August’s Players of the Week
The first week’s premier performer was Christopher Totten. At a benefit for the York Theatre Company, he was Nathan Leopold in Thrill Me, Stephen Dolginoff’s excellent musical about Leopold and Loeb — the young men who, in 1924, killed a young boy just for the supposed fun of it. The first scene of the musical takes place in 1958, after Leopold has served 35 years for his youthful crime. The diminutive Totten was impressive in showing the heavy burden of three-plus decades of guilt, but then he shed his middle age to flash back and become a 19-year-old puppy dog mooning over handsome Richard Loeb (the also excellent Matthew S. Morris). Oh, does that lad have the music that makes him dance, walk, strut, and, for that matter, breathe. Totten gave a nervous smile whenever Morris’s Loeb would come out with an outrageous suggestion — “Let’s set a fire!” or “Let’s rob a house!” — in the hope that he could somehow get the lad to say, “Nah, I was only kidding.” But that never, ever happened. Totten showed Leopold’s tremendous shame at being so weak at every opportunity when he should have been strong, all leading to a startling conclusion where he finally gets at least a finger’s worth of an upper hand on Loeb. Sorry if you missed him, but you can at least get a semblance of his power on the Thrill Me CD, recently released on Original Cast records.
Do You Have Anything Closer?
(Photo © Joan Marcus)
The honors of week number two went to Lawrence Paone, not only for performing Do You Have Anything Closer? but also for co-writing it with Matthew Aibel. Paone has for years been a box-office treasurer at such Broadway houses as the Royale, Circle-in-the-Square, and the Nederlander; in his show, he told of ticket buyers who’ve assaulted him with such questions as, “With these obstructed view seats, will I be able to see everything?” Paone, with his deadpan delivery and middle-class-husband looks, made clear that he aimed to be a writer but, in the meantime, would be “working in the theater” as a member of Local 751, the Broadway Treasurers and Ticket Sellers Union. This way, he could meet big shots who could help him get ahead. Well, we can all imagine how that turned out. When Garry Marshall came up to the box-office for seats, Paone asked him for an agent introduction; Marshall took his business card — and never called. More humiliating was the time he gave a three-sentence pitch of his latest script to Andrew Bergman, who responded dryly, “This is why other directors have their assistants pick up their seats.” Paone came to the realization, “I’m not working IN the theater; I’m working AT a theater.” But he escaped self-pity as he decided that in these tough times, when people literally go unemployed for years, he’s fortunate to have a job with benefits. True, but I’d like to see him get a second job — no, make that a first job — where he gets to perform this touching story of how any work is inherently ennobling. Let’s see him at the Royale, Circle-in-the-Square, or the Nederlander.
The third week’s award went to Michael Mitnick, the very talented composer-lyricist who’s just about to enter his third year at Harvard. (He’s contributed to a couple of musicals there, including last year’s Hasty Pudding Show.) This time, Mitnick borrowed some Bombay Dreams performers, and brought them to the ol’ Primary Stages space; there, they sang his Snapshots, in which family members look back on the photographs they took along the way. “Some of our stories are happy,” they sang, “and some of our stories are not. But these are the stories of people — the ones that you never forgot.” And indeed, a bunch of funny and melancholy stories emerged. One had elements of both: “Winning Caroline” was not unlike a recent Edward Albee plot, only this time the guy fell in love with a donkey. But unlike The Goat, here the attraction is not reciprocated. As the heartsick lad sang, “I shouted out…’Would you stay?’ She said ‘Nay.'” And so the song went until he bravely but heart-brokenly told us, “The seasons pass. But…if you see her, would you kiss my ass?”
(Photo © Agusto Murrillo)
The fourth week’s winner was Sara Kahn, a dazzlingly pert actress who I’m sure was great when she played the title role of Sweet Charity. But, as the song in All American goes, that was once upon a time, very long ago. Some time ago, after Kahn did an industrial for medical supplies in which she had to sing, “And when it comes to rectal thermometers, we’ve got an ace in the hole,” she felt the need to give up the business and become a social worker. But, last week at the Fringe Festival, she returned to perform her one-woman script Haven, about her adventures in Bosnia. She told of meeting people whose faces immediately said to her, “You’re an over-privileged American.” Others were so glad that she was there to help the International Children’s Program — so how could she tell them that her job was to shut it down? Well, the gutsy lady found a way to keep the program running. She did, however, experience failures, and her story about an immigrant who tried so hard to make it in America — and did not — was genuinely tragic. So was one about a big international soccer star who lost everything in the war and wound up in Newark working at a car wash. That story will forever haunt me, for I work in a building in Newark that’s across the street from a car wash. Had I many times walked past him, unaware of his life, struggles, and story? “Sometimes, this work can be overwhelming,” Kahn confessed — and, indeed, sometimes the show was, too. I walked out with tears in my eyes. The next day, when I was at Goodspeed to see Where’s Charley?, theater columnist Harry Haun approached me and said, “Hey, I heard that you got misty-eyed at Haven yesterday.” I was amazed that my weeping was noticed by somebody who was spreading it around but I was glad that the person did so; everyone needs to know how moving both Sara Kahn and Haven were.
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
