J. Fred Shiffman and Kate Eastwood Norris in Ghost-Writer.By Hap Erstein
A former musician turned playwright, Michael Hollinger is clearly fascinated with the music of words.
Such an interest was evident in his earlier play, Opus, about the search for harmony among the members of a string quartet. A similar verbal playfulness is present in his latest work, Ghost-Writer, a look at the creative process of a fastidious novelist, who dictates his prose to his loyal secretary, in this life and perhaps beyond.
Set in Manhattan in 1919, this compact, 85-minute play centers on the renowned, albeit fictional, man of letters Franklin Woolsey and his efficient new typist Myra Babbage. Together, they set down on paper his latest, and last, tome, he providing the words and she adding the punctuation. Over time, they work so closely that Myra begins to anticipate what Woolsey is about to say. And when he dies suddenly, she insists that she continues to receive his dictation and she completes his novel, much to the irritation and envy of his widow.
It is possible that Woolsey is communicating from beyond the grave, but we only have Myra’s word for that, as she tells her far-fetched tale to an unseen interrogator sent by Mrs. Woolsey to debunk the prim young woman’s account. But it seems more likely that Hollinger is intent on considering the nature of inspiration, as supernatural a phenomenon as any ghost. And if something romantic was blossoming between employer and employee, that too is an emotional state difficult to define.
Florida Stage has been producing plays by Hollinger for the past 14 years, including Opus – which went on to acclaim off-Broadway – and now Ghost-Writer. Director Louis Tyrrell draws us into the hermetically sealed world of Franklin and Myra, in a captivating production that makes astute use of the company’s new quarters at the Kravis Center.
Much of the play rests on the shoulders of Kate Eastwood Norris, who has the audience mesmerized from her carefully worded opening monologue. She knows her station, but let Woolsey suggest a semi-colon when a full-stop period is called for and she will speak up firmly. As Woolsey, J. Fred Shiffman is a worthy foil for her, taking great umbrage at each word choice challenge. And when, strictly for literary research, Woolsey asks Myra to teach him a ballroom dance, the ambient temperature in the Rinker Playhouse rises a few degrees.
Completing the play’s triangle is Lourelene Snedeker as imperious Vivian Woolsey, whose distain for Myra is both comic and touching. Ultimately, Ghost-Writer is a love story – romantic love and love of the power of words – and a play to admire.
GHOST-WRITER, Florida Stage at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, April 3. Tickets: $25-$50. Call: (561) 585-3433 or (800) 514-3837.
Irene Adjan, Josh Canfield and Tom Wahl in Next Fall.During his long tenure as founding artistic director of the Caldwell Theatre Company, Michael Hall was adept at scouting new plays from New York and bringing them to South Florida in well-acted, attractively appointed productions.
With Hall back temporarily from retirement to stage Geoffrey Nauffts’ engrossing Next Fall, it feels like old times at the Caldwell. Not just because of the play’s gay theme, a subject Hall has pioneered in the area, from Bent to The Boys in the Band, to Gross Indecency: The Trials of Oscar Wilde, to Take Me Out.
Unlike those works, though, homosexuality is just one of the issues under consideration in this story of a mismatched couple, 15 years apart in age, one a devout fundamentalist Christian and the other a staunch atheist. As the play begins, believer Luke, a 20-something actor wannabe, is hit by a taxi, landing him in a coma in the intensive care unit of Beth Israel Hospital.
There his partner Adam and a couple of Luke’s friends hold vigil in the waiting room, along with the collision victim’s North Florida parents, who are both ignorant of their son’s sexual orientation and that he has been living with Adam for the past four years.
Yes, it is a recipe for soap opera, but Nauffts, artistic director of New York’s Naked Angels theater company, is too smart to settle for easy answers or white hat-black hat heroes and villains. True, Luke’s father Butch is rather homophobic and racist, but particularly as played by Dennis Bateman, he comes across as a fully dimensional character rather than a stereotypical bigot.
Still, he is an embarrassment to his former wife, Arlene, a tough cookie played with wily smarts by Caldwell veteran Pat Nesbit. She injects humor into the dour situation, which would be leavening relief if all of the characters were not so quick with a quip. Fortunately, Hall encourages his cast to flesh out these characters beyond the schematic extremes on the page.
As Adam, Tom Wahl projects a likeability, despite his evident neuroses. He is not only uncomfortable with his partner Luke’s (Josh Canfield) spiritual beliefs, but annoyed by his habit of praying for forgiveness after sex. In his Caldwell debut, the extremely buff Canfield refuses to settle for a caricature of a religious zealot. While Nauffts never quite convinces us that these two very different men would live together for so long, the actors convey an unforced affection that fills that gap.
Scenic designer Tim Bennett allows the play to move briskly over time and space with an efficient, attractive earth-tone unit set that makes crafty use of slide-away panels. The result is a reminder of why the Caldwell has been such a theatrical mainstay in South Florida for four decades, bringing thought-provoking plays to the area and, when necessary, glossing over their weaknesses with first-rate productions.
NEXT FALL, Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, March 27. Tickets: $27-$75. Call: (561) 241-7432 0r (877) 245-7432.
Erin Joy Schmidt, Jim Ballard, Sarah Grace Wilsonin Dinner with Friends.
In its pursuit of “theater to think about,” Palm Beach Dramaworks has been showcasing a Pulitzer Prize winner each season, as long as it has something to say to a contemporary audience and can fit on the company’s intimate – as in small – stage.
Filling that bill, thanks to some directorial ingenuity by J. Barry Lewis and a clever scenic design by Vince Mountain, is Donald Margulies’ Dinner with Friends, a look at the emotional toll of a shattered marriage on not only the divorcing couple, but their closest friends as well.
After all, who does not know people who have trudged through the minefield of divorce, or experienced it themselves?
Loaded with insights, laced with pain and yet plenty of character-driven humor, chances are you will find yourself identifying with some of these four 40-something folks and pondering their parallels to your own life.
Margulies is aided by Lewis’s cast, all new to the Dramaworks stage, although Erin Joy Schmidt and Jim Ballard, as freelance food writers Karen and Gabe, should be familiar to South Florida theatergoers from their work in the region. Playing their longtime friends, Tom and Beth – the splitting duo that Karen and Gabe introduced to each other a dozen years ago – are Eric Martin Brown and Sarah Grace Wilson, who are married in real life, which may explain the authenticity they bring to their first-act verbal battle.
The play begins on a light note, as Karen and Gabe babble on to Beth about their recent culinary tour of Italy, as they ply her with pumpkin risotto, grilled lamb and lemon-almond polenta cake. Eventually they pause long enough for Beth to blurt out between sobs that Tom has left her for another woman. A travel agent, no less.
That unexpected jolt triggers reflection on Gabe and Karen’s part, not only about the effect on their relationship with Beth and Tom, but ultimately about the nature and durability of their own marriage. Of course, the situation is not as simple as first presented, as Margulies then layers on additional information that has us changing our allegiances between the separating couple, as, for instance, when we learn of Beth’s own indiscretions soon after she married Tom.
As he has in such other plays as Sight Unseen, Collected Stories and Brooklyn Boy, Margulies manages to be profound without drifting into the philosophical. There have been plenty of plays and films about divorce, but few as accessible and thought-provoking. Margulies has a way of getting inside our heads and under our skin, and this Dramaworks production is a nourishing theatrical meal.
DINNER WITH FRIENDS, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sun., April 17. Tickets: $47. Call: (561) 514-4042.