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2005 Season: The Red Lion     Permanent Whole Life     Red Elm

Daniel Owen Dungan, Kate Ociepka in The Red Lion by R. Bradley Smith

The Red Lion, by Brad Smith

Review- Carl Rossi, Theater Mirror
Ryan Bradley Smith’s THE RED LION, a slice of British provincial life, centers around a midland pub called The Golfers (the play’s title is the pub’s original name); when owner Mike Dunbar decides to sell the pub and retire, several townspeople discuss whether it should be preserved or let it go the way of the wrecking ball; one patron wants to buy the pub, himself. Mr. Smith has provided lovely, low-key dialogue to go with all those glasses of ale and cups of tea and he leads his characters to an ending as touching as it is inevitable --- this LION roars, but gently.

THE RED LION also calls for a director and cast who can dig for glimmers of human nature rather than till the top soil (that way melodrama lies) and the Boston Playwrights’ production comes up with shining, sifting handfuls thanks to Lenny Leibowitz’s sensitive direction and the ensemble’s delight over their characters’ quirks and wrinkles. The pivotal role of Mike Dunbar must compel when he takes center stage yet know when to step back as any good bartender would and Robert Bonotto, who dazzled as Degas in the Nora’s VAN GOGH IN JAPAN, now implodes just as impressively, alternating between the fatherly tapster and the grounded soul in a prison of his own making; Mr. Bonotto’s co-players artlessly give-and-take around him which, in turn, provides a layered strata of community to the evening. Daniel Owen Dungan and Kate Ociepka charm as two nice, decent young people at several crossroads in their lives and Mr. Dungan pulls off his Easter Bunny sequences without lapsing into sitcom; the outside world is evoked by Matthew Peterson’s brisk big-city realtor --- not a villain at all, thank you --- and Jared Craig’s slow, shy barkeep is enchanting in his mime (the character becomes less interesting when he starts to talk).

Just as Cheryl McMahon proved last spring in THE MOONLIGHT ROOM what colors a clown can bring to a dramatic canvas, so do Floyd Richardson and Leslie Harrell Dillen as Mr. Dungan’s affectionately bickering parents. Mr. Richardson tones down his eyes and teeth to become a blustery, working-class bloke resistant to change and Ms. Dillen makes a nattering, warm-hearted mum who leads a conventional life but then welcomes the opportunities that come when one door closes and another one opens.

Permanent Whole Life by Zayd Dohrn

Culture comedy
The Sisters Rosensweig, Permanent Whole Life
BY CAROLYN CLAY (Boston Phoenix)

...The Sisters Rosensweig is a warm Jewish puppy next to Zayd Dohrn’s nipping greyhound, Permanent Whole Life (at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through November 20). BU-minted MA in playwriting Dohrn is best known for the historically based political drama Haymarket. But this new black comedy about unprincipled life-insurance salesmen in Palm Beach is a whole different animal. What Glengarry Glen Ross did for sleazy real-estate hawkers dueling for steak knives and blood, Dohrn does for his purveyors of "permanent whole life" annuities they don’t plan to honor. "You are confused, Henry," sexagenarian insurance entrepreneur Mort Goldman tells his seeming blank slate of an assistant. "You’re laboring under the misapprehension that what we do here is pay life-insurance claims, which we do not. What we do here is we collect life insurance premiums, and we settle lawsuits." (Bet you an American-buffalo nickel you can identify those rhythms.)

Gabriel Kuttner, Ken Baltin in Permanent Whole Life by Zayd Dohrn

As portrayed by Ken Baltin in Wesley Savick’s snappy world-premiere production, funeral chaser Mort is a crude, lanky, avaricious bear of a man, his amiable growl friendlier than his bite, his big paws continually in someone else’s personal space as he offers his sympathetically lying shmooze, his lips a-smack as he enjoys a bit of cake in his profitable valley of the shadow under Florida skies. "Fucking paradise," he says of the Sunshine State. "This is where the whole country comes to die." Including, it turns out, him: a Hawaiian-shirted, gastronomically orgasmic diabetic committing hilarious suicide by Whitman’s Sampler.

But I get ahead of myself. We meet Mort and Henry (Gabriel Kuttner) in their natural habitat: a funeral home where, downstairs, lissome shiksa Susan Taylor (Stacy Fischer) is communing with the remains of her recently deceased husband, who was hit by a cement truck while driving home, and quite possibly driving into, her teenage niece. Bereaved yet beguiling, Susan makes a mournful picture. But Savick, aiming to out-dark Dohrn, makes it clear the marriage wasn’t perfect. Chainsmoking in her little black dress, Fischer’s Susan smashes out butt after butt in her husband’s coffin.

Unlike Mort, Henry does not revel in his job: the black suit in 150-degree heat, the fact that everyone he meets is "depressed or dead," the goal of screwing beneficiaries out of just deserts. But his wife, Ava (Lisa Morse), is pregnant, so he’s trapped. As for Mort, he wants to mentor his reluctant protégé, teach him the tricks, turn him into a human legacy. He also wants to make Henry the beneficiary, so he says, of his own half-million-dollar annuity. That is, until he promises it to the widow before comforting her right into bed while denying her claim. But as events unfold and primal fights over birth and death heat up, Mort turns out to be not the only sly fox in Dohrn’s clever, cynical gloss on Ben Jonson’s Volpone.

Savick’s production is nimble and deadpan, as befits the deliciously amoral material. Two-time Elliot Norton Award winner Richard Wadsworth Chambers comes up with a classical-boned tic-tac-toe board of a set, its latticed squares lit by Ryan Connealy to radiate by turns the white glow of a mausoleum and the pastel hues of Florida. Baltin’s anomalous Mort is a death-chasing life force, a fatherly shyster clown invoking the Holocaust out of one side of his mouth while squirting out of the other, with regard to an old woman hit by a safe: "We’re not paying two hundred fifty thousand dollars, Henry, some coupon cutter can’t get out of the way of a falling object." Kuttner’s Henry’s a stiff fish by comparison, but his eyes are watchful and he’s casting a few hooks of his own. Fischer’s enigmatic Susan turns a studied sad eye toward the bottom line, and Morse’s seemingly straightforward miscarrying mom turns out to have an inner Lady Macbeth who’s as breezy as the play’s beach-town setting. Permanent Whole Life is a sharp little dagger of a comedy displayed here in a stylish sheath.

Red Elm by Dan Hunter

Julie Jirousesk, William Young in Red Elm by Dan Hunter

Ed Seigel, Boston Globe...
Give credit... to writer Dan Hunter and a lovely production at BPT... for animating these characters with precision and grace. Behind all the tidiness is turmoil... these characters stalk one another like wrestlers of the psyche, eager for a pin if not a body slam. Susan Zeeman Rogers' warm and witty set... William Young plays Jack as if all the disappointments of life have settled into his downturned mouth... Ann Marie Shea's Margaret could run World War II while playing solitaire. Julie Jirousek beautifully captures the life of Linda, a woman trapped by circumstances... Hunter has a good ear for the way people express anger, sorrow, and shyness. Hunter and BPT surve up a savory slice of life with Red Elm. The characters stay with you...

Liza Weisstuch, Boston Phoenix...
Dan Hunter's Red Elm... is getting a sprightly production at BPT ... with veteran actor William Young playing Jack as a shambling, cranky shell of a man and Ann Marie Shea as his wife... Hunter is a skilled craftsman; he builds to a climax that leaves you feeling bruised and winded and fills the climb with crackling zingers and moments of raw revelation for the patriarch.

Ann Marie Shea, William Young in Red Elm by Dan Hunter

Will Stackman, Theater Mirror
This Fall at BPT there have been three new plays... exploring the question of legacy and complicated family relationships. Dan Hunter's Red Elm... has the strongest set of characters, some of the best writing, and intriguing plot potential. William Young and Worchester legend Ann Marie Shea... invest this aging couple with the years necessary to build the sort of relationship where more is unsaid and everything is understood... The situation is rife with potential as revelations come forth, with hints of more to come... The production is up to the BPT standard, with a bleak modern residence for the successful Butler family with ghosts of trees peering over the top, designed by Susan Zeeman Rogers. The costumes by Gail Astrid Buckley are contemporary yet stuck in the timeless post-World War II style of the deep Midwest. Ben Pilat's realistic lighting underscores the action, particularly the brief scenes set in shadow... New director Karl Michaelis, who took over from announced director Wesley Savick, who's still credited for dramaturgical work with Hunter, has gotten top-notch ensemble work from his cast of seasoned professionals.

To 2004 season reviews - The Glider, Matter Familias, Jasper Lake >

To 2003 season reviews - Monticel', Haymarket, Pictures of Patty Hearst >

Julie Jirousek, Mark Peckham in Red Elm by Dan Hunter