NJ Rep takes "Housewives' to NY

Shore stage company takes its most acclaimed play to New York

By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT • May 5, 2010

Placed in the heart of 1940s Brooklyn — a setting in which the men are away at war, and the women are engaged in their own alliances and battles — "The Housewives of Mannheim" tells the story of a young wife and mother whose entire existence is thrown off its axis when she's given a glimpse of the world that lies both beyond and within the kitchens, clotheslines and fire escapes of Flatbush.

The memory play by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Alan Brody received its world premiere in the spring of 2009 at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, in a production that was an across-the-board hit with audiences and the subject of superlative reviews from the media — including the Asbury Park Press.

It was a production that the forever forward-thinking NJ Rep and artistic director SuzAnne Barabas took an exceptional amount of pride in — and, in an echo of the yearnings experienced by the character May, it was a show that looked beyond the neighborhood of its birth, to the big world beyond.

Earlier this year, Barabas traveled to Indianapolis to direct another production of "Housewives" for that city's Phoenix Theatre. Beginning Friday, May 6, the original NJ Rep cast of "Housewives" convenes once more when the play comes to 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan as the first-ever New York production in NJ Rep's 11-year history.

It's a momentous occasion for the Rep regulars — as well as a step toward the sort of endeavor that famed troupes like Chicago's Steppenwolf company specialize in — and it traces its genesis back to discussions that SuzAnne and her husband, executive producer Gabor Barabas, had with Elysabeth Kleinhans, founder of the performing arts complex that's located (as you might have guessed) at 59 East 59th St., between Park and Madison Avenues.

While the producers didn't immediately settle upon "Housewives"as their maiden vehicle in New York City — the NJ Rep resume boasts dozens of new offerings, including one ("Engaging Shaw") that's currently on view off-Broadway — the ensemble drama increasingly made sense as a calling-card for the company, particularly in light of the rave reviews coming out of Indianapolis.

The only logical solution was to go with the quartet of actors who originated the parts back in Long Branch — including Pheonix Vaughn, who steps back into the role of May immediately after finishing her stint this weekend in the current NJ Rep production, the dark comic thriller "Yankee Tavern." Lauren Briggeman replaces Vaughn for the remainder of the run.

Vaughn is joined in New York by "the four actors are so into their roles, so protective of who they are — they own them," explains Barabas.

"It's an unusual chance for us," she said. "We can dig deeper into these characters than ever before."

A gut-wrenching play of raw emotions — and the kind of rapt, appreciative silences that are even more priceless than cheers — "The Housewives of Mannheim" opens May 6 and continues through June 6 with performances Tuesday through Saturday evenings (plus selected Sundays), plus Saturday and Sunday matinees. Ticket reservations, showtimes and additional information is available by calling (212)279-4200 or visiting ticketcentral.com .

THEATERMANIA.COM

Pheonix Vaughn and Corey Tazmania in The Housewives of Mannheim (© SuzAnne Barabas)

Jessica L. Parks' set for Alan Brody's nuanced 1944-set-drama The Housewives of Mannheim, now at 59E59Theaters, is so true to the movie norm of the day you half expect the actors to materialize in black and white. The tidy Brooklyn kitchen, with its gas stove and new-fangled "fridge," belongs to May (Pheonix Vaughn), who is as Betty Grable-pretty as she is unsophisticated.

We first see her sneaking a peek at an oversize book, which she's quick to hide when a neighbor, Alice (Wendy Peace), comes kibitzing, hoping to cadge some spare labels. Alice fancies herself a contest queen, even if the winners are "always from someplace in South Dakota." She's also the self-appointed neighborhood snoop: unprompted, she provides an itemized list of the furniture -- including a grand piano -- being funneled into a turned-over apartment.

The complex's new tenant, Sophie (Natalie Mosco, true to character but nonetheless affected), an elegant German widow whose career as concert pianist was quashed by Nazism, will soon put in an appearance -- but not before May's closest friend, Billie (Corey Tazmania), blows in, peddling linens and using language that would make a sailor blush.

Billie's an original, no doubt about it, and the atmosphere starts to crackle the minute she shows up. Not only does Tazmania defy you to take your eyes off her, but her Billie is aboil with as yet unexpressed passions, and not just for selvage and Chantilly lace.

Meanwhile, Sophie proves a catalyst for May. During her husband's long absence overseas, May has begun to develop some cultural curiosity and personal ambition. After hearing about the fictional Vermeer painting that gives the show its title discussed on a radio talk show, she has actually taken the initiative to go into Manhattan and visit the Metropolitan Museum -- and she's now eager to broaden her horizons further before resuming the role of dutiful spouse. May gloms onto this visitor from a far more rarefied milieu like a schoolgirl with a crush, and her new allegiance proves a tipping point for Billie's own long-suppressed obsession.

Brody and director SuzAnne Barabas handles the ensuing seduction scene -- and its chastening aftermath -- with extraordinary sensitivity, even if it somewhat schematically draws parallels between anti-Semitism and the intolerance that continues to surround sexual preference. May is revealed to be more clued-in than she lets on; still, it's difficult to imagine someone quite so gushily naïve to begin with.

The Housewives of Mannheim

Review by Tulis McCall (15 May 2010), New York Theatre Guide

If you are following my reviews then you will know that there is a passel of good story telling going on around town. May Black (Phoenix Vaughn) is fresh from visiting an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a trip about which she is reluctant to speak, because going all the way into Manhattan, alone, is not something a woman like May is supposed to do in 1944 (unless of course she had a job, which anyway was only to last until her husband got home). A solo trip to Manhattan was especially not the thing to do if the expressed purpose of the trip was to see a painting that was hanging in a museum. If women who lived near Kings Highway wanted to see art, they could look at a movie magazine. That was plenty good enough.

So when our gal May makes it to the Met to see the rare Vermeer painting called The Housewives of Mannheim (a fictional painting that is s composite of several Vermeers)– she is bowled over by her own daring, and then bowled over by the painting itself. These were real live women, not movie stars, and they must have felt trapped in their lives because they only see the present. The future is unimaginable. May knows this because that is how she feels, and somehow the 400 year old painting opens a window in her life and lets in new light.

With new light comes new observations. They start tumbling out of May faster than she can speak. This frightens one neighbor Alice (Wendy Peace) but thrills another, Billie (Corey Tazmania) and her newest neighbor Sophie (Nantalie Moscco). May’s life picks up speed. She thinks about attending college. She buys an art book. She attends a Bohemian party. Then she takes one step too many and life spins out of control.

Alan Brody does a pretty good job of defining these women for us. (If you want another example of this subject see Swing Shift, with Goldie Hawn and Christine Lahti, directed by Jonathan Demme.) Housewives of Manheim has a story line that is not only refreshing, it is provocative, and it is way past time for this subject was examined without the cheesecloth filter over the camera lense. These are our mothers and grandmothers. Their stories deserve our attention.

While our nation’s chroniclers go bonkers defining and honoring The Greatest Generation, it is the men about which most of the hooplah is written. The women who greased the wheels of the war machine, who put down roots and created stability while men were off making war, who raised families and held down full time jobs simultaneously – these people get short shrift. The history books would have us think that the country was on Pause while men, and let us not forget the thousands of women service personnel, were fighting in WWII. This is simply not so. But the myth as accepted makes the glass ceiling for millions of women all over the world stronger.

So congratulations to Alan Brody and New Jersey Rep for giving this story legs. While most of the acting and text may not overwhelm you, the story will stick to you like white on rice.

One quibble regarding the title: Housewives of Manheim is a sucky title. Number one – Vermeer never referenced his subjects as housewives – “Woman”, “Lacemaker”, “Maiden”, “Girl” but not housewife. Mr. Brody goes to great lengths to make these women three-dimensional but his title makes this show sound like a reality series and undermines that effort and leads him away from his goal. Number two: I resent the term housewife. Women marry other people. They don’t marry houses.

05/19/2010
The Housewives of Mannheim
By: Stewart Schulman

Pheonix Vaughn, Wendy Peace, and Corey Tazmania. 
Photo credit: SuzAnne Barabas 
 
When we look at an image, a scene in a painting for instance, how often do we take the time to wonder what the truth of that moment might have been when it was initially captured... perhaps some four-hundred years ago? That’s the question playwright Alan Brody asks us to ask ourselves as we watch the New York premiere of his compelling new play The Housewives Of Mannheim, currently running off-Broadway as part of the Americas Off Broadway festival at the 59E59 Street theaters.
 
The time is 1944. World War II is in full throttle thousands of miles away. In the kitchen of an apartment in a high-rise building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, three Jewish women, May, Alice and Billie, patiently wait for the safe return of their soldier husbands from overseas. The rhythm of their lives is slow. Children are cared for. Homes are maintained. They gossip, borrow coffee, trade ration cards and shop at Waldbaum’s and Loehman’s. Everything is status quo... till May, (a pretty, earnest, and subtly emotional Phoenix Vaughn), takes a step that forever changes her world. 
 
May has heard about a new Vermeer painting “The Housewives Of Mannheim”, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her desire to satisfy a budding curiosity about life’s possibilities beyond the walls of her modest two-bedroom home, she ventures out to see it. Quite to her surprise, as she views the Dutch Baroque painting, she begins to reflect upon who these women really were and what their  lives were like. And in that moment, something in the (fictitious) painting jump-starts a sense of wonderment and adventure in her. Suddenly, she understands that a whole new world of possibilities exists. Suddenly she’s full of questions. Suddenly May finds herself on a journey of self-discovery that will leave her questioning the very fabric of everything she believes to be right and true.
 
As May struggles to redefine herself and the direction of her life, her once solid friendships with Alice and Billie, the two women closest to her in her daily life, begin to redefine, as well. ‘Homemaker’ Alice (a prissily conservative Wendy Peace) grows threatened by May’s burgeoning lust for knowledge and experience; while ‘jokester’ Billie (a tough, brassy Corey Tazmania), grows increasingly intrigued and emboldened by May’s newfound adventurous spirit. This is all further complicated by the entrance into their quiet simple universe of cultured and worldly Sophie, (a flawlessly Parisian-Viennese-accented Natalie Mosco), a woman who has fled the Holocaust. It is Sophie’s appearance in May’s apartment that ultimately shifts the balances of power and friendship between the women and forces their lives to spiral off in new directions. Or does it? 
 
To give more away of the plot might undermine one’s fundamental enjoyment of the play. But suffice it to say, it is a piece worth seeing. “The Housewives Of Mannheim” is a thoughtful examination of perspective and the importance of vantage point. It is a play whose characters are asked to discover how drastically one’s views of the world can change simply by shifting where one stands. The women in that Brooklyn kitchen—who lead seemingly straightforward lives—experience great upheavals in their friendships, and are asked to brutally examine their loyalties, fears, jealousies and betrayals.
 
And it is interesting to realize—as one is given some insight into the moments in these women’s lives—how immensely different people’s existences truly are from the ‘snapshot’ impressions we form of them from but a cursory glance at their lives. And so, as we watch their stories unfold, beyond that ‘snapshot’, we begin to speculate about the lives of their predecessors too. We consider, just as May did, the existences of those women who lived four-hundred years before our Flatbush gals. The Dutch women performing their routine chores in a time before “The Great Wars”. Those women in the painting of the same name: “The Housewives of Mannheim”. And we attempt to imagine what their experiences and dreams might have been back then—before and after that ‘snapshot’ froze them forever on a canvas by Vermeer. But unfortunately... we’ll never really know. So we ask: Can we ever in fact judge anyone or anything fairly, from just a cursory glance? 
 
Which brings us to the most compelling question Brody’s play wants us to examine. It is in regard to the concept of “willful ignorance.” Early in the play the phrase is used to define the complicit inactions of the German and Austrian populations who turned blind eyes to the sufferings of their Jewish, homosexual and gypsy brethren. Later it describes those ordinary Americans—not unlike these housewives in Flatbush—whose unwillingness to grow past their own fear-based ignorance renders them deaf and mute to their own sufferings, as well as the suffering of others. And all throughout his affecting and demanding play, Mr. Brody is challenging us to ask ourselves if we are at all like them. And we do wonder. 
 
The production is beautifully directed by SuZanne Barabas. (It originally premiered at New Jersey Rep.) It has a marvelous realistic 1940’s kitchen set designed by Jessica Parks. Patricia E. Doherty’s ‘spot-on’ period costumes are brilliantly created to exist within the color palate of the set as well as the actual Vermeer painting itself—yet somehow you’d never notice this. The lighting design by Jill Nagle is lovely—especially the cool romantic blues she employs for the delicately directed seduction scene on the fire escape at the end of Act One. Even the sound design by Merek Royce Press is notable. The period music is well chosen and has been tweaked to emit the quiet haunting echo of a distant time.
 
There are many lovely moments throughout this production. For instance, the way May, in one simple gesture at the top of the show, removes dry clothes off a clothesline and the audience is swept back sixty-six years to a time not only before ipods... but before even the dream of a washer and dryer in every home. Or Sophie’s “Fourth Nocturne” recital reverie, where as she and May listen to her old recording, Sophie relives her glory days with a few simple gestures of piano ‘air fingering’. And where, with these gestures, we are transported back with her to a time in Vienna when life was still cultured and beautiful, and a hideous “willful ignorance” had not yet begun to rear its ugly head.
 
And of course there’s the final tableau, where the painting “The Housewives of Mannheim”, comes to life on stage. And in that glorious moment we realize that we’ve now ‘seen’ these ‘simple’ Flatbush housewives outside of their own ‘canvas’. And we begin to understand that beyond our initial snapshot impressions of them, these women lived immensely diverse and unexpected lives. As do we all. And then, as we’ve begun to understand and appreciate the intricacies of their struggles... we realize we’re all just creative souls yearning for that much more... each of us struggling every day to perfect the art of fully living our own lives. Stunning!

Adam Brody's play The Housewives of Mannheim Tackle the Female Identity

Corey Tazmania, Pheonix Vaughn, Wendy Peace and Natalie Mosco

There are plays you see that make you question everything. They delight you, make you reminisce, as they bring up past memories and make you think. Alan Brody's, The Housewives of Mannheim, does all this and more. Set during World War II in a kitchen, in the suburbs of Brooklyn, The Housewives of Mannheim tackle the female identity, both sexually and intellectually. It is surprising that a man has such insight into women’s personal growth, friendship and innate prejudices. The 59E59 street Theatre B, has been transformed into a typical Brooklyn kitchen, where the dramas of four women’s lives unfold. May Black, thirty, beautiful and awakening for the first time, to who she is, has spent her entire life living up to everyones expectations, including her own. Alice Cohen is a narrow minded busybody, who represents society. The close-mindedness, the repressed, the critical, self-appointed, judge of morality. Billie Friedhoff is a women who makes jokes to cover up her feelings and speaks to shock, with the mouth of a sailor. Billie, is like those of us who want what we want, because we are damned if we do and damed if we don’t. All three are married, with husbands overseas, except Billie, who despises her still at home, dentist husband. They have become each others life supports, though each is drowning. Enter Sophie Birnbaum, a Jewish concert pianist who has escaped both Europe and Connecticut. She has moved to Brooklyn to start again. Her entrance into the fray has stirred up emotions, wills and things that have become stagnant, though it began before she arrived with May’s discovery of the Vermeer painting The Housewives of Mannheim. Act 1: cumulates as Billie throws caution to the wind and May, hesitantly explores. Act 2: The fear of going against the norm and being different, backs May into a corner, as emotions, brought forth with personal growth make her afraid of her own feelings and she attacks. Sophie, becomes the voice of reason, the hurt, the creativity that becomes stifled when forced to face the reality, that the human race is unkind and will kill what it does not understand. We all are all four women and the question becomes in what degree. Together their personalities make up the four corners of a box that society deems proper and normal and those who don’t fit are unjustly persecuted.

The cast is first rate. Pheonix Vaughn, as May is blissfully naive and we see her growth, as she subtly conveys the inner turmoil. Wendy Peace plays Alice’s faults, like a red badge of courage. Corey Tazmania, from the moment she walks on, commands us to see into her soul and Natalie Mosco’s Sophie, is the quintessence of dignity still held high nomatter the disappointment. Through SuzAnne Barbaras, direction these four women are given depth. Jessica L. Parks set, Jill Nagle’s lighting, Merek Royce Press’s sound and Patricia E. Doherty's period costumes contribute to the production's feel and drop us into the world of the 1940’s. But it is Mr. Brody’s words, that are the language that you want to wrap your mind around. He convey’s so much in what is not said. It is like watching an Albee Play.

For those who have the courage to examine themselves and the world around you, this play will thrill you.

The Housewives of Mannheim

Written by Alan Brody

Directed by Suzanne Barabas

59E59 Theaters

59 East 59th Street

www.59e59.org

Review by Iris Greenberger

Lost In Flatbush Phoenix Vaughn and Corey Tazmania in The Housewives of Mannheim (photo: SuzAnne Barabas)

New York theater lovers have cause to cheer. A beautifully acted production of The Housewives of Mannheim has arrived on the Upper East Side, courtesy of the New Jersey Repertory Company.

Set in an apartment house in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in 1944, the story centers around three housewives: May Black (Pheonix Vaugn) and Alice Cohen (Wendy Peace) — whose husbands are away in the service — and Billie Friedhoff (Corey Tazmania). The delicate balance of their friendships is upended with the arrival of Sophie Birnbaum (Natalie Mosco), their new neighbor.

Vaugn is perfect as May, the beautiful housewife who realizes she has gotten by so far on her looks and is “used to being good.” Feeling trapped in her current, safe life, she begins to explore with trepidation what lies beyond her sheltered existence. In another standout performance, Tazmania is first funny, then heart wrenching in the role of the street-smart, foul-mouthed Billie, May’s best friend. Unhappily married, she laments that her dentist husband is “missing the part of his brain that helps you sustain human conversation.” She’s been an outsider her whole life and has learned to rely on her sharp wit to survive. Mosco is haunting as Sophie, the Viennese concert pianist and widow who escaped the Nazis. Sophie eventually becomes a role model to May, who is fascinated by her European sophistication. As Alice, Peace is the least developed character in this fine ensemble; however, she is convincing as the building’s judgmental yenta who appears incapable of changing.

The character of Billie is based on the mother of playwright Alan Brody’s childhood best friend. Brody has a keen understanding of the way women think and feel, and his rich dialogue demonstrates insightfulness as he examines the themes of loneliness, friendship, loyalty, tolerance and the struggle for self-fulfillment. Jessica Parks’s wonderful scenic design and Patricia Doherty’s lovely costume choices enhance this engrossing drama.

Audience members who are curious as to what happens when the men come home and the families move to the suburbs will be pleased to know that Housewives is the first play in a trilogy, following with Victory Blues and Are You Popular?

New Jersey Repertory Company's Lovely Production of Alan Brody's Housewives of Mannheim Is A Stellar addition of 59E59's Americas Off Broadway
By Elyse Sommer

I don't know anything anymore. Everyone around me tells me what it's right to want and to feel. And when I think something different, it frightens me. — May

Corey Tazmania, Pheonix Vaughn, Wendy Peace and Natalie Mosco

Simon Saltzman's did not go overboad in his enthusiasm for Alan Brody's The Housewives of Mannheim. Yes it's another World War II drama with music, costumes and scenic details to take us back to an era that seems to be a never ending source for dramatists and novelists. But it is indeed a standout, and New York theater goers are fortunate that they now have a chance to see the sensitively directed, beautifully detailed New Jersey premiere production with the actors who originally made each character a real, distinctive and unforgettable human beings.

Coming as it does at the end of a New York season that's been notable for being awash in gay-themed plays, both newly-conceived revivals and brand-new plays, the arrival of Brody's play in New York is especially timely. Unlike these plays, The Housewives of Mannheim tackles the much less explored subject of female sexual identity. Unlike any of these other plays bringing "the love that dare not speak its name" into the mainstream, this is not a Lesbian play — well, it is, in that it does address the women loving women issue. However, it does so as part of a much broader, more fully fleshed out story that examines matters of personal growth, friendship and prejudice. It uses the microcosm of a kitchen like millions of other kitchens to view the macrocosm of a world war which would change those on the home front and those in the forefront of the battle.

I'm not familiar with the layout of Ms. Barabas' theater where Simon saw and reviewed the play, but all those authentic details of May Black's kitchen have transferred just fine to 59E59's Theater B. — including the sheet on the clothesline so ingeniously used to project the Flemish painting from which the play takes its title and which the playwright subtly uses to remind us the centuries its taken for the daily little kitchen sink dramas of women's lives to evolve.

If I would add one quibble's to Simon's otherwise right on the mark review, it's that a sophisticated refugee like Sophie Birnbaum would be unlikely to move into a working class apartment building in Flatbush. In 1944 apartments between 90th and 110th street or further up in Washington Heights where many European refugees lived were no more expensive than apartments in Brooklyn and a more believable escape from Greenwich anti-semitism. But without Sophie's arrival to stir up the dormant emotions of the other women, we wouldn't have had as powerful a play so I guess Brody can be allowed this bit of poetic license.

As I became more and more involved with these women's lives, I found myself hoping that Mr. Brody was working on a follow-up that would extend this story to after the war so we could see what happens when the war ends and the men come back — something like Arlene Hutton's Nibroc Trilogy which followed its characters from the 1940s into the post War era, which began life a play at a time but is currently being frequently re-revived as an all-in-one event. Leafing through my press kit after the play ended I discovered that the playwright has anticipated my wish. The Housewives of Mannheim is, in fact, the first of a trilogy. The story will continue with Victory Blues about the husbands' return and "Are You Popular?" which moves them out of Brooklyn and into the suburbs. But don't wait for these still unproduced plays. This installment has enough power to stand on its own and shouldn't be missed.

The Housewives of Mannheim - Golden Girls meets The Goldbergs Off B'way

Oscar E. Moore “from the rear mezzanine” for Talk Entertainmnt.com

What does it take to get a naïve woman to think for herself? What does it take to have a wife not miss her husband who is off fighting for his country? What does it take for a woman to be free enough to speak the truth about her innermost feelings for another woman?

To help you discover some very intriguing answers, go get yourself a ticket to a modest new play with some immodest ideas by Alan Brody - “The Housewives of Mannheim” that is sensitively directed by Suzanne Barabas and finely acted by the cast of four which has just opened at 59 E 59 Street Theaters. Originally produced by the New Jersey Repertory Company it has arrived in Manhattan with its original cast intact. And what a wonderful cast it is.

Four Jewish women, living in Brooklyn, during WWII. Husbands have gone off to war, leaving their wives behind to take care of the kids and wait for things to return to normal. Will they ever? After a new tenant – Sophie Birnbaum (Natalie Mosco) moves in with her piano that busy body Alice (Wendy Peace) can’t wait to describe to innocent and beautiful May (Pheonix Vaughn) over coffee in the richly detailed kitchen set by Jessica L. Parks we start to wonder.

The about to blossom May has begun to think what it would be like to be independent. She has uncharacteristically gone off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan to see a painting attributed to Vermeer – The Housewives of Mannheim - women that appear to her to be trapped in their lives. So she is ripe for some new pleasures and even goes so far as to fill out an application to apply to college.

The arrival of the worldly wise widow Sophie (who has fled the Nazis and who was a concert pianist) is the catalyst that sets off a series of events that have been percolating for the past ten years. Billie (Corey Tazmania) sells fine linens to try to escape with her son from Brooklyn and an unhappy marriage to her dentist husband who remains on the home front. She’s the funny one. On the outside. Inside she harbors deep set feelings and fears that slowly emerge and culminate in her seductive dance after coming home tipsy from a Bohemian party with the newly thinking for herself and equally tipsy May. It’s one of the most sensitively directed and tasteful seduction scenes that you will ever see. All season long I have seen so many homosexual plays that I began to wonder, when will women get their turn. Well, this is it.

The dialogue by Alan Brody is rich in detail and humor. It’s a pleasure to hear these people speak with one another. His structure is also strong as are his characters. There is good story telling going on here. He makes all his points while keeping us interested throughout.

The use of period music between scenes is just another Midas touch.

How does May treat Billie after that fateful night? Will she accept Billie as she was before or reject her? It’s fascinating how this all plays out. And what will happen when the men finally do come home? For that we’ll have to wait for the next two installments of this trilogy of plays.

Wartime ‘Housewives’ Forge New Paths

Phoenix Vaughn, Natalie Mosco and Corey Tazmania star in Alan Brody’s “The Housewives of Mannheim.”

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

by Ted Merwin

They may not all have turned into Rosie the Riveter, but women’s lives certainly changed once their men went off to battle. Alan Brody’s new play, “The Housewives of Mannheim,” focuses on four Jewish women living in the same apartment house in 1944 Flatbush who find different paths to growth and fulfillment in the absence of their husbands. When “Housewives” ran last year with the same cast at the New Jersey Rep in Long Branch, Robert L. Daniels of Variety called it a “keenly constructed and beautifully acted romantic drama.”

Directed by SuzAnne Barabas, “Housewives” revolves around a (fictitious) painting by Vermeer that shows four 17th-century Dutch women as they work together in the kitchen. May Black (Phoenix Vaughn) finds the painting at the Met and identifies with the figures who seem imprisoned in the domestic sphere.

The more conventionally minded Alice Cohen (Wendy Peace) cannot appreciate May’s dilemma, but May finds a ready listener in middle-aged Sophie Birnbaum (Natalie Mosco), a former Viennese concert pianist who has fled from the Nazis. But when May’s neighbor, Billie Friedhof (Corey Tazmania), tries to start a sexual relationship with her, May questions just how liberated she wants to be.

The playwright, who is a professor of theater at MIT, grew up in Brooklyn before moving to suburban Philadelphia in the 1950s and then returning to New York to study acting at Columbia with Uta Hagen. His first novel, “Coming To,” published in the 1970s, was hailed as the first feminist novel written by a man. His later work, including many plays, has often dealt with Jewish themes.

Among these dramatic works are “Inventions for Fathers and Sons,” about four generations of Jewish men in Brooklyn, and “The Company of Angels,” about a Yiddish theater company that toured the displaced persons camps after World War II. “Housewives” is the first play in a trilogy that continues with “Victory Blues,” which shows what happens when the husbands return, and “Are You Popular?,” which follows the families as they make the move to the suburbs.

In a telephone interview, Brody told The Jewish Week that the play is about “what happens when men were away and women discovered that they didn’t need to identify themselves only through their husbands.” When May visits the museum, he said, she “discovers a whole world of history and art that she never knew existed.”

Brody based the character of Billie on the mother of his best friend from childhood. “I could never find the way to realize her; then I found it and a lot of things coalesced.”

Like the building that his characters inhabit, Brody recalled that the apartment house where he grew up was a “high-rise village” for which the word “community” had not yet been invented. “We didn’t need to use that word,” he said. “It’s only when something dissipates that you put a name to it and try to get it back.”

'Yankee Tavern' stage review: Long Branch play something to toast about

By Peter Filichia/For The Star-Ledger

April 22, 2010, 4:04AM

SuzAnne Barabas Jim Shankman as Ray and Pheonix Vaughn as Janet in Yankee Tavern at NJ Rep in Long Branch now thru May 23.

So why did noted playwright Steven Dietz name his new drama “Yankee Tavern”?

The nearly excellent play, presented in its world premiere at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, has nothing to do with Americans living in the Northern stretches of the country.

That world championship baseball team isn’t part of the plot, either.

And while the fascinating script does take place in a watering hole, it could just as easily be set in any place where people congregate.

What’s really on Dietz’s mind is the 9/11 tragedy. Ray, a barfly who spends an inordinate amount of time in this tavern, incessantly listens to talk radio. He even wears a headset lest he miss a morsel.

That apparatus also gives Ray the opportunity to call the program at a moment’s notice. He constantly feels the need to “correct” both the talk show host and other listeners who call in.

Ray is the loosest of cannons as he dispenses his version of the truth. He has opinions on everything, including this howler: “The fall of communism was a Communist plot!”

And yet … and yet … only the rarest of theatergoers won’t feel that every now and then, Ray has a plausible theory or a believable take. That’s the main fascination with “Yankee Tavern.” Who knows for sure what’s true and what isn’t? Can we trust what the politicians tell us?

Adam, portrayed in a low-key fashion by Jason Odell Williams, owns the bar. He’s more concerned about the chance the city will condemn it than with the big wedding his fiancée, Janet, is planning.

These two get the play off to a shaky start. Certainly Williams and Pheonix (that’s the way she spells it) Vaughn, who plays Janet, make a cute couple, but what does that ultimately mean where a marriage is concerned? Janet grills Adam as to why so many of the “save-the-date” cards she mailed were returned; he admits that he made up the names just to seem as if he has more friends. While this establishes Adam as an unstable character — one who may be inclined to fudge the truth as much as some government leaders — Janet gets over this lie much too easily. Don’t blame either Vaughn or director SuzAnne Barabas; the trouble is in the writing.

Another complication comes courtesy of an ominous-looking stranger who enters, sits at the bar, and orders two beers. This unnamed person doesn’t have much to say for the entire first act, but he certainly becomes loquacious in Act Two — with more information about 9/11 than even Ray could imagine. Michael Irvin Pollard excels in making us believe that this man has better-informed answers, and that he’s someone who should not be challenged.

Jim Shankman is best of all as the grizzled hothead Ray. He’s reason enough to see the play.

Whether or not Ray is spouting fiction, Shankman makes certain that all his emotions are real and raw. The actor stalks across the floor of Jessica Parks’ too-neat set as if he’s staking his claim to the entire operation.

One of the more arresting moments arrives as the lights come up on Act Two, Scene Two. The bar is covered with baskets of flowers. Were they sent to celebrate Adam and Janet’s wedding — or out of respect for someone who died?

“Yankee Tavern” always keeps the audience guessing.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, most people land somewhere between the extremes. Perhaps they believe that Oswald acted alone, but the Apollo space landing was a hoax. Or they implicate the CIA in killing Martin Luther King, but accept Princess Diana’s death as a tragic accident.

Jim Shankman testifies to Pheonix Vaughn in Yankee Tavern, through May 23 at New Jersey Repertory.

But at the very ends of that spectrum, you’ll find the nuts and the hopelessly naïve: Those who believe that nothing happens without a hidden (and, more often than not, malevolent) subtext; and those who insist on believing that things are exactly as they appear, regardless of the contrary evidence.

Yankee Tavern, a new play by Steven Dietz at New Jersey Repertory Company, is all about those extremes, and what happens when the ground beneath closely held positions shifts.

Adam is a serious young grad student, working on a dissertation about urban myths and their role in perpetuating dangerous, elaborate conspiracy theories. He is angling for a job with the CIA when he graduates. Meanwhile, he is stuck tending the bar in his late father’s tavern while he waits for the city to condemn the place. Adam’s fiancée Janet works at an unnamed foundation and is knee deep preparations for their wedding.

The play’s beating heart is Ray, a clever but very crazy homeless man who was once the best friend of Adam’s father. Ray sees conspiracies everywhere he looks. He is chock full of doomsday predictions, unprovable assertions and half-baked speculations about everything from the occult Starbucks logo to the real story behind those notorious hanging chads.

It is the events of September 11, 2001 for which Ray saves his most zealous theorizing. Obsessed by questions about who knew what and when, by which parts of the tragedy constituted coincidence and which were the result of covert schemes, his rantings are eloquent quackery.

But Ray’s crackpot notions suddenly seem less implausible when a mysterious stranger sits down at the end of the bar. In the midst of one of Ray’s rants, the newcomer finishes one of Ray’s sentences. And he proceeds to reveal a surprising intimacy with the details of September 11 and, even more menacingly, with Adam’s research. Suddenly, all of the odd details of the World Trade Center tragedy, which so preoccupy Ray, are seeming much coincidental.

But that good-natured bemusement is completely absent in the play’s second half. With Adam off to Washington, D.C. for a round of secretive meetings and Ray off in search of a suit to wear to the couple’s wedding, the mysterious stranger returns to find only Janet behind the bar. The simmering menace of the first act erupts into a rolling boil.

Jim Shankman chews the scenery as Ray, delivering twice as much dialog as the other characters in half the time. He manages to make his rants at the same time self-deprecating and egomaniacal, completely conveying the incontrovertible proof of hundreds of conspiracies, everywhere he looks. In the second act when Ray is largely offstage, the play seems to deflate a little.

Despite being deliberately upstaged by Shankman, Pheonix Vaughn and Jason Odell Williams are both very good as the couple whose center cannot hold when their facades begin to disintegrate. Michael Irvin Pollard carries a tortured menace as Palmer, the mystery man who knows too much,

Barabas’ crisp direction steers the play along briskly enough to gloss over any small plot holes. Yankee Tavern is a surprising and effective piece of theater that is both funny and suspenseful.

It's Happy Hour, sort of, at NJ Rep's "Tavern"

By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT, Asbury Park Press • April 16, 2010

There's the dramatic setting — a lower Manhattan building scheduled for a date with the wrecking ball. A young man is caught in "a web of intrigue" as he comes to grips with his late father's hidden legacy. Plus, his father's friend, a dealer in outlandish conspiracies, may just be a paranoid schizophrenic. And add "a mysterious stranger who appears to know far more than he should about the 9/11 attacks."

Not only is "Yankee Tavern" a comedy, it's one of those devilishly dark comedies regularly served up as the specialty house cocktail at New Jersey Repertory Company.

The play by Steven Dietz makes its regional debut this weekend at the company's Long Branch playhouse — part of a "rolling world premiere" from the National New Play Network, and an effort that director SuzAnne Barabas maintains "should have a long life, way beyond NJ Rep."

Barabas, who will transfer her NJ Rep production of "Housewives of Mannheim" to New York for a May 6 to June 6 engagement at the 59E59 Theaters (more about that in a future edition), confesses that it was the irresistible lure of the conspiracy theory that attracted her to the script by the Texas-based playwright — noting "When I started to hear the sort of stories they were telling, it made my hair stand up; it was that creepy."

Of course, as one of the rolling premieres, the play can be staged in many places at once — it's already been read and performed in at least three other cities, and a successful stand here could ensure that this study in "outlandish theories" and "dangerous realities" may not be easily escaped in the months to come.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Bear in mind, however, that "Yankee Tavern" is being brought to you by the same folks who staged such sardonic snickers as "Old Clown Wanted," "tempOdyssey," "Ten Percent of Molly Snyder" and "Sick" — paranoid fantasies all, from a troupe about whom it could be said nobody does it better.

"Many things are going on in this play," Barabas said. "Who's behind what; that sort of thing.

"It's a lot of fun to listen to, a little ridiculous — until it starts to go beyond," she says.

The bulk of the play's humor, Barabas asserts, comes from the conspiracy chatter — brought center stage by "Sick" veteran actor Jim Shankman as Ray, the "itinerant homesteader" whose only permanent address is his bar stool at the Yankee Tavern.

Jason Odell Williams plays Adam, the graduate student whose stewardship of his father's failing business is cast in an unexpected light. Also in the cast are two welcome NJ Rep regulars. Pheonix Vaughn, a sensation as May in "Housewives" and a role she'll reprise in New York, who plays Adam's practical fiance Janet — the show's only character not in danger of slipping into the "Twilight Zone." Also, on hand as the enigmatic Palmer is Michael Irvin Pollard, an actor who's segued in recent seasons from broad comedy ("Big Boys") to some awe-inspiring dramatic work in "Apple" and "Dead Ringer."

"I'm grateful to be working with this cast," director Barabas observes. "They've been off-book for weeks, and they're ready to do this thing."

Just announced by NJ Rep is a new season's worth of shows commencing in July with Sharr White's "Sunlight," a drama touching on the events of 9/11, followed in September by Charlie Shulman's "Character Assassins" and in December by Steve Braunstein's noir-ish thriller "Tangled Skirt."

The 2011 calendar year is highlighted by "Puma," a based-on-fact play by Julie Gilbert and Frank Evans, in which actors portray Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Stewart, Paulette Goddard and Erich Maria Remarcque, author of "All Quiet on the Western Front."

‘EXPOSURE’ DEVELOPS AT NJ REP (Red Bank Orbit)

Sitting pretty: John FitzGibbon, Andrea Gallo, Jessica Howell and Adam Jonas Segaller star in EXPOSURE TIME, the play by Kim Merrill that makes its world premiere in Long Branch this week. (Photos by SuzAnne Barabas)

By TOM CHESEK

Who says Alice doesn’t live here anymore? As movie audiences look forward to director Tim Burton’s star-studded, three-dimensional riff on Alice in Wonderland, interest is once again heightened — as it’s periodically been since 1865 — in the concepts and characters created by the parson, poet and portrait artist who wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll.

Meanwhile, on the intimately scaled but expansively visioned stage of New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, the story of Alice gets viewed through an altogether different looking glass — the glass plates and heavy lenses of the Victorian camera — in a drama that centers around the competition between Carroll (a/k/a Charles L. Dodgson) and the pioneer photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. The prize? The favor of the girl who would serve as the real-life inspiration for Alice.

Yes Virginia, there really was an Alice — Alice Liddell, a clergyman’s daughter who grew up to be a noted society hostess (and who died in 1934 at the age of 82). In Exposure Time, the play by Kim Merrill that kicks off its world premiere engagement with a pair of preview performances this Thursday, she’s a maturing young thing (portrayed by Jessica Howell) who becomes something of a muse to Dodgson/ Carroll (Adam Jonas Segaller) — the daughter, in fact, of Dodgson’s superior, and a figure who fascinates the man who’s torn between his church career and his artistic impulses.

Andrea Gallo, who co-starred in a couple of previous shows at NJ Rep (including a weird and wonderful show called Tilt Angel that pretty much no one saw) plays the amazing Cameron, and the cast (under the direction of Alan Souza, who helmed the Rep musicals The Little Hours and Cupid & Psyche) is rounded off by another stock company stalwart — John FitzGibbon, whose plummy-toned vocal prowess and grand characterizations (as everything from The Butler to train-wreck poet Delmore Schwartz) have graced many a local production. He’ll be playing the famed Charge of the Light Brigade poet Lord Alfred Tennyson — a match-up that already hits the spot, sight unseen.

Red Bank oRBit spoke with New York-based playwright Merrill — a sometime actor, mother of two, and otherwise author of contemporary dramas with names like Criminal Acts and Sex, Death and the Beach Baby — about the seemingly miraculous process through which this picture of bygone people emerged. Read on. 

RED BANK ORBIT: Like so many of the mainstage productions at New Jersey Rep, your play was first seen there as one of their little script-in-hand readings. Has it changed much since that time, or were you pretty well satisfied with what you had?

KIM MERRILL: I’m not one of those writers who think what they’ve got is perfect from the start, so I’ve done a fair amount of rewriting since they presented the reading, back in August of 2008, I think it was. We had a two week workshop in Minneapolis also — I even made some more changes before rehearsals started.

It’s been interesting, revisiting these characters that I began writing years ago. Going back to an old play is like going back to someone you broke up with!

Take us back to the beginning of the project — what was it about Julia Cameron and Lewis Carroll that struck you as a worthwhile dramatic subject?

I read an article about a display of Carroll’s pictures — I hadn’t even known he took photos before that; he really considered himself a professional, and he was meticulous about archiving his work — and in this article there was a mention of Julia Cameron. I thought she’d be an interesting subject, not only because she was a woman who was very involved with the early days of photography, but also because of the impact that photography had on the Victorian era.

I’ve always been interested in that era, when the seeds of our current culture were affected by all this new technology. A comparable thing would be the introduction of the internet to our society. 

So you must have done a fair amount of homework before starting in on the script.

I researched it for about a year. This is my only historical play, so even though I made a lot of it up — in particular, I pumped up the competition aspect for the sake of the story — it’s based on things that actually happened. 

One of the things I looked into was the whole process of photography as it existed back then — I found a woman who’s an expert on Julia Cameron, and I spent a day with her taking my portrait as it would have been done back then. I learned how complicated the chemicals were; how time consuming the whole process was…

We’re talking about the days before film, when she and her contemporaries were using, what, daguerrotypes? Glass plates?

She used what was called the wet collodion process, which involved glass plates and a silver nitrate solution; a lot of dangerous chemicals — it was a pretty difficult method of taking pictures, but it was popular for a while.

There was an argument going on back then over whether photography should be considered an art or a science, given how complicated the process could seem at the time. Ever since she was rediscovered around the 1940s, Julia is known primarily in art circles; a lot of her work wasn’t archived but the photo albums that have survived are well known with collectors and museum people. 

One of the more interesting things about those early photos is that, because of how they were produced, they’re really not captured moments in time — they’re actually very orchestrated events.

Those old photos look weird to us because they’re so staged and constructed — personally I find them to be very orderly and creepy! I also admire the Alice books, but they’ve always been scary to me!

There’s also a creepy undercurrent to the whole story of Lewis Carroll and the real-life Alice, if you believe a lot of the more recent biographical material. Do you address that here, in the midst of this story about the two photographers who are kind of competing for the attention of this girl Alice? 

The play’s not realistic, although I stay true to their story — they did actually meet, and both of them photographed Alice Liddell. Most of the fictionalizing here is in Carroll’s relationship with Alice.

I’m aware of the stories of pedophilia that have circulated about Lewis Carroll, but in the course of my research I found that there was this aesthetic back then for taking pictures of naked kids. Julia took these too, but being that she was a middle aged woman I guess that she hasn’t come under the same sort of scrutiny. I think there was an idealization of innocence in the way that many photographers portrayed children back then, although our modern eyes would see things differently.

I’m more interested in them as artists anyway — I did my best to make this a story about aspiration. Julia Cameron was obsessive about photography.

I know that you’ve taken an active interest in watching this production develop, as it were — so how’s it been seeing the show come to life on the stage? And working with a director who specializes in musicals?

I think in an ideal world I’d love to be able to do this on a big stage, with big projections of photos behind the actors. But working with New Jersey Rep has been a great experience, just as working with Alan Souza — the play as I said is not realistic, so it does present some of the same directorial challenges that a musical can present. We received an American Play Award, which allows for extra collaborative time, so we had some extra weeks to work with Alan. And I’ve learned a lot from the rehearsal process.

GO ASK ALICE

NJ Rep develops "Exposure Time" for world premiere

As a big-budget new screen treatment of "Alice in Wonderland" prepares to open nationwide next month, New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch offers up an entirely different take on the Alice saga — one that, while it's based in fact, is equally surreal, and also in 3-D.

The real life Alice Liddell, who died in 1934 at the age of 82, may have inspired some fanciful adventures under the ground and through the looking glass. "Exposure Time," the play by Kim Merrill that makes its world premiere this weekend at NJ Rep, peers through a different sort of glass — the photographer's lens — to create a study of the young woman and her relationship with two prominent citizens of Victorian England; one a pioneering female photographer, the other a man who would come to write under the pen name of Lewis Carroll.

It's actually the lenswoman Julia Margaret Cameron who's at the heart of "Exposure Time," a play that the New York-based Merrill was inspired to write upon becoming fascinated with this prominent portrait artist of the 19th century.

"I've always been interested in that era, when the seeds of our current culture were affected by all this new technology," the playwright explains. "A comparable thing would be the introduction of the internet to our society."

Those pioneer days of photography — a time when there was some debate over its being an art form or a science — were defined by heavy glass plates, dangerous chemicals and lengthy exposure times that made an old photo portrait something more "staged and constructed" than spontaneously captured. In researching Cameron, Merrill investigated the techniques used by the early professionals, even spending most of a day sitting for a recreation of a formal portrait session.

"This is a story about aspiration," says Merrill of the play that was written several years ago, and which, like so many offerings at NJ Rep, developed from one of the theater's popular series of script-in-hand readings.

"It's based on things that actually happened, but it's not a realistic play," the author maintains. "I made a lot of it up — in particular, I pumped up the competition aspect for the sake of the story."

That competition - between Cameron and her fellow camera enthusiast, the young clergyman and poet Charles L. Dodgson — becomes a thing of Mozart-Salieri proportions in Merrill's hands. The two contemporaries vie not just for supremacy in the marketplace, but for the favor of the girl to whom Dodgson would come to dedicate his pseudonymous "Alice" stories.

"Most of the fictionalizing here is in his relationship with Alice," says Merrill in reference to the recent and controversial speculation regarding the Dodgson-Liddell connection — adding that "there was an idealization of innocence in the way that many photographers portrayed children back then, although our modern eyes would see things differently."

Andrea Gallo, a veteran of several past productions at NJ Rep, stars as Julia Cameron, with Rep newcomer Adam Jonas Segaller as Dodgson. Jessica Howell makes her company debut as Alice, and another familiar figure on the Long Branch stage — the estimable character man John FitzGibbon — portrays one of the "A-list" figures of the era, the celebrated poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In the director's chair is Alan Souza, whose previous credits at NJ Rep include the musicals "Cupid and Psyche" and "The Little Hours" (a show that he'll be reprising in New York this spring).

For Merrill, who's workshopped and revised her script considerably in the years leading up to this world premiere run, it's "been interesting revisiting these characters—going back to an old play is like going back to someone you broke up with!"