It's a Wonderful Life

It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Trinity Repertory Company
Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

I wasn't sure what It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play would be like without Jimmy Stewart and the rest of the cast from the classic 1946 movie but I'm happy to report that onstage it's pretty wonderful, too.

Joe Landry's 85-minute adaptation is presented as a Christmas Eve 1949 radio broadcast from Manhattan, before a studio audience. There's a minimal cast - five actors play multiple roles and a Foley artist provides sound effects - but the story retains its charm and emotional pull.

Just in case you're not familiar with the plot:

George Bailey dreams of an adventurous life far away from his hometown of Bedford Falls but ends up taking over the building and loan started by his father. Years later, facing financial ruin, he's on the brink of suicide, convinced that his family would be better off without him and wishing that he had never been born.

Fred Sullivan Jr. was absolutely endearing as George Bailey, a man who's always put the needs of his family, friends and community over his own. As his devoted wife, Mary, Angela Brazil was sparkling. I enjoyed watching them progress from young lovers to a married couple with kids of their own.

Timothy Crowe was a marvel, switching effortlessly from the rich and ruthless Mr. Potter to George's affable but not always reliable Uncle Billy. Stephen Berenson brought sweetness to Clarence, an angel who's sent to save George, and a comic touch to the kindly bar owner Mr. Martini. Anne Scurria was terrific as the flirtatious Violet and as the adorable Zazu, the youngest Bailey child.

Michael McGarty's set includes microphones on stands, a few chairs, a small Christmas tree and props for the Foley artist, Benjamin Inniger, who makes doors slam, the cash register ring, the water splash and the wind howl.

The actors spend a lot of time in front of the microphones, scripts in hand. But when Clarence shows George what life would have been like in Bedford Falls without him, they play directly to the studio audience in a way that was so emotional and effective.

What the scaled-down set and cast did for me was to make the story more intimate. It's a Wonderful Life is about one man and his impact on a community, but it's also a moving portrait of small-town American life. And it struck me how much the story resonates today.

Home ownership - that cornerstone of the American dream - plays a major role in the plot. The Bailey Building and Loan Association made it possible for the working-class residents of Bedford Falls to get out from under Mr. Potter's usurious rents.

I'm certain that George Bailey never let anyone take out a mortgage they couldn't afford. I'm also certain that those first-time homebuyers bought within their means and understood how much their monthly payment would be. And everyone knew who held their mortgage.

This is the first year Trinity Rep has staged It's a Wonderful Life, in tandem with the theatre's annual production of A Christmas Carol. It's a great combination.

As much as I love the movie, there's something unique about watching a story unfold right before your eyes. It's a Wonderful Life is funny and poignant and absorbing. And in the end, there were tears in my eyes.

Absurd Person Singular

Absurd Person Singular at Trinity Rep
Gratuitous Violins rating: ***1/2 out of ****

I laughed my way through Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy The Norman Conquests on Broadway. So when I saw a work by the prolific British playwright on Trinity Rep's schedule, my excitement level went sky high.

Set in the mid 1970s in London, Absurd Person Singular takes place in the kitchens of three married couples hosting Christmas Eve parties in successive years. And once again, I laughed all the way through. (If you ever get a chance to see an Ayckbourn play, take it!)

Director Brian McEleney keeps everything moving at a brisk clip and the cast really nails Ayckbourn's slapstick humor.

Sidney (Stephen Berenson) and Jane (Angela Brazil) are desperate to make a good impression so they can obtain a bank loan to expand their grocery store. Geoffrey (Fred Sullivan Jr.), married to the depressed Eva (Phyllis Kay), is a successful architect who boasts about his womanizing. Ronald (Timothy Crowe) and Marion (Anna Scurria) are the snobby banker and his wife.

Ayckbourn has a great knack for bringing out the absurdity in the most ordinary people and mundane events, making comedy out of situations that on the surface don't seem funny: alcoholism, depression, financial woes.

He paints a great portrait of the tension - beneath the surface and boiling over - that exists during these holiday get-togethers: the frantic preparations, the small talk, the silly party games and the person who always has too much to drink.

While I don't think there's any deep message in this play it is interesting to see the changes that occur over the three acts. Marriages are strained, the way the couples relate to each other changes, fortunes rise and fall.

One of the things I appreciated most about Absurd Person Singular is what it leaves to the audience's imagination.

There's a ferocious-sounding dog in Act II that we never see. And at a couple of points during Act I, the actors leave the stage. The only sound is the chatter of partygoers in the adjoining room.

When that happened it was surprising and kind of unsettling - I was staring at an empty set for a minute. Yet at the same time I found it kind of thrilling as I wondered what would happen next.

At the theatre, I don't think you can ask for anything better than that.

Memory House

In February, I saw Susannah Flood give a terrific performance as Emily Webb in Trinity Repertory Company's production of "Our Town." Her mannerisms and speech perfectly embodied a teenage girl - the intelligence and curiosity, the awkwardness and insecurity.

Flood, who was then a student at the Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium, has since earned her MFA and her Equity card. This month, she's back at Trinity, again giving a memorable performance as a teenager, but this time, a 21st-century one in Kathleen Tolan's two-person play "Memory House."

It's New Year's Eve and Flood's Katia is a high school senior, a child of divorced parents who was adopted from Russia at a very young age. She arrives back at her mother's apartment after a visit to her father's house across town. Her father is a college professor and her mother, Maggie, played by 28-year Trinity veteran Anne Scurria, is a former dancer who now has an office job.

Katia has just a couple of hours to complete an essay for her college application and get it in the mail by midnight, and we're not altogether certain that's going to happen. Going away to college is a step that will change both Maggie's and Katia's lives and over the course of the play, they examine their past, present and future.

The set, designed by Eugene Lee, consists of a small, sparsely furnished living room strewn with books and papers and a kitchen with a working oven. As the audience watches, Scurria makes a blueberry pie - kneading the dough, rolling out the crust, pouring in the filling, and placing it in the oven. We can see and smell it baking. It's a great device because it gives Maggie something physical to do.

Katia's essay has to be in the form of a memory house, a place where she stores her thoughts, experiences and recollections of her past. But she's troubled that she doesn't remember enough about her past, before she was adopted. Without those memories, she's unsure of her place in the world, and it makes her normal teenage sense of insecurity even worse.

She's at a point where she's anxious about her future, questioning what she wants to do with the rest of her life, wondering how she can make a difference in the world. Rather than seeing her parents as the people who rescued her from a dreary, loveless life in an orphanage, she sees them as privileged Westerners who snatched her away from the country where she was born.

That sense of being adrift manifests itself as anger toward her mother. Flood rolls her eyes, bites her lip and sulks as she slouches around their apartment. She talks about her "real" mother and expresses a desire to go back to Russia. She almost taunts her mother as she asks why she gave up doing something she loved, how her father's life seems so much better and happier, and wonders whether she should even go to college.

Scurria also gives a wonderful performance, imbuing Maggie with an abundance of humor, patience and common sense. Maggie is obviously hurt by her daughter's barbs, and makes the occasional sharp retort. She's clearly exasperated by Katia's procrastination over the college application. But overall, Scurria's portrayal is as warm and homey as the pie baking in the oven.

Tolan writes in a very believable, true-to-life way about the relationship between mother and daughter. There's a danger of having "Memory House" turn into a dialogue between a sullen adolescent and her exasperated mother. But Katia's questions about her past give the character a great deal of poignancy. Flood and Scurria make both Katia and Maggie very sympathetic and likable.

Trinity Rep's artistic director, Curt Columbus, says that "Memory House" examines questions of identity, both personal and national, and questions about how to create a "home" when the rules of "homemaking" have changed. Tolan has created "something which speaks to the uncertainty of the modern world in general, and of the turbulence in modern family dynamics within that world."

Katia and Maggie spend most of the play arguing in a way that will surely resonate with anyone who's ever been a parent or a child. Scurria and Flood really make this relationship work. By the end of the play you realize that despite the turbulence, these are two people who truly love each other and care about each other.