BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
THEATRESCENE.ORG - JANUARY 2023
By: Darryl Reilly
Witty hats depicting a teapot, a candlestick and a clock, vigorously and continuously replaced by charismatic actor Tucker Dally Johnston on his head while emoting in broad English and French accents, elicited gales of laughter from children and adults during this 70-minute iteration of Beauty and the Beast. Mr. Johnston also merrily appears as a frantic Rip Taylor-style version of Belle’s father. This funny and joyously theatrical pantomime-style production was presented by the Bronx-based Irish-themed Poor Mouth Theatre Company.
Tucker Dally Johnston as Teapot (Photo credit: Scott Kennedy)
The pantomime theatrical form is popular in the United Kingdom during the holiday season and is characterized by songs, slapstick, gags, gender-crossed casting, all used to spoof a famous story. Here, there’s audience participation including being instructed to cheer and boo at appropriate times, and to hold up small green paper tree cutouts during forest scenes. Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” The Tubes’ “She’s a Beauty” and The Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party),” are among the classic songs that have been tweaked into the saucy score.
These elements and The Benny Hill Show theme are all used throughout playwright Scott Kennedy’s cheeky though good-natured adaptation of the classic tale well known from the classic 1991 animated Disney film. The core plot remains the same, a haughty young man is turned into a creature by a witch and can only find deliverance thru attaining mutual love.
Corinne Delaney as Belle and Michelle Hendee as Beast. (Photo credit: Scott Kennedy)
Wearing that familiar blue and white outfit, the winning Corinne Delaney is a caustic Belle. Michelle Hendee’s Beast is a playful delight. Resembling an animation with a prominent codpiece, the physically imposing and twinkling George Roach makes for a comically solid Gaston. Their faces adorned with obviously fake beards, Suzanne Hockstein and Kathryn Donnelly are riotous as singing townsmen; Ms. Donnelly is also a cranky wolf. Looking quite Pirates of the Caribbean, is musical virtuoso Richard Hockstein on guitar.
Co-directors Don Creedon and Mr. Kennedy’s artful small-scale staging achieves momentum and visual splendor on the minimal playing area and in the auditorium. Sight gags and jokey stage pictures abound; these are aided by Ms. Hockstein’s smartly resourceful props and costume design. The characters are further realized by Ms. Donnelly’s vivid makeup design. Mr. Creedon’s sound design adeptly renders the effects and Ms. Donnelly and Mr. and Mrs. Hockstein’s punchy musical arrangements.
This zesty Beauty and the Beast was originally performed in December 2022. Its January 2023 special return engagement is part of the Origin Theatre Company’s 1st Irish Festival 2023. The program includes more than 20 theatrical productions, play readings and film screenings across New York City over three weeks. For information, visit www.origintheatre.org
PYTHON
ONSTAGE - October 2015
Paul Nugent and Conor McManus in Brendan Connellan's "Python"
PHOTO: LIZ GUARRACINO
‘Python’ at Poor Mouth Theatre. ‘Father Ted’ meets ‘Breaking Bad’
By Thomas Burns Scully
It took me three attempts to see ‘Python’ at the An Beal Bocht Cafe. Not an inconsiderable time investment, given its location in the Bronx at the end of the 1 Train. The first time I went to see it I had the wrong start time and so missed the show. The second time I was booked to go see it, the venue flooded before I got there. The third time, however, was the charm, and I’m glad I was able to find the time to go, because it was a fun little show. Something of a standalone in the Origin Theatre 1st Irish Festival in the that it was unrelentingly fluffy and the most cartoonish of all the shows in the festival. That’s not a criticism, however it was unexpected. The descriptions of the show paint it as an anarchic comic crime thriller, that and its atmospheric noir-y poster were a little misleading as to the show’s ambience. I was expecting a Tarantino affair, what I got was much sillier, like if Graham Linehan were to write a ‘Breaking Bad’ parody episode of ‘Father Ted’. Again, no bad thing, but not what I was expecting. As I said before, I liked ‘Python’, it was light, silly and funny.
The play is the story of a university criminology professor called Daniel (Paul Nugent). One night he decides to tag along on a night patrol with his police officer friend Marshall (David O’Hara). Whilst out in the rough part of town, the pair of them stumble on the beaten-up body of “Python” (Mark Byrne) a notorious local drug-dealer. He asks them for help, and they take him in to custody. At the police station, things take a turn for the strange. Daniel suddenly becomes initiated in to Dublin’s criminal underworld, meeting Python’s associates Shingles (Conor McManus) and Vinny the Pole (Laurence Lowry) and he finds, to his surprise, that he quite likes the whole affair.
Brendan Connellan’s script is replete with good gags, plenty of comic hyperbole and silly references. He makes light of overly image conscious crime-lords and the fraught nature of modern male masculinity, keeping the audience giggling throughout. Occasionally he flirts with the idea of the play having a message or a moral, but while he flirts he doesn’t get much past second base. I’m in two minds as to whether or not I’m okay with this. On the one hand the play is funny enough that it stands up well as is, needs no apology or summation, and why do stories need morals anyway? On the other, with the groundwork already laid there, I’d bet the devil my head that a moral would come quite naturally to the story without cheating it of much comedy. A little food for thought, but more a light snack than a full meal.
Performances are strong across the board. Paul Nugent’s giddy schoolboy enthusiasm at a new-found sense of empowerment is great fun to watch. O’Hara’s work as Marshall is a neat study in the comedy of two steps forward, nine steps back. Both Conor McManus and Laurence Lowry play Irish Thug types whose veneer of bad-assery is surprisingly quick to come off; highly enjoyable character turns, both. Mark Byrne plays Python like an Irish football hooligan, and is generally fun. There’s a nice edge to the role though, Byrne plays Python like someone who, in another time, would have gotten in to the IRA, rather than drug dealing. Although there was something funny going on with his voice, maybe it was just the day I saw it, but he sounded like he was working a hair too hard to appear the Irish Tough, which I found slightly distracting. Other than that, all good.
Director Don Creedon has put together the show very nicely, especially considering his limited resources. The An Beal Bocht Cafe is a lovely locale, but there’s no getting away from how small the space is, particularly the stage. To that end, Creedon’s staging is highly minimal, no notable set to speak of, and he has obviously encouraged his cast to use the centre aisle of the theatre in lieu of a thrust. All this creates a feeling of space that the An Beal Bocht wouldn’t otherwise have. You can feel the actors straining at their restrictions, but he makes it work. Creedon also keeps the show’s timing and pace nice and tight. The runtime is a tidy seventy minutes (give or take) and everything moves swiftly in the mean time. Good bit of work.
Overall, I’d stick by my initial assessment of ‘Python’. It’s like the nonexistent ‘Breaking Bad’ episode of ‘Father Ted’. It is a set of slightly dysfunctional but lovable characters getting themselves accidentally mixed up with organized crime, falling in over their heads, and then one of them finds out he quite enjoys it. What could be more Saturday Night on BBC 2? I found the whole affair rather enjoyable. Light, fun, and inconsequential in a good way. Every now and then you need a good giggle, and that’s what ‘Python’ delivers.
THE IRISH ECHO - April 15 to 21, 2015
Brendan Goggins and Aaron Souza in Janice Young’s “Who Got the Girl,” which was performed at the Poor Mouth Theatre Company as part of its 5th anniversary celebrations.
PHOTO: LIZ GUARRACINO
By Peter McDermott
When passing An Beal Bocht Café in the Bronx one day towards the end of the last decade, the author Colin Broderick saw some redevelopment taking place. It appeared that a new room was being added. He called up his friend Don Creedon to suggest that it might be a good time and place to form a theater company.
“He didn’t have to ask me twice,” Creedon said in an interview last week.
They named it the Poor Mouth Theatre Company – drawing on the English title of the Irish-language classic by Flann O’Brien, which inspired the name of the café on West 238th Street. The founders will celebrate five years with a special five-play production this week.
Their plot didn’t come out of vacuum. The men had form, as a detective at Scotland Yard might say. But not as partners in crime; rather they had both been prominent in the artistic ferment experienced after large numbers of immigrant 20-somethings settled in the Bronx from the mid-1980s on.
“There was quite a scene there,” Creedon said.
Broderick had been a member of the Irish Bronx Theatre Company, founded by Dubliners Jimmy Smallhorne and the late Chris O’Neill, a familiar face from back home as Michael Riordan in TV’s “The Riordans.” Meanwhile, director, playwright and actor Creedon founded the Macalla Theatre Company.
The native of Clontarf in north Dublin, left a permanent and pensionable civil service job in 1985 to be an actor in New York.
“Like a lot of parents [would be], mine were ambivalent,” he said. “The idea was to get a good job — be a solicitor or a teacher or a civil servant.
“But parents also want their children to be happy and I was very unhappy,” said Creedon, who studied for two years at the Brendan Smith Academy of Acting in his native city.
The civil service employment rolls were increased to deal with youth joblessness, but the flip side of the policy allowed for extended leaves of absence. Creedon took three years, and never went back. He joked that he might yet turn up in Dublin to claim that pension.
In 1986, he got a “fairly small role” in the Irish Arts Center production of “The Tunnel,” which was written by Terry George, directed by Jim Sheridan and included Frank McCourt in the cast. “I was delighted to be working with that group of people,” he remembered.
“Frank was still a teacher,” Creedon said, adding that that hasn’t changed much for New York’s Irish actors.
“We all need our day jobs,” said the Dubliner, who is currently an executive assistant and has been involved with other types of office work such as desktop publishing.
Actors have traditionally been drawn to jobs that require competence, diligence and hard work, but that don’t overuse the creative or what Creedon called the “writing” side of the brain.
There is always the temptation in the profession, he said, to throw caution to the wind and concentrate wholly on getting acting jobs. But that, he said, can place an “unfair burden” on the artist that in the end compromises the work.
“I used to think that to be successful you had to achieve a lot of fame,” Creedon said. “But I’ve evolved. Success is continuing to work at things that really interest you and inspire you.
“I’ve come to respect people who pursue their own art and manage to survive,” he added.
Creedon praised the work of the well-established Irish Arts Center, the Irish Repertory Theatre and, the more recent addition, the Origin Theatre Company, but he believes there’s a need for a company that does more readings and development.
“With low overheads,” he said, “it’s possible to take risks.
“Sometimes you’ll say: ‘That wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.’ But that’s what a writer needs.
“It’s better than being in ‘development hell,’ where the playwright never finds out,” added Creedon, who lives in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., with his partner Alison Choate, a graphic artist.
“New work, new plays,” are what interest Creedon. “Writing, rewriting and the reading process,” he said, “and then finally getting it to the stage.”
The Poor Mouth, these days, is close to doing a production a month and in celebration of that – and its five years — will stage five short works, on three occasions, this week, in a space that Creedon calls a “little piece of heaven.”
THE IRISH VOICE - Wed., Jan 9, 2013 to Tues., 15, 2013
A Tale of Three Irelands
THE RIVERDALE PRESS - Wed., Nov 3, 2010 to Tues., Nov 9, 2010
Theater is Alive in Riverdale
Puttin' On Your Shorts2
Poor Mouth Theatre Company
Review by Adam Wisnieski
Conor McManus in Janice Young's "The Big Five O"
There was no way the members of An Beal Bocht Cafe’s new theater company could get away with putting on the poor mouth on Oct 28.
The show was sold out. The place was packed.
An Beal Bocht is not only the title of a somewhat-obscure 1941 novel by Flann O’Brien, translated from Irish it means “the poor mouth,” which comes from the Gaelic expression “Putting on the pour mouth” — to pretend things are worse off than they are as a defense or an excuse.
But the pub/cafe on West 238th Street that bears the name was the site of applause and bunches of flowers last week, as the aptly-named Poor Mouth Theatre Company presented Puttin’ on Your Shorts 2, five short plays with actors and playwrights from Riverdale.
The upper level of An Beal Bocht Cafe was closed off from the bar and only accessible from the second entrance outside. It was manned by Pat Gilheany, who was in the unfortunate position of having to tell people their only choice was the waiting list or taking comfort at the bar.
In March, the Poor Mouth Theatre Company debuted at An Beal Bocht on the tiny stage built specifically for the group, founded by Colin Broderick, Don Creedon and Stephen Smallhorne, with the first production of Puttin’ On Your Shorts. Mr. Creedon’s Guy Walks Into a Bar soon followed and won the Audience Award at the 1st Irish Theatre Festival, held across New York City from Sept. 7 to Oct. 4.
Last week, the first short, Everything Must Go — written and acted in by Jamie Budge Gehman, and directed by author Mr. Broderick — portrayed a husband and wife on the verge of divorce holding a garage sale. Like many of the evening’s shorts, it presented a serious theme in a comedic light.
“I hope you’re happy with the Irish treasure you just got for the price of an Irish breakfast!” yelled Jim, played by Gordon Tashjian, to a customer buying a vase that reminded him of happier days with his wife.
Chris Campion’s one-man show, Untitled Monologue, a humorous, absurd story, told the tale of one man’s journey from rock star dreams to a more sobering reality of splitting up a fight on the street between his neighbor and a passerby who didn’t like that he was selling chocolate chip cookies for diabetes.
Scott Kennedy’s Bill’s Arc depicted a group of playwrights, workshopping each other’s writing. It began with Bill reading the last line of his play and sitting down satisfied before other members berated him for his “sick and vile” manuscript that featured goats, pool sticks and toll booth clerks.
Bill Rutkoski’s one-man show, Christ is the Answer … But What’s the Question? involved his singing and telling stories about the character’s lifelong interest in religion. Mr. Rutksoki had trouble keeping a straight face when crooning about Jesus not liking him and being beaten by Sister Mary Beatem in Catholic school, but it was all in character.
The final play, The Big Five O, was written by former Riverdalian Janice Young, who teaches high school English in Yonkers, N.Y. and runs her school’s drama club. The piece, about a group of men unable to speak their true feelings to one another while dealing with middle age problems, was based on An Beal Bocht regulars. Ms. Young wrote it specifically to be performed there.
Her mouth was turned up into a smile by the end of the night.
“It’s the first play I’ve done with adults in it and I can’t tell you how satisfying it was. It was like Christmas in October,” she said after the show.
New Theater Company Debuts in Bronx
Puttin' On Your Shorts
Poor Mouth Theatre Company
Review by Cahir O’Doherty
The Celtic Tiger was quietly laid to rest during the opening performance of Poor Mouth Theatre Company's debut show Puttin' On Your Shorts in Riverdale in the Bronx last weekend. In time honored Irish fashion, there was a lot of laughing at the wake.
Two pallbearers followed by a solemn priest entered carrying a small (open) wood coffin. Inside was a little tiger wearing a green soccer scarf.
"Before the Celtic Tiger came along," the priest announced, "the poor people of Ireland were totally useless. Nothing they ever did amounted to anything except maybe write books about their terrible childhoods growing up in desperate holes like Limerick and making up stories about sexual abuse. Stuff that never actually happened..."
The gales of laughter that followed that line set the tone for the whole evening. The Don Creedon written and directed piece was an instant hit, as was everything that followed it.
Calling these pieces "shorts" is an understatement. The truth is that between them they represent some of the smartest and most hilarious new Irish writing seen onstage anywhere in recent years.
But although all three of the founding members are Irish, they want to make it explicitly clear that this is not an Irish theater company, as such—anyone is welcome to participate and stage a piece. On their debut night they chose five short plays and one reading from a forthcoming memoir, and in the process they lifted the lid on the creativity that's been without a home in Riverdale for far too long.
Even hurricane force rain and wind could not prevent the performnace space at An Beal Bocht Café from selling out. Poor Mouth began the night in a bittersweet way by unveiling a plaque dedicating the performance space to the late great actor Chris O'Neill.
O'Neill, who was known to many in Ireland (and to the expat community here in New York) as Michael in the long running TV show The Riordans, was also one of the co-founders of the original Bronx Irish Theatre Company 17 years earlier, giving many in the Irish community their first shot at working with a serious theater company.
In that same spirit, the new group is hoping to create a home for lost creative souls in the Chris O'Neill Room at An Beal Bocht Café.
After Celtic Tiger Wake Nicola Murphy took the stage for a tour de force in The Actress, written by Sara McDermott and directed by Tim Ruddy. This was followed by another Creedon gem titled Shackled. In this short two women come up with the perfect solution to the worldwide problems created by belligerent men—corrective surgery or hormone replacement (it's your choice).
"Men on top", says one exasperated female character. "The subjugation of women. Penetrating wherever and whomever they want. Sure, they treat us just like they treat the world. Drilling holes wherever they feel like. Wham, bam, thank you mam. As far as men are concerned, this is just one big brothel. Well, not any more, Georgie boy, d'ya hear me?"
On the night this was just the kind of battle of the sexes to enliven the evening, and in the process to make some deeper points about their impact on the world. But you can just enjoy the craic if that's all you're up for, either way you'll still have been thoroughly entertained.
As Delia, the woman who wants a world without men, Katherine O'Sullivan was reveling in the role of an avenging virago. Bronagh Harmon nailed her go-along-to-get-along partner who realized the enormity of what she's getting into just in time for a happy ending.
Turnstiles, written by Liz Amberly, directed by Carrie Isaacman and starring Amanda Sayle and Liz Frost, was a gently feminist primer about getting even with loser boyfriends and husbands. (Interestingly, men and the world they've created were turned on the spit all night).
This being a Poor Mouth theater, the company can schedule any play or event they like, so next up was author Colin Broderick, who read an excerpt from his follow on book to the hard-hitting memoir Orangutan entitled That's That.
The evening ended in a luminous fashion with Tony Caffrey as an unspeakable funny St. Peter in Pearly Gates, written by Stephen Smallhorne (who also starred) and featuring Conor McManus. The wages of sin may be small, the plays suggests, but the hours are excellent.
THE IRISH VOICE - Wed., May 12, 2010 to Tues., May 18, 2010
When Guys Want to Meet Girls
Guy Walks Into a Bar
By Don Creedon
Review by Cahir O’Doherty
After a shattering divorce, thirtysomething Joe wants to “get back out there” in the dating game. After all, he reasons, he’s still young, he has his urges, and he knows there’s much more to life than work and sleep—it’s just that he’s sorely out of practice when it comes to wooing women.
So where does an eager but timid guy turn to answer love’s call? He turns to the Internet and speed dating, that’s where. And let’s face it, what could be timelier or more impersonal than that? But as usual with the Internet, what you see is rarely ever what you get.
In Guy Walks Into a Bar, Irish playwright Don Creedon’s genuinely hilarious and caustic series of four interlinked new plays about love, lust and dating now playing at the Producer’s Club in New York, the playwright casts a cold eye on the world of men (who are, we learn, prepared to do or say anything in pursuit of their goal, which is love, or failing that, another notch on their bedpost).
People used to talk about the battle of the sexes. In this new era of Dr. Phil and Oprah, that kind of adversarial language has been replaced by reassuring buzzwords like empathy and understanding—but what has actually changed?
In Creedon’s perceptive plays, which are set in any and every corner dive bar in the city, if you scratch the gentleman you instantly reveal the hairy knuckled cave man beneath. All it really takes to uncover the truth is one beer and the prospect of another lonely night at home.
As Joe, the hapless but decent straight man who is desperately trying to change his luck (or at the very least, his batting average) Walter Michael DeForest brings authenticity and real feeling to his role as protagonist.
Joe is a man suddenly adrift in life, with just his dog for company, and no clear plan for the future. When he steps into the local dive bar to meet the woman he’s been corresponding with online he gets cold feet when she looks much less appealing in the flesh.
Taking in Joe’s epic battle with himself are Sam (Bill Rutkoski) and Decco (Wayne Stills). Two cynical, seen-it-all-before barflies, they instantly diagnose Sam’s predicament and offer him even more disastrous solutions.
When men advise men the choice is often between bad and diabolical, and Creedon has enormous fun skewering their pomposity and selfishness. They wise guys, he shows us, think they have life licked. But in reality they’re not waving, they're drowning.
The essence of comedy is the yawning gap between aspiration and reality, and Creedon (whose Bronx based theater company Poor Mouth, has put Irish theater back on the map) navigates it expertly.
Guy Walks Into a Bar is subtle and bitingly funny satire that holds the mirror up to male vanity. Creedon’s wrongheaded characters struggle with their hearts and their heads, and the result is laughter. Marriage, divorce, infidelity, hypocrisy, lies and desperation—they’re all here.
When Joe begins an affair with a married woman on her wedding night, he decides to secretly tag along on her honeymoon too. This is one of the stellar decisions that Creedon’s self-deluded characters often make.
Hoping to stay one step ahead of the game, they end up being pawns that get played. Both Rutkoski and his foil Wayne Stills excel as recognizable city boys whose disastrous advice is only matched by their ruinous behavior.
Creedon excels at pushing his characters past the point of absurdity. When a local bar allows ladies to drink for free between eight and 10, he has Steve and Dessie (Rutkoski and Stills again) buy some wigs and heels and encamp on barstools to freeload. What they lose in personal dignity, they reason, they make up for in freebies.
But their flirtation with the lived reality of the opposite sex has unintended consequences. Suddenly they start seeing the world through women’s eyes, they get in touch with their feelings, and they start to notice the inconsistencies they used to let slide.
It’s amazing, considering how often most men think about women, how little time they actually give to contemplating being one. That central irony powers Guy Walks Into a Bar.
The battle of the sexes still rages, but in Creedon’s four plays (which get deeper and stranger and funnier as they progress) it’s the self-inflicted harm that cuts the deepest.
SHOW BUSINESS WEEKLY - Tues, May 11 to Monday, May 17, 2010
Singles
Guy Walks Into a Bar
Written and Directed by Don Creedon
Review by Iris Greenberger
Whether single or married, everyone can remember the trials and tribulations of the dating scene. With great humor, writer and director Don Creedon captures all the lows of looking for a long-term relationship in the comedy Guy Walks Into a Bar. The action centers on Joe, a 30-something Everyman whose confidence has been badly shaken by the breakup of his marriage, as he attempts to get back into the game.
As Joe, Walter Michael DeForest heads up the perfectly cast three-man ensemble. We follow him in four scenes, all set in New York City bars, as he experiments with Internet dating, an affair with a married woman, speed dating and ladies’ night. In each situation, he encounters a different pair of guys, played with impeccable comic timing by Bill Rutkoski and Wayne Stills.
In the first bar, Joe nervously awaits a blind date he met on the Internet. Two bar flies—Sam and Decco—feed on his insecurities by telling him that any woman who would look for a man online must be desperate. Next, he meets Sal and Dommo as all three watch a football game on TV. When Joe admits to having a several-year affair with a married woman whom he can only see when her husband is out of town going to football games, the two question what he is gaining from this lopsided relationship. At the next bar, where Joe waits to participate in a speed-dating event, Shea and Dodo are shocked that he would pay for this kind of singles’ activity. The pair leave him completely flustered as they explain why talking to 12 women for 10 minutes each “goes against the laws of human nature.” The repartee is outrageous and hilarious as they do a series of mock speed dates with him to see if he can handle the difficult questions they are sure the women will ask him later that evening. In the final scene, set in a bar where Joe has stopped in for drinks on ladies’ night, he chats with two very straight looking men—Steve and Dessie—who have dressed as women just to get free drinks. Here, the physical comedy of the pair enhances some very witty dialogue.
All three actors are wonderfully talented and make the most of clever, fast-paced writing. Don Creedon has a spot-on understanding of the dark side of looking for love and has found just the right actors to deliver his message.
Bill Rutkoski and Walter Deforest in GUY WALKS INTO A BAR
GUY WALKS INTO A BAR
BroadwayAfterDark.com - September 2010 - Reviewed by Judd Hollander
Delicious Dish From A Man's Point Of View
Most times the phrase "A guy walks into a bar" is the setup for some sort of punch line. However in Don Creedon, hilarious comedy, "Guy Walks Into A Bar" actually is the punch line, and punching bag; as well as title of his wonderfully politically incorrect (and all too true) play about guys in bars, their spirit-distilled thoughts about the fairer sex and the wonderful highs and the emotional lows they experience in the search for the person with which to spend the rest of their life. The show is currently performing upstairs at Ryan’s Daughter’s bar as part of the 1st Irish 2010 Festival. (Creedon also directs the work.)
The play is actually a series of four vignettes, each about 15 minutes in length, set in four different bars over an approximately five-year period. The one constant is a guy named Joe (Walter Michael DeForest), though the pieces could easily be four stand alone stories; all expanded into full-length works, should the author have so chosen.
In the first piece, a very nervous and skittish Joe enters a bar to meet Christine, a girl he connected with via an online dating service. Joe however, is not quite ready to meet this woman and hides at the opposite end of the establishment, between Sam (Bill Rutkoski) and Decco (Mike Pirozzi), two long-time drinking buddies, as he tries to figure out what to do next. Sam and Decco soon learn this is Joe’s first real date in many years, he being into the second year of a trial separation from his wife of nearly a decade. As Joe tries to wrap his head around the situation ("she (Christine) looks so...real") and Sam tries to make time with Christine by sending her free drinks, Sam and Decco begin drawing Joe into a conversation, one which quickly removes any remaining bits of confidence Joe may have left. (It’s time to forget you’ve been stripped of every ounce of self-belief.") They also make derisive comments about internet dating, as well as Joe’s marital status. (The words "emotionally unavailable" are bandied about and Joe’s wife is referred to as his "ex" even though she technically isn’t.) The banter, which contains more than a kernel of truth, is hilarious to watch. Kind of like a "Sex and the City" talk about dating and quickie hook-ups from the male perspective.
The three remaining stories follow pretty much the same pattern, only the specific circumstances, bar and people Joe meets (all played by Rutkoski and Stills) keep changing. (Rutkoski plays Sam, Sal, Shea and Steve; while Pirozzi plays Decco, Dommo, Dodo and Dessie.) Subject discussed include being married to a sportsoholic husband; what to do when your wife is having an affair; is following a lady you love on her honeymoon (with another) going a bit too far; how do you get to know a girl in just ten minutes; is Lady’s Night sexist; and can a "come-hither" glance from someone across the room lead to something more than simply breakfast the next morning? In one of the best sequences, Joe is preparing to begin a night of speed dating when his companions (Shea and Dodo this time) sit him down and force him to answer a series of probing questions as if he were a woman. So by the time Joe goes out on the speed dating circuit, he’s so mixed up he ends up giving answer that would probably get him tossed out on his ear. (It helps tremendously that Rutkoski and Pirozzi play the scene as a pair of dead-pan interrogators, grilling Joe for all he’s worth.) However amidst the show's hilarity are some rather astute and painful observations, giving the piece tinges of poignancy and pathos. (Such as why a man would stay with a woman who cheats ("I love her"); the need we all have to connect with someone special; and how hard it is for some people to move on from a relationship that just doesn’t work.)
DeForest is wonderful as Joe. Both a likeable sort and an emotional train wreck, he just wants to meet Miss (make that "Ms.") Right, but his volatile personal baggage keeps getting in the way; his self-confidence rising and falling with the frequency of a 19th century schooner in a hurricane trying to cross the Atlantic. His constant vulnerability makes him an easy target for the other characters’ machinations, though it should be pointed out that much of his predicaments are of his own making.
Rutkoski is very good as the more domineering of Joe’s two drinking buddies (playing pretty much the same role in every scene, even though the character is different). Completely politically incorrect and the guy most likely to wear a T-shirt with obnoxious pick-up lines, he’s someone most people would probably never want to be around. Still he is so over the top one can’t help but like him in these circumstances, as he continually says things many might agree with but would never dare say aloud.
Pirozzi is fine as the more laid-back (almost a pushover type) of Joe’s two barroom friends, who happily goes along with all of Sam/Sal/Shea/Steve's schemes and rants, yet still has his own occasional flashes of incite. Both Rutkoski and Pirozzi play off each other so well, they’re like a well-oiled team tossing verbal hand grenades at Joe (and through him, the audience); many of which are not seen coming. The two often also add on their own thoughts and ideas to Joe’s situation, whether they're true or not.
Creedon does a decent job as director, keeping the actors tightly reined in and the action moving smoothly and quickly, with verbal, more than physical skills, often carrying the day. Most of the time Rutkoski and Pirozzi are simply sitting on bar stools, with DeForest the one moving back and forth. (An exception to this is the speed dating story.) Having the action take place in an actual bar also gives the play an extra air of authenticity. Costumes by Brooke Cohen are fine and lighting and sound by Rosemarie De Sapio is okay.
Lurking beneath the general hilarity is the quite serious message that in order to meet someone and hopefully live happily ever after, the best one can hope for when starting out is an equal playing field with no expectations. Creedon also seems to be saying that in order to start on this quest, one has to stop hiding behind a façade of glass of beer and an attitude, and not be afraid to take the chance of getting hurt. For if you don’t try, you too might wind up in a bar somewhere...alone. Then again if you meet folks like the ones depicted here things might not be all that bad, at least for a little while.
