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| (l-r) Debra Kay Anderson,
William DeMeritt, James Young, Bruce Sabath, Rita
Rehn, and Paris Rose Yates |
| These People reminds me, most
appropriately, of the play's main conceit: tennis. There
are some hits, there are some misses, but all in all,
the game is quite fun to watch.
It is always
nice to be surprised by art, and in several places
These People is very surprising—there is humor
where one would expect melodrama, and pathos where one
would await a punchline. Playwright Chris Widney is to
be congratulated; his play is fun and funny, and above
all, entertaining.
These People begins
just as Jerry Shurl's (Bruce Sabath) life comes crashing
down around him. He has made a tiny mistake on his
income taxes (for, ahem, several years), so he is
sentenced to 2 years in the big house and the coming
weekend will be his last as a free man. What does he
want to do? Well, as any good upwardly-mobile
suburbanite, he and his buxom wife Cheryl (Rita Rehn),
and little daughter, Hillary (Carson Kleiner), are going
to participate in the Tennis Scrambler at their country
club.
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| (l-r) Bruce Sabath, Paris
Rose Yates, and Rita Rehn |
| Tennis, you see,
is the star that Cheryl and Jerry's world revolves
around, a game where talent could translate into social
success; where, if Cheryl makes the women's A-team, she
and her husband could slip that much closer to the inner
circle. Jail, of course, would equal disaster, and all
those tennis lessons, all that hard work on the courts,
and every inch gained in the club dining room would have
been for nothing.
Jerry and Cheryl scheme to
hide the jail sentence from the rest of the club; it is
a business trip, they will say, to Kuala Lumpur—it is
burgeoning, you know. For this they enlist the help of
their friend, Richard (James Young), a club member with
the hots for Cheryl, and Roland, the club tennis
instructor, lovingly played by a cardboard cutout of a
man. Seriously.
But Pearl (Debra Kay Anderson),
the evil club matriarch, discovers the truth, and
threatens to drop the entire family from the club,
starting with expulsion from the all-important Tennis
Scrambler.
|
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| (l-r) Debra Kay Anderson
and Rita Rehn |
| If this sounds
silly, you have hit the nail on the head. It is silly.
But, to paraphrase book critic Jonathan Yardley, the
fight is so fierce because the stakes are so small.
Would Cheryl and Hillary be worse off if they were not
in the club? Probably not; one would think that they
would be a bit more concerned that their husband/father
is off to jail.
But that is the fun! The play is
so deliciously zany, and director Mary Catherine Burke
has assembled a talented cast to perform it; my personal
favorite is the Ballboy (William Demeritt), a
jack-of-all-trades who alternately plays Jerry's lawyer,
a talking dog, and Pearl's enfeebled husband.
Michael V. Moore's set is sparse, but
serviceable, and he uses clever methods to transform the
stage from bedrooms to tennis courts. Lighting designer
K.J. Hardy manages to light an enormous stage while
still keeping the audience focused on the scenes that
mattered.
There are some flaws, though: Roland,
the cardboard cutout, ceases being clever after his
first scene; there is a karate-like battle between Pearl
and Cheryl, fought with croquet mallets, that probably
looks funnier on paper than it does on stage; and Mr.
Widney's final scene is somewhat anticlimactic and does
not resolve the issues that the play raises. Ultimately,
these are minor quibbles with a play that connects more
often than it does not.
I do not know if Mr.
Widney plays tennis; he probably does, but baseball is
more his game-with These People, he smacks, maybe
not a home run, but at least a respectable double.
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American
Theater of Actors (courtyard) |
Category:
Comedy
Written by: Chris
Widney
Directed by: Mary Catherine
Burke
Produced by: Golden Day
Productions
Opened: October 8,
2004
Closed: October 30,
2004
Running Time: 90
minutes
Theater: American Theater of
Actors (courtyard)
Address: 314 West
54th Street
New York, NY 10019
Mapquest Directions
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Tickets: $15.00
not
available
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Creative TeamWritten
by: Chris Widney
Directed by:
Mary Catherine Burke
Produced by: Golden
Day Productions
Light Designer: K.J.
Hardy
Sound Designer: Eric
DeArmon
Set Designer: Michael V.
Moore
Costume Designer: Jessica
Gaffney
Fight Choreographer: Craig
Bridger
CastBruce Sabath as Jerry
Shurl
Rita Rehn as Cheryl Shurl
William DeMerritt
as Ballboy
Carson Kleiner and Paris Rose Yates as
Hillary Shurl
James Young as Richard
Debra Kay
Anderson as Pearl
CrewStage Manager:
Christopher O. Halpin
Assistant Stage
Manager: Beth Slepian
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