inis Nua artistic director] Tom Reing could make her ugly, why not?”

Her friend and frequent co-star, Doug Greene, who last appeared with Lynch in “The Duchess of Malfi” for the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective in September 2010, says that Lynch didn’t seek out the glamour roles, though they could have been hers for the asking. She was petite, with blue eyes and long blonde hair that she was perfectly willing to dye or hack if the character called for it. In “Bedbound” her face was smeared with sooty makeup and her usually sparkling teeth looked like a brush hadn’t been near them in a decade.

“She was a really beautiful girl and could have taken an easier road playing the beautiful girlfriend and wife, but she had a lot of depth as an actor and wasn’t satisfied just playing the girlfriend,” says Greene. Tellingly, though she was playing such a glamour role in “Duchess,” what reviewers saw in her portrayal of the conniving mistress of a Cardinal was “evil.”

But off stage, the only thing wicked about Melissa Lynch, her friends and colleagues say, was her sense of humor. “The first thing she would want me to say was that she was hilariously funny,” says Jared Michael Delaney, assistant artistic director of the Inis Nua Theatre Company, which produces modern plays from the UK and Ireland. “She had a really wicked and sharp sense of humor that could at times be terribly crude and at times incredibly clever.”

When her co-stars recall a performance with Lynch, it’s always marked by the memory of a recurring joke, usually made at their expense. Brian McCann, who played Lynch’s father in the poignant, violent, demanding play “Bedbound” last year, says she cracked him up before every performance when she would turn to him and mutter, “Now don’t f— this up for me.”

The other thing they recall is an outsized personality. “She was loud. She was opinionated. She loved to laugh and cause a scene. She could be as proper or as unladylike as you could imagine, depending on her mood,” her Clarion College classmate Rebecca Godlove wrote on her blog shortly after Lynch’s death.

And there was magic: “The girl was so passionate about everything you could almost feel the sparks crackling in the air around her,” Godlove wrote.

“I spent most of my time with her laughing and having a good time,” says Greene. “She was effervescent—and I don’t know too many people I would describe as effervescent. She had that ‘life of the party’ personality.”

She was also a true and loyal friend, a rare find in a world—the theater—that can be competitive, even cutthroat, and soul-crushing. “She was everything you want a friend to be—deeply loyal, but someone who would always tell you the truth, what you needed to hear whether you wanted to hear it or not,” says Delaney.

Many of those friends repaid that loyalty by waiting for hours on a cold winter evening in a line that stretched outside the Wetzel and Son Funeral Home in Rockledge and around the block, just to express their sorrow to Lynch’s family—father, Michael, mother, Madeline, and siblings Tina, Michael, Joseph and Theresa, and Lynch’s fiancé, Bill. And they were there the next day, at the gravesite in Whitemarsh Memorial Park in Horsham, where they joined her brother Joe in an impromptu and tearful version of “Danny Boy.”

Those who knew her as a friend admit that it’s been difficult coming to grips with the sudden finality of her death. “I’ve lost a lot of family members but this is the first friend,” says Delaney. “This is a new kind of grief for me personally.”

Those who knew her as a colleague, a co-star, or a character struggle with other feelings: Who will replace her? “To work with her is to love her instantaneously,” says MacMillan. “There are people who just saw her on stage and feel this loss. I know lots of actors who were looking forward to working with her. After ‘Uncle Vanya’ she came up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘I f’n love you. Can we do this again soon?’ And I said, ‘Yes, as soon as possible, please!’ I was so filled with the potential for this new friendship and a new collaborative relationship that I feel something important has been stolen from me, something that I wanted really bad.”

A remarkable, generous actress, Melissa Lynch was above all dedicated to her craft, one she chose as a child after seeing an ad for auditions for a local community theater. She starred in several musicals while she was a student at St. Hubert’s Catholic High School for Girls and in 25 productions while she was an acting major at Clarion.

“In school, most actors portrayed different intensities of themselves,” says Godlove. “Not Melissa. She had these moments of introspect when she was finding a character and it was magic. She could play anything and anyone. My last play in college was [Shakespeare’s] Henry V and the cast was almost all female. Melissa played Henry V and I played her comedic foil, her loyal Welsh sidekick who hated the Irish which was ironic since she played so many Irish roles. Watching her, you forgot she was a woman. You didn’t look at her and think, ‘that’s a girl playing a King.’ You thought, ‘that’s the young Henry V.”

Though she made it look seamless on stage, acting wasn’t effortless to Lynch. Inis Nua’s Tom Reing recalled her getting “crazed and panicked” by a part at first, “then she would see the humor in it and calm down.”

For her performance as a medical student in Inis Nua’s production of “Skin Deep,” by Paul Meade, Reing recalled, she had to jump rope while trying to memorize medical terms. “One day during rehearsals she came to me and said, very seriously, ‘Tom, I gotta talk to you.’ I thought she was going to tell me she got another gig with a bigger company, but she says, ‘I can’t jump rope.’ So she took the jump rope home and practiced memorizing her lines for that scene while jumping rope. I kept asking her about it and she said, ‘I’ll be ready for opening night, I’ll be ready for opening night.’ And she was.”

Lynch wasn’t above using the same methods that charmed critics and theater-goers to get what she wanted off stage either. Recalls Jared Delaney: “If she wanted something from you, you’d better do it. I wasn’t going to see her in her last play, ‘Uncle Vanya,’ because I don’t like the play and it’s 2-3 hours long. I told her, ‘Lynch, I’m sorry I can’t make it.’ She stood there looking at me, this tiny, beautiful blond girl. She put her hands on her hips and pointed at me and said, ‘You have to, I’m your girl.’”

He paused for a few seconds. “That’s why we’re dedicating the rest of our season to her,” he said softly. “She was our girl. And we loved her.”

See photos of Melissa Lynch both off-stage and on. Thanks to Doug Greene and the Lantern Theatre Company for their help in assembling these photos.

January 13, 2011 by
Arts

Review: “Bedbound” from the Inis Nua Theatre Company

Bedbound

Brian McCann and Melissa Lynch star in the Inis Nua play. (Photo by Katie Reing)

For an actor, playing a part in Enda Walsh’s “Bedbound” must be like running a marathon every night. For an hour and 10 minutes, its two players—a father and his crippled daughter, trying to sleep in the same cramped, filthy bedroom—are ranting, keening, or reacting silently to each other’s torrent of words with an intensity that seems ultimately unsustainable.

“Bedbound,” a production of the Inis Nua Theatre Company now playing at the Adrienne in Philadelphia, is the story of a man whose ambition, formed when he is very young, is to be king of the furniture business in Cork and, later, in Dublin. And he is willing to do anything, including the most unspeakable acts of perversion and violence, to achieve his desires. He delivers the story of his life—the violence, calculated sex, even marriage in the service of his dream–in agitated monologues aimed at the audience while his daughter, bedbound by polio as the result of a freak fall into a sewage tank, acts them out, playing the roles of the boss and the underlings her father has killed. Or has he? The unbelievable is somehow believable in this brutal and, yes, often funny play.

He had been grooming her to follow in his footsteps when she contracted the disease that has left her with a still, twisted arm, a hunched back, and paralyzed legs. His shame led to his nightly ritual of remodeling his home so that her room has become progressively smaller and smaller, as though he were building her a coffin. In that room, her now dead mother once slept beside her and read to her from romance novels, hushing her fears that the walls are closing in on her by telling her that it was “all a fairy tale.”

For the young girl, played in the Inis Nua’s production by Melissa Lynch, the stories, as horrifying as they are, are life to her. “What am I if not words? I am empty space is what I am,” she says. And it’s the empty spaces, the rare moments of silence, that bring the most terror to these two tortured characters who, in the end, turn to talk to one another, ending this emotionally exhausting play with an unexpected and poignant note of redemption and hope.

Brian McCann, who plays the father, deftly draws a character who is both despicable and strangely endearing, a psychopath with a sense of humor and, as McCann subtly suggests, perhaps even a heart of gold. Melissa Lynch’s performance as the physically twisted daughter of an emotionally twisted man is a tour de force. She ranges from helpless cripple to crotchety boss to obsequious underling to angry daughter so seamlessly that it’s as if she has multiple personalities constantly jockeying for center stage. Even when the father is raving loudly, your eyes are riveted to her face for her reaction, as though everything you needed to know was there.

Director Tom Reing has done a masterful job in bringing a difficult and demanding play to the stage. “Bedbound” is an emotionally taxing play for both actors and theater-goers, but is ultimately touching, satisfying, and memorable in the best possible way.

“Bedbound,” by Enda Walsh, runs through April 25 at the Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA. For tickets, call 215-454-9776 or order online at the Inis Nua Theatre’s Web site.

April 16, 2010 by
Arts

Fringe Bonus: The Return of “Trad”

Charlie DelMarcelle and Mike Dees as "Da" and Thomas.

Charlie DelMarcelle and Mike Dees as "Da" and Thomas.

“Trad,” a play by Irish comedian Mark Doherty and a popular production by the Inis Nua Theater Company is returning to Philadelphia as part of the 13th annual PhiladelphiaLive Arts-Fringe Festival in September.

A comic take on the hero’s journey, the play follows the path taken by Thomas, a 100-year-old Irish bachelor farmer and his even older “Da” as they search for the child Thomas sired 70 years before. In the course of their sojourn, they experience a little culture shock, much like someone who hasn’t been back to Ireland in the last decade or so might experience today.

“We’re incredibly excited to be part of the Philly Fringe and to bring ‘Trad’ back for another go-round,” says Inis Nua Artistic Director Tom Reing. “When we produced ‘Trad’ as part of the Live Arts Festival two years ago, it received a great response. We have such a good time with this show,we wanted to bring it back for a longer run, not only for the audience but for ourselves.”

In addition to performing in the Philly Fringe, Inis Nua will also be producing “Trad” in NYC as part of the First Irish Festival, running concurrently with the Fringe.

“It’s going to be a lot of work, but we’re really excited to be performing in both cities,” Reing says. “We’ll be splitting the weeks up, half in New York, half here at home.”

Playwright Mark Doherty’s radio credits include “Only Slaggin,'” “A Hundred and Something,” “Stand-up Sketches” and “The Bees of Manulla” for RTE, and “The O’Show” for BBC Radio 4. He has written for, and appeared in, various TV shows, including “The Stand Up Show” and “Back to the Future” for the BBC, and” Couched,” a 6-part comedy series for RTE.  He has also workedextensively as a stand-up comedian and actor. He was the recipient of the 2004 BBC Radio Drama Award (Stewart Parker Award) for Trad. Doherty also wrote and starred in the movie,” A Film with Me in It.” 

Inis Nua Artistic Director and founder,Tom Reing, will helm the production. His credits include all Inis Nua productions to date (A Play on Two Chairs, Tadhig Stray Wandered In, Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco, Skin Deep, Made in China ). Tom has also directed for (among others) Azuka Theatre, Shakespeare in Clark Park, Brat Productions and at the Walnut Street Theater.

The cast includes Barrymore-Award-winning Mike Dees as Thomas, Inis Nua favorite Charlie DelMarcelle as Da and Associate Artistic Director Jared Michael Delaney as Sal/Fr. Rice. “Trad” also features musician John Lionarons on hammer dulcimer, fiddle, accordion and tin whistle, providing live sound on stage.

 You can see “Trad” at the Amaryllis at the Adrienne Theater, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia on the following dates:

September 3 at 8 PM; September 4 at 8 and 10 PM ; September 9 at 7 PM; September 10 at 9 PM; September 11 at 9 PM; September 16 at 6 PM; September 17 at 9 PM; September 18 at 7 PM;  September 23 at 8 PM; September 24 at 8 PM; September 25 at 8 PM. 

Tickets are $15 and available by calling 215-413-1318.

August 27, 2009 by
Arts

Philly Debut of “The Brothers Flanagan”

Funny how things work out.

About eight years ago, Bill Rolleri wrote a play about a couple of Irish brothers who own a bar in Philly and are at odds over everything, from whether to put in a TV to whether they should sell the place below market value, given the fact that a serial killer prowling the neighborhood is really cutting into business.

 A few months ago, Rolleri and some friends held a benefit at Fergie’s Pub in Philadelphia to raise money to stage the play. They didn’t really make enough, but Rolleri’s play, “The Bros. Flanagan,” will still go on. . .in a Philly pub, owned by an Irish guy who thinks TVs in bars are an abomination.

 “What better place to see a play about two brothers who own an Irish pub in Philadelphia than in an Irish pub in Philadelphia,” asks producer Stephen Hatzai.

 Fergus Carey, who owns Fergie’s and several other pubs in the city, first saw “The Bros. Flanagan” a few years ago when Rolleri presented it during a festival of new plays at InterAct Theater Company. “He came up to me and said, ‘I presume you have a day job,” deadpans Rolleri, raising an eyebrow or two from Hatzai  and Carey who are sitting with him at a dark corner table one afternoon recently at the popular Sansom St. watering hole and restaurant.

 “Did I?” asked Carey.

 “No,” said Rolleri.

 “I didn’t think so,” Carey says. “I’m not that rude. He makes things up,” he adds, nodding his wild, silvery locks toward Rolleri. “Which is a good skill for a playwright.”

 “The Bros. Flanagan” is part of the 13th annual Philadelphia Live/Arts and Fringe Festival which kicks off September 4. The Inis Nua Theatre Company’s popular production of “Trad,” another Irish play, is also part of the festival, which is known for its cutting edge artists and performances and unconventional venues, like art galleries, the YMCA, churches and, of course, pubs.

 Carey, who came to the US planning to write plays and act “and didn’t,” has become that theater essential—a supporter of the arts. He is chairman of the board of Brat Productions, a local theater company and “The Bros. Flanagan” won’t be the first play staged in his upstairs room. Just last winter, you could have seen a production of “Beowulf,” a musical monologue called “Buddy Felch Tells It LikeIt Is,” and “Go Irish: The Purgatory Diaries of Jason Miller” with your beer.

 “Fergie is such a theater animal,” says Hatzai. “He loves things that are a little off-beat.”

 And he thinks that a pub is just the place to see a play. “It’s a fun thing to sit in a bar and hear someone tell you a story,” says Carey, who won’t have a TV set in his pubs because he thinks they’re conversation killers. “And what is a play but great storytelling?”

 Rolleri’s play certainly is.The story: Business at the Flanagan brothers’ struggling bar isn’t helped by the terror gripping the neighborhood in the wake of a series of murders, deemed by the police to be the work of one killer. But that’s not the only violence in this four-man play. The brothers are at each other’s throats over just about everything, but mainly about selling the bar whose market value drops with each scary headline.

Into the mix Rolleri adds a police officer who is part of the task force hunting for the killer and a real estate speculator with political ties whose aim is to “buy the bar for peanuts.” There’s a lot of drama, some comedy, and, of course, it being a play set in a bar, there’s some fighting.

 It’s taken Rolleri eight years to get his play produced, but it hasn’t been sitting in a drawer somewhere. “The Bros. Flanagan” has been rewritten many times. “A lot of people’s hands have been in this play,” Rolleri says. “I’m almost ashamed to put my name on it.”

 “But he did,” quips Hatzai. 

 And he got a few of the city’s finest actors to play in it. Character actors Michael Toner and H.Michael Walls play the eponymous brothers, while Jerry Rudasill is the police officer and Chris Fluck the smarmy real estate speculator.

 But he never really raised enough money to produce it, which may be why he has more than a few butterflies. “We never hit our budget, so we’re going ahead on faith,” says Rolleri.

 “The Bros. Flanagan” will run September 5, 12, 19, at 2 and 6 PM; September 6 and 13 at 4 PM; September 9 and 16 at 7 PM at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Admission is $20. And if you buy one entrée, you get one free. Call 215-413-1318 for tickets or info, or order tickets online.

August 27, 2009 by
Arts, News

With a Little Help from His Friends

At the end of the Jimmy Stewart classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the beleaguered George Bailey, whose friends and neighbors are tossing money into a basket to replace the $8,000 missing from his savings and loan, finds a book in the pile from the angel, Clarence, who helped him when he thought life would be better for everyone if he’d never been born. In the front of the book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Clarence wrote, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

And playwright William Rolleri knows that even better than George Bailey. The former New York Daily News reporter who now lives in Delaware had little hope of producing his newest play, “The Brothers Flanagan.” It’s a recession; he’s a mostly unknown quantity, as is his play about two Grays Ferry Irish pub owners whose business is being decimated by a serial killer. And, he points out ruefully, “No one wants to produce a 75-year-old playwright.”

Except maybe his friends, who have already anteed up half the cost of the production. And to raise the rest, well, in the spirit of Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy movie character from the 1930s, they’re putting on a show in the bar.

On December 28, two of Philadelphia’s finest actors, Michael Toner and Jack Barrett, will be performing two of Rolleri’s short one-man plays upstairs at Fergie’s Pub at 1214 Sansom Street. For $30 a ticket, you not only get two plays, but some Irish music and a Guinness Stout glass (which you can fill downstairs at the bar).

“Fergie [bar owner Fergus Carey] is one hell of a supportive guy,” says Rolleri. “He loves the theater himself, and he loves ‘The Brothers Flanagan.’ If we get the money together to do a full production in fall, we’re going to do it in Fergie’s because the whole thing takes place in a bar.”

Rolleri chose the two short plays because they both got a great reaction from audiences when they were previously performed (by Toner and Barrett). One, called “Sugar Ferguson’s Rotten Apples,” is a largely autobiographical account of an episode from Rolleri’s last visit to his grandparents in Canada, though the playwright, who is half Irish (County Wexford), transports the story to Dublin. It focuses on a near tragedy, involving kids, a forbidden apple tree, a shotgun, the police, and the parish priest. “Ring in the Old” takes place in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen where a bar patron sees an opportunity to bring back, at least for a moment, a little of the now yuppiefied area’s violent past. . .for auld lang syne. Expect some midnight dark humor.

The generosity of his friends has inspired Rolleri to pay it forward. “It occurred to me that there are a lot of younger playwrights in Philly and some of them are very good, but they have trouble getting produced because their work is original and their names not known; their names are not going to sell tickets,” he says. “I have a few friends who wanted me to go ahead and get my play produced, and I decided that if I go ahead, I’m not going ahead alone. Whatever we get at the box office will go to produce another play—not me, but another playwright.”

You can help Rolleri and the unknown playwrights his success will also lift by attending “Apres Noel, Christmassy Plays,” on Sunday, December 28, at 7 PM. For tickets (there are only 50 seats, so act fast), contact Fergie’s at 215-928-8118 or Steve Hatzai at 215-769-0552, or? swhatz@msn.com.

December 24, 2008 by
Arts

A Look Behind the Scenes at “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”

Robert Hedley has been through it all before. Forty years ago, then a relatively new assistant professor in the theatre department at Villanova University, Hedley directed a production of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

It was the first production in Villanova’s Vasey Theatre and, by all accounts, a huge success.

Now Hedley—who has since moved on to become head of the Playwriting program at Temple University, co-founder of The Philadelphia Theater Company, artistic director of the Iowa Shakespeare Festival, and holder of the Barrymore Lifetime Achievement Award—is taking a fresh look at O’Neill’s master work in a new production at Villanova.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is considered an autobiographical work, and it documents the torments and travails of a dysfunctional Irish-American family over the course of one day. It addresses some fairly well-known themes in Irish-American life, such as drink and Roman Catholicism. To summarize the play in such a Cliff-s Notes fashion, of course, does it a grave injustice

The play, which opens Villanova’s 50th season, runs from September 23 to October 5, 2008.

Hedley also serves as director of International Education for the School of Communications and Theater at Temple, which includes the Dublin program—so Irish themes do tend to resonate a bit.

We chatted with Hedley about the play, O’Neill, families—and Philadelphia’s large and appreciative Irish theatre audience.

Q. You first directed “Long Day’s Journey” at Villanova forty years ago. I’m told it was the first play staged in Vasey Theatre. Where were you in your career then?

A. I was a young assistant professor then. I was, I think, in my third year of teaching in the United States. I’m from Canada. I was moving into the Philadelphia area and got the job at Villanova. (He became the chairman of the theatre department.) It “Long Day’s Journey”) was the first play in the present theatre. Then, it was just a lecture hall with a high stage at one end and wooden fixed desks. We took over that space.

For me it was a tremendous experience, all in all, even though we were rushing to make that hall a do-able space for theatre.

Q. Tell us about that first show, 40 years ago.

A. I remember we had an unusually large Irish audience. I was surprised. Everyone in the play, of course, is of Irish descent. I never thought we’d find that particular audience. Night after night, those people would come up to me and talk to me about the play. I saw some of the same faces in the audience, every night.

Q. What does it mean to revisit the play so long after directing it the first time?

A. It’s a really powerful piece. Coming back to it after all these years, it’s [still] an extraordinarily intense look at a time in one family’s life.

Someone asked me whether I thought this play had a contemporary relevance. I said, it is probably more present now than it was 40 years ago. It has to do with morphine and addiction through medication, for example. (Mary Tyrone, the mother, is addicted to morphine.) That’s in the news today. And it’s about disjointed, disengaged families. It addresses questions like: How do you cope with family members not living up to your expectations, or following in your footsteps?

It’s such a human play. It’s the only play I know that is this intense among the four family members.

Then I went back to it, it was not only “present” to me, but I was frankly surprised at how contemporary it seemed.

Q. Why do you think this play has such a lasting presence?

A. What has sort of guaranteed its lasting is that it is really extraordinarily, brutally honest. People say things to each other that are pretty shattering. You have people who are suffering—in Mary’s case, because of addiction, or, in (son) Jamie’s case, because he’s never lived up to his father’s expectations. You look at that and how siblings are related, and it’s really powerful stuff. We go home exhausted.

Q. How else is this production different for you?

A. Last time, 40 years ago, I had a couple of professional actors and a faculty member up there, and a couple of students. It’s very much the same lineup (now) as before. Still, the productions are very different.

In the theatre 40 years ago, all the members of the audience faced the stage, and that meant that you were looking at it almost the way you look at a movie. For a director, that’s sometimes a lot easier.

In this case, though, most of the play takes place around a table, and with the theatre in its present configuration, were playing very far down front, There are audience members along the sides, and some practically behind us. That means that you feel like you’re really inside it. You’re very, very close. You can have the most intimate sort of things happening. You can have actors genuinely whispering and you can hear them just fine.

I love the notion that you have a play unfolding, and you are close enough to it to pick up the smallest nuances, the smallest flicker of emotion in somebody’s face.

Q. How did you get into theatre?

A. I’ve told this story many times.

My mother Wanted to be a concert pianist. She taught piano. My father was a pretty good musician, but he was also a painter and a photographer. My sister was a very good pianist. My brother had an opera program.

When I went to university, there was a requirement that you take one of the arts courses. Well, my family had covered all the other bases. There’s no way I was going to go into one of those areas that my family was already good at. So I chose a course in theatre. As soon as I got into it, it felt absolutely right. I was very, very comfortable in it. I just enjoyed everyday going into those classes.

For details on the Villanova production, visit the university Web site.

September 12, 2008 by
Arts

“Stones in His Pockets” Coming to Ambler’s Act II Playhouse

Tony Braithwaite and Chris Faith, during rehearsals at Act II.

Tony Braithwaite and Chris Faith, during rehearsals at Act II.

Marie Jones’ award-winning comedy, “Stones in His Pockets,” is classified as a two-hander. In theatre jargon, that means there are two main characters.

Maybe they call it that because to call it a 30-hander would seem physically impossible. And yet, here you have two veteran local actors, Chris Faith and Tony Braithwaite, intrepidly embodying 15 characters, with all of the action compressed into one tight, fast-moving little show.

(Editor’s note: There’s been a recent change in the cast. See below.)

“Stones in His Pockets” is about what happens when a Hollywood movie company descends upon a tiny town in County Kerry. The show, directed by William Roudebush, starts September 2 (press opening on the 5th) and runs through September 27 at the cozy Act II Playhouse in Ambler.

(And for those of you who just can’t wait to see this multiple award-winning comedy, stay tuned for news about a sneak preview that is also a benefit for the Hibernian Hunger Project.)

Braithwaite and Faith have worked together before, including their 2005 performance of “Good Evening,” by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. That’s right—a two-hander. And, technically, yes, they’re two characters in “Stones”— Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn, who hired on as extras for the film, a hyper-romantic view of the Emerald Isle. But the play also requires that they fill a whole lot of other shoes.

“Good Evening” posed a challenge, Braithwaite recalls. There were two characters on stage from beginning to end, and they assumed other characters. But, says Faith, “in this play there can be three or four characters on stage at the same time … or more, even.”

So as bad as it is to step on another actor’s lines in a play, Braithwaite and Faith have the potential to step on their own. Or worse, adds Braithwaite: “Showing up as the wrong character for a split second, and then realizing that you have to turn the hat around a little bit, or whatever that character’s little flair is.”

In rehearsals, Faith is wrestling wth similar issues: “I can hear when a voice from another character creeps into the voice I’m doing, and I pull back. For now, it’s fine-tuning all that stuff.”

Juggling the multiple personalities also poses a challenge for the director.

“Oftentimes when characters play multiple roles they go off and they come back on as another character, which makes immense sense,” says William Roudebush. “But sometimes the changes are instantaneous, right in front of your eyes. Part of what I’m trying to do as a director is to make that change very magical, to take advantage of the moment.”

Another challenge: Playing Irish, which Braithwaite has done before. He played the character Paddy O’Gratin in “The Big Bang,” described as a “madcap tour of history.”

“He sang to his potato, the last potato in Ireland,” he recalls. “It was a love song. That was the last and the only time I ever had to do Irish.”

For Faith, putting on an accent—something that sounds something other than “stage Irish”—is a new experience. “It’s challenging,” he says, “but I think there are three major sounds we’ve got to hit all the time. I think that, if we’re in the ballpark, we’ll be OK.”

Though “Stones” is a comedy, Roudebush says it’s his goal to treat all 15 of those characters, especially the Irish, with respect. “The soul of the play is Irish,” he says. “It’s a great honor and challenge to have to try and live up to that—and not make it a cliché, that’s for sure.”

All three describe themselves as journeymen—or, as Roudebush quips, “I like to say that my job is finding work.”

Roudebush has been “finding work” for over 30 years. His 2002 revival of “Equus” was nominated for eight Barrymore awards and won five, including Best Overall Production of a play, Best Ensemble and Best Director. He has taught at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, The University of Memphis, The University of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, along with being Theatre School Director for the Walnut Street Theatre for four years. He is currently director of musical theatre for the Performing Arts Institute in Kingston, Pa.

Both the actors are well-known in Philadelphia theatre. Like most actors, they do—or have done—other things. But what they do all the time—because to do otherwise would be unthinkable—is act, and when they’re not doing that, looking for opportunities to act some more.

Braithwaite, a Barrymore award winner (for the role of Boyd in “The Big Bang”) used to teach theology, theatre—and sex education to freshmen—at St. Joe’s Prep: “I used to say—I teach theatre, theology and sex ed, so we do ‘Agnes of God’ every year.” (Cue the rim shot.) He still directs shows at St. Joe’s.

Faith has appeared Off-Broadway in “The Secret Garden” and “Like It Is” at the York Theatre. He is a three-time Barrymore Award nominee. He and his wife have a children’s performing arts studio in Plumsteadville.

Now, as to that sneak preview:

The final dress rehearsal of “Stones in His Pockets” will be open to the public on Sunday, August 31, at 2 p.m. The suggested donation is $10, and all contributions will be donated to the Hibernian Hunger Project, a community service program that feeds needy people in the Philadelphia/Camden area. (Hey, how can you call yourself a Hibernian and not go?)

Three preview performances will be held September 2-4, with tickets discounted at $20. Talkbacks will be held after the first two 8 p.m. previews, as well as on Thursday, September 11, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 21, at 2 p.m.

Opening night is September 5, followed by a reception. All evening performances are at 8 p.m., and matinees begin at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Tickets are $25 for all Wednesday-Thursday performances and $30 for Friday through Sunday shows, with discounts available for groups of 10 or more. Tickets are available by calling the Act II Box Office at (215) 654-0200 or online at www.act2.org.

Act II is at 56 East Butler Avenue, just a block from another venerable borough institution, The Shanachie Pub. Shanachie is also a show supporter. Look for an opening night appearance by the pub’s co-owner, singer Gerry Timlin.

P.S.: We’re supporters, too, even though it’s mostly moral support.

Editor’s note: Broadway and Irish actor Declan Mooney is stepping into the role of Charlie Conlon. Mooney, who joins Tony Braithwaite in rehearsal, replaces Chris Faith, who was forced to leave the show due to a family emergency.

Mooney will easily fill the shoes of Faith. He has performed the role of Charlie two other times, including as stand-in for Tony-nominated Conleth Hill in the Broadway production of the play. Dialect training will not be necessary for Mooney: He hails from Downpatrick in County Down, Ireland, and came to the States to attend college on a soccer scholarship.

August 22, 2008 by