Month: June 2025

Posted by

0

‘Our Class’ Confronts And Challenges Revisionist History

Cast of Arlekin Players’ ‘Our Class’. Photos by Irina Danilova

By Shelley A. Sackett

No one can take his audience on an emotional and artistic roller coaster like Igor Golyak, founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre & Zero Gravity (Zero-G) Theater Lab. With “Our Class,” in production through June 22 at the Calderwood Pavilion, he introduces us to characters we initially relate to and bond with, spins an artistically ingenious cocoon, and then tells a tale that rips our heart to shreds and leaves us too overwhelmed to even speak.

Written by Catholic Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek in 2010 and inspired by the true story of the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, “Our Class” introduces a group of 10 young adults – five Catholic Poles (Zocha, and the “Four Musketeers” Rysiek, Zygmunt, Heniek, Wladek) and five Jewish Poles (Dora, Rachelka, Jakub, Menachem, Abram) – who have grown up in the small town of Jedwabne and have known each other since 1925, when they were all five years old.

Subtitled “A History in Fourteen Lessons,” the multiple Lortel Award-winning play follows these 10 from 1925 to 2003, through the upheavals of 80 years of history marked by rotating vicious regimes (Stalin’s Red Army, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, post-WWII USSR), increased brutality and genocidal antisemitism. Some will become victims, while others will become perpetrators. None will remain unscathed.

We meet these classmates in Lesson 1 as grade schoolers, singing songs and introducing themselves. The mood is light and welcoming. They tell what their father does and what they want to do when they grow up. As they speak, each character’s name, date of birth and date of death are written on the enormous blackboard that is the scenic centerpiece. Some will die in 1941; others as late as 2002. Before even hearing their stories, we already know who shall live (mostly Catholics) and who shall die (mostly Jews) and when.

Although Polish-Jewish relations were politically complicated then, these youngsters are merely curious about their differences.

All of that will change soon enough. The choices each character makes in response to these historical events determine the courses of their lives and the demons they will later battle.

In 1937 (Lesson 4), the four Catholic boys band together, turning as brutish and menacing as their government. They reject and betray their Jewish classmates. Catholicism is the “one true faith” and one brings a large cross to class for prayer sessions, “which means it’s time for our Jewish friends to remove themselves to the back of the classroom.” When the Soviets invade, the “Four Musketeers” commit atrocities that they blame on the Communists. When the Nazis arrive, they switch sides and continue preying on the Jews, including their classmates. Zygmunt (a terrifying Ryan Czerwonko) beats up Menachem for his new bicycle while Zocha (the always magnificent Deborah Martin), his Catholic sweetheart, watches helplessly. The four thugs laugh and then defiantly pray to Jesus.

Kirill Rubtsov, Ilia Volok, Jeremy Beazlie, Ryan Czerwonko

That same year, Abram (the charismatic Richard Topol) leaves for New York, the only classmate who escapes the horrors about to unfold. He becomes a rabbi and sends letters home. As the unofficial narrator, announcing each lesson, his happy, settled life in America contrasts starkly with the chaotic ruthlessness of Poland, where friendships and loyalty devolve into violence, prejudice and even murder. When Jakub is suspected of being an informant, three musketeers beat Jakub to death and slit his throat in a gut-wrenching scene staged on a ladder. “They were my neighbors,” Dora flatly recalls. “I knew them. Just laughing. Making jokes.”

Deb Martin, Gigi Watson

The Jedwabne pogrom took place in 1941 (Lesson 10), and 1941 is the play’s pivotal turning point. The town’s Polish citizens killed its 1,600 Jewish residents in one night by locking them in a barn and burning the barn down. These were ordinary people, including our musketeers, doing and covering up unspeakable things. Afterward, the perpetrators maintained that the Nazis were responsible for the massacre, a travesty that continued until a 2008 investigation revealed the truth.

Act I ends with the wedding between Wladek (the musketeer who watched, but did not participate in Jakub’s murder) and Rachelka (the renowned Chulpan Khamatova), the only Jew left in Jedwabne, in one of the play’s most gut-wrenching scenes. Wladek (wonderful Ilia Volok) has vowed to save her with one caveat – she must convert to Catholicism and change her name to Marianna. Shrouded in a white sheet with lipstick smeared across her face, she is a shell-shocked hostage, a dybbuk trapped in an earth-bound body. The three murderous musketeers shower her with wedding gifts of booty stolen from now-dead Jews. The despair in her eyes is shattering.

The play is full of such difficult moments, yet Golyak manages to blunt them with aesthetic elements that help the audience achieve some breathing space from the sheer horror. The opening scene, for example, is staged as a reading. Scripts in hand, the actors are in contemporary garb, evoking the timelessness and timeliness of the play’s issues. Characters draw faces on ghost-white balloons and set them free to float upward, a metaphorical gesture that lessens the impact of watching the inhumanness that might otherwise catapult us over the edge. Folding ladders, a bedsheet, original music and stunning lighting and projections all add to the production’s power and mystical aura.

The acting is indescribably sublime, each actor both a searing individual and a perfect ensemble member.

Chupan Khamatova (center)
 

That the play is rooted in a true story makes “Our Class” feel like an important history lesson, especially in these times of revisionist history, mob mentality, “othering” and seemingly insurmountable global antisemitism, violence, and raw hatred. The questions Slobodzianek poses are no less pertinent today than they were 80 years ago: Who is more to blame, those who incite, those who bear silent witness or those who act? Does it even matter? How do boys become murderers and friends betray friends? How do you know and tell the truth when there are so many to choose from? And most of all, how do you go on as a survivor of such trauma?

Marianna and Wladek stay married until the play’s end. Marianna reflects on her life with ambivalence and resolve, summing it up in seven little words that have become our mantra: “We Jews. We’ve survived such things before.”

‘Our Class’ – Written by Tadeusz Słobodzianek. Adapted by Norman Allen. Directed by Igor Golyak. Staged by Arlekin at the Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, through June 22.

For tickets and additional information, go to:  arlekinplayers.com.

(Editor’s Note: This review previously appeared in The Jewish Journal)

Posted by

0

‘Bull in a China Shop’ Brings A Powerhouse Feminist to Life

Cast of Treehouse Collective’s ‘Bull in a China Shop’. Photos: Brian Higgins

‘Bull in a China Shop.’ Written by Bryna Turner. Directed by Lisa Tierney. Stage Manager – Nicole O’Keefe; Lighting Designer – Dan Clawson; Set Designer – Britt Ambruson; Sound Designer/Sound and Light Op – Dannie Smith. Presented by The Tree House Collective at Abbott Memorial Theatre at Hovey Players, 9 Spring St., Waltham through June 29.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Mary Emma Woolley may be the least-known important historical figure you’ve never heard of. A radical feminist, education reformer and suffragette, she served as president of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937. She also lived a fairly openly lesbian life and shared a life-long partnership with Jeannette Marks, her former student and a firebrand academic revolutionary and writer.

Thanks to Bull in a China Shop, Mount Holyoke 2012 alumna Bryna Turner’s smart, ensemble-based one-act play, and The Tree House Collective’s skillful production, the story of Woolley’s fascinating life and important legacy are a little less unfamiliar.

Turner has a lot of material to work with and she covers a lot of ground in a mere 80 minutes, offering glimpses of American women’s history from 1900 to 1930s against the intimate details of Woolley and Marks’ 55-year-long relationship. Inspired by letters the two women wrote during absences from each other, her funny and tender script is also feisty and pedagogic. Her characters liberally sprinkle their conversations with spicy F-bombs one minute and rhapsodize about Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” the next.

Karen Dervin as Dean Welsh and Linnea Lyerly as Woolley

The play begins as Woolley (Linnea Lyerly) considers leaving her professorial position at Wellesley College for the presidency at Mount Holyoke. She and Marks (Heidi White) discuss the move while embracing on a tiny bed (Britt Ambruson’s minimalist set design is maximally effective). Like any couple, the two struggle with the adjustment Woolley’s position of power and her career ambitions would have on their relationship. With a light yet insightful pen, Turner makes clear that this lesbian couple is no more immune to the stress of these challenges than any heterosexual married couple might be. In both, it is assumed that the non-breadwinning wife would play a secondary, supportive role.

Although Marks is anxious and reticent, they do, of course, move to Mount Holyoke, where Woolley exercises prodigious power and Marks is an English professor, living in a faculty dorm. “I never wanted to be a wife,” Marks complains. Intoxicated by the heady opportunity to smash every social, political, cultural, and academic norm that constricts women, Wooley snaps back, “I want a partner, not a child. Grow up.”

Turner weaves a lot of facts into her play. We learn, by way of pithy, clever dialogue, that in the past, the college had placed an emphasis on women’s education in service to society (all students were required to learn laundry skills, for example, and attend daily chapel). Woolley, by contrast, laid the foundation for a women’s education to be valued for its intellectual merit. Period. On her watch, education for education’s sake would no longer be a brass ring reserved for men.

Ever the proverbial bull in a China shop, Woolley minces no words. “You want a training ground for good pious wives?” she asks during a practice interview with the Mount Holyoke hiring committee. “I’ll give you fully evolved human beings. Are you afraid they won’t find husbands? So what. If a man is interested in headless women, send him to France.”

Alas, while Woolley’s moves to upend the concept of womanhood are met with applause and adulation from the student body, the stuffier, straighter board of trustees and heavy-hitter donors prove a tougher sell.

Hannah Young as Felicity, Lyerly and White

Dean Welch (Karen Dervin) tries to rein Wooley in when she treads too close to the board’s lines in the sand, but Woolley pays no heed until, at last, it’s too late. Before that eventuality, however, there are many delicious subplots to unfold.

There is, for example, the secret fan club that springs up on campus, dedicated to worshipping the romance between Woolley and Marks. Fan club president Pearl (Anneke Salvadori), a student of Marks’ who is so besotted with her teacher that she stalks her like a lovesick puppy, actually pens sonnets about her eyes in the student evaluation forms.

There is a suffrage protest that lands Marks and Woolley on opposite sides of the college administration’s official stand. There is Woolley’s three-month trip to China, which ignites Marks’ predictable affair with Pearl. Felicity (Hannah Young), Marks’ protective and invaluable roommate, is a grounding voice of reason amidst the ensuing domestic chaos.

Turner also raises plenty of philosophical questions clothed in adroitly crafted, though at times dense, conversation. Is Woolley a realist, opportunist or idealist when she doesn’t risk taking a public stand on women’s suffrage until after receiving the board’s approval? Is she sincere or a manipulator, and, at the end of the day, do her motives matter as much as her actions?

The Tree House Collection has mounted a production that feels greater than the sum of its parts. Director Lisa Tierney makes admirable use of the simplest of sets to evoke a bedroom, office, classroom, rooming house, train, and jail. The pacing is brisk, with pleasing, period musical interludes (Dannie Smith) that accompany quick set changes between scenes.

And then there is the crackerjack acting. As Woolley, Lyerly is a complicated, powerful presence, as beguiling and charming as she is frustrating and infuriating. White plays Marks as an intense, humorless professor who seems to be in need of either a chill pill or a new lover. (Young, as roommate Felicity, tries her best to steady Marks’ listing boat).

Heidi White as Marks

But the real surprises and pleasures are Dervin, as Dean Welsh, and Salvadori, as Pearl. Dean Welsh presents as all business and conformity on the outside, but Dervin’s nuanced performance imbues her with a hint of rebellion and a wink of humor. Salvadori simply steals every scene she is in. Her Pearl is dry-witted, wry and droll, and Salvadori deadpans even her most outrageous lines to great effect. Although the scene where Pearl fantasizes about wreaking havoc on Marks after being dumped by her for the returning Woolley could use some editorial tweaking, Salvadori’s delivery could not be more spot on.

Bull in a China Shop debuted off-Broadway in 2017 at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater, where it earned glowing reviews and played to sold-out audiences. Lincoln Center has offered Turner a commission for her next play. I, for one, can’t wait to see what bauble catches her eye.

For more information, visit https://www.treehousecollective.us/home

Posted by

0

Gloucester Stage Breathes Fresh Life into A Beloved Classic, ‘The Glass Menagerie’

Liza Giangrande, Patrick O’Konis in Gloucester Stage company’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’
Photos by: Shawn Henry

‘The Glass Menagerie.’ Written by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Doug Lockwood. Scenic Design by Jenna McFarland Lord; Costume Design by Nia Safarr Banks; Lighting Design by Amanda Fallon; Sound Design by Aubrey Dube. Presented by Gloucester Stage at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, through June 28.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Tennessee Williams’ classic autobiographical story of a struggling family, The Glass Menagerie, is no stranger to Broadway and community theater stages. It premiered in Chicago in 1944, where it was championed by several Midwest critics, and moved to Broadway in 1945. Subsequent Broadway productions were mounted in 1965, 1975, 1983, 1994, and 2005, with the likes of Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, and Jessica Lange playing matriarch Amanda Wingfield. The 2013 revival transferred to Broadway from the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA. Known as a staple in college and community theaters’ repertoire since its 1944 début, the play and its straightforward staging is a reliable crowd pleaser and audience draw.

It’s hard to imagine any theater company could add anything new. Yet, Gloucester Stage (2025 Elliot Norton Award Winner for Outstanding Play, Midsize for its production of Hombres) has effectively (and thankfully) taken the road less traveled in its presentation of the 80-year-old classic with an interesting and thought-provoking production that allows the audience to experience Williams’ script anew through an exciting, hyper-focused and refractive lens.

Williams advises in his preface, Author’s Production Notes, “Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is actually or should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.”

Kudos to Director Doug Lockwood and Scenic Designer Jenna McFarland Lord for taking those words to heart.

De’Lon Grant

The Glass Menagerie is a seven-scene memory play with a storyline that follows Tom Wingfield (De’Lon Grant) as he looks back on his family life in St. Louis during the 1930s. In the opening scene, Tom appears slightly offstage to deliver his soliloquy. “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic,” he says, warning that what he is about to share may not be THE truth, but it is certainly what he remembers (or thinks he does). “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you an illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

He describes exactly who we will see — his mother, Amanda, his sister, Laura, himself, a mystery man — and who we will NOT see: his father, who was a telephone man who “fell in love with long distances.”

The set reflects the otherworldly dreaminess Tom describes. Gauzy, torn gold floor-length drapes enclose the stage like curtains around a freestanding shower/tub. As Amanda’s voice becomes audible, Tom pulls back the curtains and enters the Wingfield residence.

On stage are Amanda (Adrianne Krstansky), Laura (Liza Giangrande) and four chairs. Amanda and Laura sit at an imaginary table, pantomiming eating. Their gestures are in perfect spatial sync, creating the impression that they (and, therefore, we) are suspended in this dreamlike world of memory and mirage, where props are invisible and reality is a hermetically sealed snow globe. Even the only wall art, a baroque gold frame that is supposed to hold a portrait of Tom’s father, is empty.

Grant, Giangrande, and Adrianne Krstansky

This minimalistic approach allows the audience to focus on Williams’ words and the true genius of the script. Without the distraction of glimmering glass animals and ornate period furniture, we too become submerged in Tom’s recollections, a key element of The Glass Menagerie’s success as a “memory play.”

A faded Southern belle of middle age, Amanda deals with her present by hanging onto her past. Abandoned by her husband, she lives with her children. Laura, in her 20s and afflicted with a limp, perhaps caused by polio, is debilitatingly shy. Tom, her younger brother, secretly writes poetry and supports the family by working a warehouse job that he hates. A fêted debutante in her Southern youth, Amanda longs for the creature comforts and male attention she enjoyed and spends most of her time reliving and recounting those happier times.

Amanda is also obsessed with finding a “gentleman caller” for Laura, whose crippling anxiety and introversion have sabotaged her every move, with the result of dropping out of high school and a secretarial course. Laura spends her days in her own homespun world, playing records on the Victrola and polishing and communing with her “glass menagerie,” a collection of tiny animals she engages with as a toddler would in fantasy play. Like Amanda, she treads the path of escapism.

The first five scenes of the play (“Preparation for a Gentleman Caller”) draw to an end as Amanda bribes Tom to bring home some nice young man from the warehouse by promising that, once Laura is married off, Tom is free to follow in his father’s footsteps. He tells her that Jim, a work acquaintance, will join them for dinner the next night. Amanda sets to work, reimagining the apartment, Laura, and the future.

After intermission, when the curtains are again drawn aside, the set revealed is firmly grounded in the “real” world of tangible accoutrements. After all, the very first outsider ever to enter the Wingfield inner sanctum might be scared away by anything short of at least the pretense of “normalcy.” Even Tom’s father is restored to his throne, majestically peering down at the chaos his legacy has sown.

O’Konis and Grant

Subtitled “The Gentleman Calls,” these last two scenes are Williams at his heartbreaking best. Jim O’Connor (Patrick O’Konis, 2025 Elliot Norton Award Winner for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play, Small), the man Tom has brought home, turns out to have gone to high school with the Wingfield siblings. Tom was “the” big man on campus, starring in the school play and excelling at any sport thrown his way. Like Tom, he is disappointed at his current lot in life and his hope to shine again is conveyed by his study of public speaking, radio engineering, and ideas of self-improvement.

The ending is predictably dark (this is Williams, after all), although there are bursts of cheer and light as Jim and Laura reminisce over their very different high school experiences. The real tragedy is that these two do connect in an authentic way, only possible in the living room of a home where its residents live in a dream world.

The acting in this four-hander is uniformly stellar, the direction more than spot on, and the script a critic’s delight. Even if you think you’ve seen The Glass Menagerie enough times for one lifetime, be sure to catch this version at Gloucester Stage through June 28. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.For more information, visit: https://gloucesterstage.com/glassmenagerie/

Posted by

0

Quirky, Funny and Flaky — NSMT’s ‘Waitress’ Is Feel-Good Summer Fare

Christine Dwyer (Jenna) and Brandi Chavonne Massey (Becky) in WAITRESS at North Shore Music Photo©Paul Lyden

‘Waitress.’ Written by Jessie Nelson. Music and Lyrics by Sara Bareilles. Based on the motion picture written by Adrienne Shelly. Directed by Kevin P. Hill. Music Direction by Milton Granger; Choreography by Ashley Chasteen; Scenic and Lighting Design by Jack Mehler; Costume Design by Rebecca Glick; Sound Design by Alex Berg. Presented by North Shore Music Theatre, 54 Dunham Rd, Beverly, MA through June 15.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Who doesn’t love a thick slice of pie, especially in the summer when fresh fillings are ripe and especially sweet? “Sugar, butter, flour” is the mantra chanted like a lullaby throughout Waitress, the wonderfully staged musical now playing at North Shore Music Theatre. Although pie takes center stage throughout the almost two-and-a-half-hour performance (with one intermission), Waitress is no simple, indulgent, or sentimental high. Meaty themes like domestic abuse, infidelity, empowerment, motherhood, and self-fulfillment are the secret ingredients that keep the show rolling and the audience from lapsing into a sugar coma.

Sara Bareilles’ witty, pop-ish lyrics and score marry the narrative requirements of musical theater with a variety of styles ranging from ballads and a country hootenanny to stunning duets and wacky, hysterical solos. The actors are uniformly well cast, from their vocal talents to their abilities to both shine as individuals and meld as an ensemble. Jack Mehler’s scenic and lighting designs are well thought out and effective. Director Kevin P. Hill makes good use of NSMT’s signature theatre-in-the-round stage and center trap door lift and sets a spot-on pacing. Add a live band (Music Director Milton Granger) and excellent sound (Alex Berg), and, production-wise, Waitress is as enjoyable as any production I’ve seen at NSMT.

The plot, which some have described as “half-baked,” is nonetheless a fine table on which to set this entertaining musical.

Christine Dwyer

Jenna (a fabulous Christine Dwyer) is both an expert pie baker and waitress at Joe’s Pie Diner, somewhere in the American South. Baking is her way of continuing her mother’s legacy and flexing her own creative muscle. Stuck in a stereotypical abusive relationship with her high school beau, Earl (Matt DeAngelis, who does the best he can with his cardboard character), she works long hours and considers her co-workers to be her real family.

Jenna is also afraid she might be pregnant (no spoiler; she is) and it is only the coaxing of her fellow waitresses, sassy, brazen Becky (Brandi Chavonne Massey, terrific) and gangly, nerdy Dawn (Maggie Elizabeth May, ditto) that gets her to pee on that proverbial stick.

An unplanned and unwanted pregnancy by a man she doesn’t love only adds to her load. (That she remains with Earl, a one-note bully and narcissist who demands her tip money the second she gets home, is tough to accept plot-wise.) She hides the pregnancy from Earl while she tries to come up with a plan to escape his clutches and start a new life for her and her baby.

Dwyer (Jenna) and Brandon Kalm (Dr. Pomatter)

For the time being, though, what is poor Jenna to do? Why, have an affair with her charismatic (and very married) obstetrician, Dr. Pomatter (a charming Brandon Kalm), of course! (Another plot head-scratcher some might find unrelatable and off-putting).

Meanwhile, back at the diner, Becky and Jenna help Dawn overcome her inertia and self-doubt and create an online dating profile. Almost as quickly as Jenna’s pregnancy test registers positive, Dawn gets a bite from the irrepressible, equally geeky Ogie (played with verve and vivacity by Courter Simmons). Their scenes together are among the most hilarious and weirdly adorable.

Jenna discovers the possibility of a way out of her abysmal home life when Joe (Keith Lee Grant, in a role tailor-made for him), the elderly owner of the eponymous diner, suggests she enter a pie baking contest. The prize is $20,000, her pies are definitely good enough, and she has nothing to lose. After much cajoling, she’s in.

]

Eventually, all ends well (enough) for all the characters and Jenna embraces motherhood with a single-mindedness previously reserved for baking and inventing pies. If this were a dramatic play, no amount of clever dialogue could overcome the light-weight plot line, unnuanced character development and too pat ending. Luckily, Waitress is a musical and the talented Bareilles has crafted a funny, heartfelt and musically exciting score of 19 numbers that keep the action moving, the audience laughing, and the NSMT tent rocking.

For it is through the songs that the subplots and characters unfold.

In “The Negative,” for example, the three waitresses focus on the negative as they pray for Jenna’s pregnancy stick to stop at one line. “Club Knocked Up” is the obstetrician’s waiting room where the very pregnant patients pay homage to the era of the Andrews and Lennon sisters. Simmons, as Ogie, brings down the house with his Pee Wee Herman antics in the belly-laughers, “Never Getting Rid of Me,” and “I Love You Like A Table.” Massey, as Becky, then sets that house on fire in “I Didn’t Plan It.”

Bareilles really lets loose in Jenna and Dr. Pomatter’s duets, both musically and lyrically. “Bad Idea,” on which act one ends, is a slinky, sexy, tribute to the power of attraction. “It’s a bad idea, me and you; Let’s just keep kissing ‘til we come to…” Dwyer and Kalm croon as they throw themselves at each other and onto the gynecology examination table, limbs and voices silkily entwined. The ballad, “You Matter to Me,” gives the audience another opportunity to savor their harmonization.

At the end of the day, though, it is Jenna’s story, and it’s only fitting that she has the show’s two most introspective numbers. In the climactic “She Used to Be Mine,” Jenna unflinchingly assesses who she has become and who she wants to be in a song that is a rollercoaster of emotion and range, giving Dwyer the chance to really strut her vocal stuff. “Everything Changes” is her tribute to the power of motherhood.

The show’s finale, “Opening Up,” circles back to the moral of Waitress — it really does take a village for an individual to survive and thrive. The diner community is that village, holding them up and helping them keep it together. “Take a breath when you need to be reminded that with days like these, we can only do the best we can,” the company sings. Amen to that.

For more information, go to nsmt.org

Posted by

0

Charming, Engaging, and Clever — A.R.T.’s Musical ‘Two Strangers’ Has It All!

Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts in A.R.T.’s ‘Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)’.
Photos: Joel Zayac

‘Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).’ Written by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan. Directed and Choreographed by Tim Jackson. Scenic and Costume Design by Soutra Gilmour; Lighting Design by Jack Knowles; Sound Design by Tony Gayle and Cody Spencer; Orchestrations by Lux Pyramid; Music Direction by Jeffrey Campos. Presented by A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge through June 29.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), in its American debut at the American Repertory Theatre,is the perfect antidote to our bleak, cold spring. This sunny, upbeat two-hander musical romantic comedy is as beguiling as it is impeccably acted, directed and produced. In short, it is a full-blown fabulous evening of musical theater at its finest.

Unlike too many musicals these days, Two Strangers has a complicated plot and fetching music with lyrics that are Sondheim-esque in their conversational fluency and relevance. Add to that a smart, slick set (Soutra Gilmour), superb band (Music Direction by Jeffrey Campos), impeccable direction (Tim Jackson) and perfectly matched and equally talented leads (Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty), and…well…you get the picture.

The premise is worthy of a Meg Ryan-Billy Crystal/Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks blockbuster “meet cute” film. Dougal, an excited and excitable 30-something-year-old Brit, has arrived in New York to attend the Christmastime wedding of the father he has never met. Robin, the 30-something-year-old older sister of the bride, is charged with picking him up at the airport. The two couldn’t possibly be more different.

Dougal (a bouncy, adorable and charismatic Tutty) is a bundle of enthusiastic energy. He’s pumped up to be in New York for the first time (“Are They Ready for Me in New York?” he sings in the opening number, “New York”) and marvels, wide-eyed and bushy tailed, at his first subway ride.

Robin is the jaded and pessimistic foil to Dougal’s blind optimism. A disillusioned New Yorker, working as a barista in a coffee shop and barely making ends meet, she is waiting for something to jump-start her “real” life. Her opening number, “What’ll It Be?” (“Is there something ’round the corner in the distancе? If you’re changing, what’ll it be that makes thе difference? Will you notice, will you feel it? What’ll it be?”) is a lamentation to dreams deferred. 

Dougal is in the same boat over the pond (he lives in his mother’s basement and works as an usher at a cinema), but he has the confidence and faith that fate and time are on his side. Robin’s glass is more than half empty; Dougal toasts hers with one that’s more than half full.

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan have crafted lyrics and music that are varied and reflective of both the two characters and the various situations they encounter. Tutty and Pitts have sparkling chemistry, and they are both engagingly agile actors with spot-on timing, inflection, physicality, and dancing and singing gifts. In the magical first act closing number, “American Express,” with its tip of the hat to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the two actors really get to strut their stuff. (Kudos to Pitts and Tutty for sharp enunciation and to Tony Gayle and Cody Spencer’s crystal clear sound.)

Gilmour’s set design of stacks of suitcases etched with neon is simple and elegant. It spins throughout the show, underscoring how Robin and Dougal seem to be walking in place while circling each other. Magically, the wardrobes and large suitcases open to a coffee shop, a fleabag hotel, a Chinese restaurant and more. Jack Knowles’ dreamy lighting creates starry skies, dance floors and even a Plaza Hotel suite out of thin air.

The second act is more serious and meatier, as Dougal and Robin begin to open up to each other and provide compassionate reality checks. Robin gets Dougal to acknowledge his daddy fantasies and Dougal eventually succeeds in gaining Robin’s trust. And yes, the two do actually carry a wedding cake across New York.

By the play’s end, it is clear they have had a profound and indelible effect on each other, and that their connection has morphed into more than friendship. To their credit, Barne and Buchan resist the temptation to wrap it all up in a neat, happy rom-com bow, leaving the audience heartful, hopeful and thoroughly charmed.

Highly recommended.

For more information, visit americanrepertorytheater.org