Michael Dale’s Theatre Crawl – Savoring the Privacy Of Theatre Previews
Peterson Townsend and Emma Pfitzer Price in Becomes A Woman (Photo: Todd Cerveris)
by Michael Dale
This week…
Becomes A Woman presented by Mint Theater Company through March 18. Tickets $45/$75/$90.
Wolf Play at MCC through April 2. Tickets $68/$88
Don’t try and sell try and sell Mint Theater Company’s Artistic Director Jonathan Bank on the glitz and excitement of opening night. He ain’t buying…
In his pre-show speech before the splendid opening night performance of Betty Smith’s 1931 social commentary, Becomes A Woman, he explained how opening night means the end of that special preview time, when the production is more of a private affair between artists and audience.
Opening night, of course, signals the release of reviews, when buzz is amplified and most people are coming in having already heard or read opinions on what they’re about to see. There’s a published record of critiques and that enticing privacy is diminished a bit.
Born in 1896, Smith is best known for penning the 1943 literary classic, “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn”, but before that she had a prolific, though largely forgotten, playwrighting career while studying at the University of Michigan and at Yale.
Largely forgotten careers is one of Mint Theater’s specialties. For decades they’ve been one of my very favorite companies in town, reviving interesting works by long-ago authors that were popular in their day, but now remembered only by scholars, and, as in this case, obscure plays by well-known writers of the past.
Before the performance, my friend and I admired an elderly woman slowly making her way to her front row seat with a walker. Bank introduced her as Betty Smith’s daughter, who was a little girl when her mother won a $1,000 prize from the University of Michigan for writing Becomes A Woman, and was now about to witness the unpublished play’s premiere production.
Conversely, when Bank introduced director Britt Berke, who is making a solid Off-Broadway debut with this mounting, I guessed her “little girl” days probably included some early years of this century.
When it came time for the play to do the talking, the evening belonged to Emma Pfitzer Price, who led a strong company playing 19-year-old Francie Nolan (Betty Smith aficionados will recognize that name.), the daughter of demanding Irish immigrants (trusty stage veterans Jeb Brown and Antoinette LaVecchia) who works at a popular five and dime store, selling sheet music and frequently singing the latest hits for customers to entice sales.
As the songs used in the play are actual popular selections, dramaturge Amy Stoller needed to decipher the playwright’s notes to figure out exactly which ones she intended. The most frequent request in Mint’s production is Jerome Kern and Anne Caldwell’s ragtime ditty “Left All Alone Again Blues”, which is practically a Chekhovian gun in this story.
While her co-workers, wisecracking Florry (Pearl Rhein) and sensible Tessie (Gina Daniels), maneuver through the dating game, Francie always declines her frequent invitations to dinner from male shoppers, claiming it’s odd that a man would take her out without getting to know if he likes her first.
“Men ain't made that way,” advises Florry. “A girl has to really like a man before she gets intimate with him but a man has to get really intimate with a girl before he likes her.”
Francie is attracted to the dapper son of the store owner (Peterson Townsend), partly because he doesn’t immediately ask her out – he just gets her a raise – but when matters of sex and social standing come into the picture, Francie learns to stop valuing the approval of men, whether they be her father, her employer or her lover.
Price gives her character a thrilling transformation, climaxing in a defiant scene where Francie declares her independence.
“Must whether men want me or not be the only reason for my happiness or unhappiness? No, that doesn't worry me. I'm building up a different kind of thinking these days where all those things will be priced according to just what they are worth… to me!”
I imagine that line would have gotten quite a response if played to a Broadway audience in 1931. It certainly got a rousing reception in 2023.
Aside from the afterglow that comes from enjoying an imaginative theatre piece in a cleverly staged production…
…Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play left me with a severe craving for a big bowl of sugary breakfast cereal, prompting me to immediately make a large dent in the box of Lucky Charms I picked up at Key Food on my way home.
In the play, the sugar bombs are devoured by a boxer named Ash, played by Esco Jouléy, whose lean muscular physique can obviously burn up those calories much quicker than my portly belly.
Esco Jouléy and Mitchell Winter in Wolf Play (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)
The cereal scene, as I’ll now call it, provides a subtly played turning point in the story of a young South Korean boy whose American adoptive parents reconsider and offer him up to a new couple via a Yahoo! chat room. Ash’s wife Robin (Nicole Villamil), who facilitated the secondhand adoption rather than deal with the added bureaucracy that would come to them as a queer couple, is anxious for the child to turn them into a happy family, but Ash, who doesn’t hide disgust for the boy’s father (Christopher Bannow) is initially too ensconced in training to be concerned with parenthood.
In director Dustin Wills’ consistently engaging production, which is coming to the end of its MCC run after transferring from SoHo Rep, set designer You-Shin Chen has the audience on two sides of a sparsely furnished playing area, framed on the other two sides by what looks like the packed environs of an overstuffed suburban garage. Surprise entrances and exits abound.
The boy, who eventually reveals his name as Jeenu, is represented by a sandy-colored, unemotional, life-size puppet, designed by Amanda Villalobos, who is manipulated and voiced by actor Mitchell Winter. Serving as the energetic host of the play, Winter delivers what might be taken as the boy’s inner monologues where, wounded by abandonment, he sees himself as a lone wolf; hiding in defensive seclusion, but prepared to attack mercilessly when sensing danger.
In an aggressively clever production full of surprising moments, it’s Jouléy’s quiet compassion as the boxer Ash recognizes a kindred soul that gives Wolf Play its heartbreaking beauty.
A flower shop in SoHo may not be a typical place to see a play reading…
…but given that Debbi Hobson’s Reflections From The Shallow End Of The Dating Pool deals with searching for romantic possibilities after reaching age 50, the fragrant and colorful surroundings at Élan Flowers helped set a proper mood.
A costume designer by profession, Hobson was guided by director Karen C. Cook for a pair of workshop readings to test the material before a larger-scale production this fall as part of Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s arts festival in Nyack. (A really pretty train ride along the Hudson via Metro-North, by the way.)
The focus of her adventures is on dating apps, from her humorous observations on profile photos (What’s with all the men posing with fish?) and introductory messages (Full sentences, please.) to actual face-to-face dates.
One story that I’m sure many artists will relate to tells how a prospective suitor kept asking about what her “real job” was, because surely nobody pays the bills by designing costumes.
It reminded me of the time when I had a date with Patti LuPone back when she was starring in Evita, and she walked out because I kept asking what her day job was.
I mean, I just assumed that was the reason she didn’t do Wednesday matinees.
That was a joke.
It didn’t really happen.
I’ve never met Patti LuPone.
Please don’t tell her I wrote that.
Curtain Line…
Can’t wait for the stage version of New York, New York to start previewing, if only to hear those who only know the title song from Frank Sinatra’s recording complain about how those Broadway people changed the lyrics.