Partial Comfort Productions

The Main(e) Play

NY Times: Andrea Stevens

When a character who is talked about but never seen is the most interesting figure in a drama, is that a problem? It is for “The Main(e) Play,” Chad Beckim’s punning title for his quasi-autobiographical riff on family that opened on Wednesday night at the Lion Theater.

We’ve been told that home is where you can’t go again (Thomas Wolfe), but if you do, they have to take you in (Robert Frost). For Mr. Beckim’s protagonist, Shane, like his author a Maine native who migrated to New York and show business, both observations are true. Home has changed too much; Mom and Dad’s split still hurts, years after the fact; Shane’s bedroom isn’t even his anymore. And though his brother, Roy, is glad he’s back for another holiday — Thanksgiving — the house locks were changed, and Shane had to get an old girlfriend to break a window so he could get in.
Something else he doesn’t like about the house is the unseen character who lives there, Jay, Roy’s 7-year-old son, a trigger-happy future felon, with his BB gun, deafening drum set and lengthening disciplinary record at school. To Roy, who pours concrete for a weary living and has broken up with Jay’s mother, the child is the bridge between past and future, the hope of each new day: “I’m tryin ta establish something fah him,” Roy tells Shane. “Like what we usta have. Tradition.” To Shane, Jay is a symbol of how life is chaos unless it’s controlled.

Mr. Beckim loves language, and Roy, his pal Rooster, and Shane’s ex, Jess, use an earthy Maine vernacular that sounds authentic. Similarly, in his first produced play, “… A Matter of Choice” in 2005, also presented by Mr. Beckim’s company, Partial Comfort Productions, and set in Spanish Harlem, the conversations among the characters were at times witty fugues of unprintable words.

In his new work, directed by Robert O’Hara, there are some laughs and an excellent performance by Michael Gladis as the tobacco-juice-spitting, marijuana-inhaling Roy. But the play suffers from stereotypical characterizations, and a miscast Alexander Alioto as Shane never convinces. Shane may dislike Jay, but he is equally erratic: “Ahhh … Home. Nice to be home.” And a few minutes later: “This — ugh — whatever — just — nothing changes here.”

–

Theatermania – Dan Bacalzo

Despite being saddled with a rather terrible title, Chad Beckim’s The Main(e) Play, getting its world premiere at the Lion Theater, is a provocative drama that examines issues such as single parenthood and abortion from a fresh perspective. By focusing on two male characters in relation to these hot-button topics, Beckim explores territory seldom represented in theater, while still refusing to come up with any easy answers.

Brothers Roy (Michael Gladis) and Shane (Alexander Alioto) have taken wildly divergent paths in life. Roy stayed home in Maine, had a son named Jay, divorced his wife, and is raising his boy — who seems to be an absolute terror — on his own. Shane took off to New York City to pursue an acting career, leaving behind his friends and family — including ex-girlfriend Jess (Susan Dahl), who had a late-term abortion while pregnant with Shane’s child. Shane’s return to Maine for a Thanksgiving visit stirs up old feelings and makes the audience wonder which brother made the right choice, or if either of them did.

Gladis, a star of the hit AMC series Mad Men, gives an understated, yet deeply evocative performance. The love Roy has for both his brother and his son is clearly in evidence, but there’s also an undercurrent of quiet menace that could be quite terrifying if Roy were to ever lose his temper. Alioto’s Shane wears his resentments more plainly, and his volatile nature earns him the apt nickname of “Hurricane Shane.” Yet, the actor also internalizes a good deal of his character’s emotions, allowing for a subtlety of expression that is captivating.

Dahl does a credible job with a difficult role, striking a good balance between the feelings Jess obviously still holds for Shane and the pride, doubt, and anger that she uses to keep him at a safe-but-not-too-safe distance. Curran Connor is amusing as Jess’ current boyfriend Rooster, and rounding out the cast is Allyson Morgan as a girl scout who shows up at Roy’s door demanding money for the cookies he purchased from her.

Director Robert O’Hara eschews the more melodramatic elements of the story in favor of delving into the rich subtext of the primary characters. While it’s clear that Roy and Shane share a deep connection, it’s just as clear that a gulf has opened up between them and they no longer recognize themselves within each other. Their final exchange in the play keenly demonstrates the damage they are capable of inflicting by simply being honest, and the regrets and recriminations that they are bound to feel as a result.

–

nytheatre.com by Martin Denton

“The world must be peopled” – Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing

Even the most diehard bachelor in all of Shakespeare concluded that children are, on balance, a good thing to have; it’s tough to watch a play’s protagonist rail honestly but kind-of malevolently against his own nephew, a rambunctious seven-year-old whom he calls “a monstrosity.” The boy’s crimes include stealing his uncle’s wallet, shooting him with his BB gun, and hitting him with a toy truck; he’s a naughty kid, no doubt about it. But when Shane, The Main(e) Play’s central character, condemns his nephew Jay with virulence in the climactic scene of the drama, it is nevertheless a little hard to take.

However, Jay is merely the catalyst for what happens in this intense and often funny new piece by Chad Beckim (whose earlier work ‘nami is published in NYTE’s Plays and Playwrights 2007). This is, fundamentally, a play about the dissolution of an American family, and so thematically follows in a long and hallowed tradition of American works from Williams to Wolfe. The twist here is that the family, for all intents and purposes, has no parents: the pivotal familial tie for brothers Shane and Roy seems to be their own, and when Shane—a New York City actor—comes home to spend Thanksgiving in Maine with construction worker Roy and his son, he starts to realize that “home” is no longer where he thought it was:

My room is gone. My bed is gone. Thanksgiving is dead. The cereal is moved to different cabinets. And these fucking toys are everywhere. Mom isn’t my mom any more, and you, you aren’t my brother any more, you’re someone’s father.

Beckim, who has said that The Main(e) Play is based in autobiography, excels at showing us the deep relationship between these two brothers—young men who, despite all the differences in their interests and tastes and desires, remain fundamentally and ineluctably bound together. Shane and Roy not only love each other deeply, they like each other; their horseplay and their reminiscing all ring true, and so when their relationship starts to falter, we’re aware of just how much is at stake.

There are two other characters who contribute to the family meltdown, Shane’s ex-girlfriend Jessica, and Roy’s longtime best pal Rooster, both of whom, like Roy, stayed here in Maine while Shane went off to become, if not a big success, then something utterly different in the Big City. Beckim perhaps weighs everyone down with more baggage than he strictly needs to, but the play progresses tautly and sharply under Robert O’Hara’s direction toward the confrontation that we know is coming from the get-go.

The brothers’ characters are portrayed with love by their author, and Beckim—an actor as well as a playwright—is particularly adept at skewering the peccadilloes of performers in his depiction of Shane, who for all his supposed sophistication and independence is very impressed with himself for having made a Gap commercial with Lionel Richie and is ready to jump at his agent’s command to attend an inconveniently timed audition. And although the themes here are pretty serious, Beckim laces the play throughout with ample humor.

Alexander Alioto does a fine job in the central role of Shane, and Michael Gladis is sympathetic as Roy. Gladis feels years older than Alioto on stage, though, which kept gnawing at me throughout, because I was certain that Roy was supposed to be younger than Shane. (The script, which I checked afterward, confirms this.) The play would likely feel different if Shane and Roy’s relative positions in the pecking order were made clearer; I’d be interested in seeing it again, because this a rich and unusual drama that comes directly from the heart—the kind that can pierce most bitterly.

–

Variety – by Sam Thielman

The home in which “The Main(e) Play” unfolds is an uninviting place to return to. Spilled Lego pieces bite into unprotected feet, an unseen hell-raising kid shoots BBs at sleeping guests from offstage, and everyone in the play has a score to settle. It looks unpleasant from the get-go, but Chad Beckim’s sweet-spirited observations on rural Yankee life draw out enough laughter and goodwill to keep “The Main(e) Play” moving, even though it doesn’t have much of a dramatic raison d’etre.

For Shane (Alexander Alioto), a newly Gothamized actor returning to visit his brother and other Mainiacs, the prospect of a homecoming is a happy one at first. He’ll swing by, maybe reconnect with his old girlfriend and enjoy a pleasant Thanksgiving with his family. It doesn’t work out that way, of course, not because Shane finds his family and friends different but because he finds himself different in their presence.

Beckim clearly prizes small-town virtue over urban guile, and that easy dichotomy could kill the play right off if it weren’t for Shane’s older brother, Roy (Michael Gladis). Roy seems to be everything Beckim likes about Maine — a backhanded tribute to the guys who carry around Mountain Dew bottles of tobacco juice to avoid spitting on the rug, who smoke joints in the living room while their kids are banging around on drum sets down the hall.

For all his quirks, Roy is unshakably loyal, and not even Shane’s fey TV ads for slim-fit jeans earn him more than a good-natured ribbing from his brother when he first arrives. Things change, though, catalyzed by the suspiciously rapid arrival of Shane’s ex-girlfriend, Jess (Susan Dahl).

It’s in the scenes between Jess and Shane that Beckim downgrades his drama from a terrific play to a merely enjoyable one. Dahl is good enough in a thankless part, but Jess is alternately obnoxious and vulnerable, leaping hugely across the emotional spectrum in a way that baffles both Beckim’s characters and his audience.

Jess’ awkwardness as a character is heightened by the more surefooted observation in exchanges between Roy and Shane that almost always bookend her scenes. There’s also a scene with a girl scout selling cookies that’s so out of place, it seems to belong in another play, suggesting Beckim may be better served by his male characters.

But the good exchanges are very good, and the actors are clearly most comfortable when asked to score manly points off one another. Frequently, the cast outdoes the jokes: When Shane gets particularly fed up with Roy, for instance, he turns to their friend Rooster and announces, “Did you know that Roy used to have a Cabbage Patch Kid named Burt?” The line is pretty funny in context, but the look on Gladis’ face is a little master class on how to take a punch, verbally speaking.

In the end, though, “The Main(e) Play” does something almost unforgivable in the context of so much light, endearing writing: It craps out without ending. After one of the better scenes onstage this season, in which Shane rips into Roy for being a bad father, the play just stops being written. Beckim and director Robert O’Hara try to put a button on the final scene, but it rings false.

After convincing us to invest so much in these characters, the writer seems to have lost confidence and ended the play while he still had something left to say. And that’s a shame, because we were all ears right up to the end.

Kidstuff

Showbusiness Weekly – Ethan Kanfer

lthough it’s in need of a few rewrites, Edith Freni’s bittersweet comedy explores an intriguing truth: how the unfinished stuff of adolescence surreptitiously drives the decisions we make as adults.

After the death of her mother, 30-year-old Eve, played by Sarah Nina Hayon, finds herself cast emotionally adrift in life with little sense of direction. The only thing that seems to interest her is endlessly reexamining her first love and its awkward demise. High school beau Chet was the love of her life — until she caught him cheating on her with the (of course) vastly inferior Francesca. Eve seeks help from psychodrama guru Lou, played by Peter O’Connor. Using Eve’s script, actors take on the parts of the teenage lovers, adding improvised behavior as they go. Lou prompts them to explore their emotions, but internecine squabbles and inflated egos cause the sessions to deteriorate into unproductive mayhem.

A chance to really reenact the past occurs when Eve bumps into Chet, played by Justin Blanchard, at a jewelry store. As it happens Chet, too, has never quite gotten over the relationship. The two enter into a cautious rekindling of the romance. But before things can go very far, more ghosts from the past come back to complicate their happiness.

At its best, Freni’s dialogue captures both the comedy and melancholy of the struggle to come of age. Unfortunately, many of the play’s more intriguing elements are underdeveloped. Flashbacks offer a tantalizing glimpse of Eve’s detached Dad and alcoholic brother, played by Christopher Van Dijk and Vincent Madero. Yet the reasons for their behavior, and how the family dynamic influenced Eve’s world view, are barely touched on. The connection, or lack thereof, with her departed mother also goes largely unexplored. Instead, large amounts of stage time are devoted to the repetitious psychodrama sessions, which provoke few laughs and move neither the play nor its protagonist forward.

Under Erica Gould’s direction, the cast hits the script’s somber and farcical notes with equal proficiency. Hayon especially, captures the ambiguities of a psyche that is simultaneously immature and wise beyond its years. It is to be hoped that the gifted playwright will take another pass at the material. Like its characters, Kidstuff has what it needs to succeed. But without further attention paid to the script, it will stay stuck in state of arrested development.

–

NY Times- Jason Zinoman

Sixty minutes of attitude, soft satirical jabs and romantic angst, Edith Freni’s “Kidstuff” can seem more like a collection of jokes than a play. It’s packed full of thin characters and quick, punchy scenes, and while it may suffer from a familiarly broad sitcom style, it does have its charms, mostly thanks to its lead actress.

Sarah Nina Hayon, blessed with a creative comic verve that is a delight to watch, plays Eve, lost in life, approaching 30, alone and generally confused about her direction. And her mother has just died. The play is about her confronting the past, in particular the love of her life, who returns out of nowhere.

In the first scene she bumps into Chet (Justin Blanchard), an old high school boyfriend, in a jewelry store where he is buying an engagement ring. The actors both shudder ridiculously, playing for the audience.

She tells him that she’s hoping to go back to school. When he asks what she’ll study, she turns red-faced: “I’ll think of something.” Even if she has a tendency to hammer home jokes, Ms. Hayon sticks most of them.

Erica Gould has staged “Kidstuff” on a bulky, abstract white set, and the production design has the makeshift look of an acting class exercise. The doubling up of roles also leads to some incongruities. But no matter: this comedy moves so quickly from one joke to another that there isn’t time to reflect on why, for example, the priest is wearing sandals. Or why exactly Chet is leaving his soon-to-be fiancée so abruptly.

If the playwright doesn’t work very hard to motivate Chet, Eve’s remote father is even more of a mystery. Instead the play concentrates on Eve’s chaotic group therapy sessions. The people here are hysterical, emotionally fragile and generally silly. “Eve is having an aha moment, but she refuses to embrace it” is a typical satirical line.

In an attempt to help Eve, the group members act out scenes from her life, frequently departing from the facts to work out their own issues. Of course this allows for the familiar gag of mocking intentionally terrible performances. But since the acting style here is already over the top, the joke is somewhat lost in translation.

–

nytheatre.com Martin Denton

Usually it’s a good thing to leave a play wanting more…but not always. In the case of Edith Freni’s hour-long Kidstuff, the feeling of not being satiated is frustrating: there just isn’t enough story to make for a fully satisfying experience.

The protagonist of Kidstuff is Eve, a thirtysomething woman who is deeply unfulfilled by her life, though we only have the sketchiest of information as to why. What Freni tells us about Eve is this: that her mother has recently died and that she’s been estranged from her family for a while; that she is in therapy (an immersive/invasive variety of group, led by a cultish egoist named Hector who seems to encourage his patients to insult and abuse one another); that she’s hard-up for cash (when we first meet her, she’s at a jewelry store, trying to sell some of her inheritance); and that she has never gotten over a high school romance with her first (only?) love, Chet.

Chet cheated on her with another girl, Francesca, more than a decade ago. For reasons that Freni never advances, Eve is still stuck on this abortive affair. It’s the subject of all of the therapy sessions we are shown; and it’s also the subject of Kidstuff’s main plot line, which begins when Eve unexpectedly encounters Chet at the jeweler’s. Chet is there to pick up an engagement ring. (I won’t tell you whom it is intended for, but I think you can guess.)

Chet and Eve spend a long evening together (I think it’s just one evening; that was not absolutely clear to me, however), during which both seem to come to some conclusions about their pasts and presents. Or not…because though Eve presumably makes some kind of progress at the end (though, again, it was vague as to exactly what she has learned), Chet, apparently, does not.

It all adds up to just enough information about our leading couple to start caring about and rooting for them, but nowhere near enough to feel any kind of deep empathy for them. The final blackout, after a second scene in the jewelry store, comes a good 15 minutes too soon. We just need to know more—back story and resolution, both—for Freni’s admittedly intriguing ideas to really gel, to really start to matter.

Erica Gould’s direction of the piece seems well-suited to it; Freni’s narrative jumps around time and space and Gould’s staging adequately contains it. Sarah Nina Hayon and Justin Blanchard, as Eve and Chet, make much of characters that are essentially underwritten, and the rest of the company bounces back and forth between one set of roles in the therapy scenes and another set in the other parts of Eve’s life. The production design is appropriately economical, but I admit to being a little bit bothered by Caleb Levengood’s set, in particular the shop counter that unfolds into a (very high off the ground, very uncomfortable-looking and unconvincing) bed.

I love Partial Comfort Productions’ energy and focus on contemporary lives and issues, and Kidstuff exemplifies the kind of work they do best. But this fragmentary dramedy feels more like a long trailer than a whole play.

–

New Theater Corps Aaron Riccio

There’s a little too much Kidstuff in Edith Freni’s latest show. What starts as a lost soul’s last chance–Eve (Sarah Nina Hayon) runs into her first love, Chet (Justin Blanchard) for a fifteen-year overdue reckoning–quickly turns into a bad comedy routine as her therapist, Lou (Peter O’Connor), has her fellow group members act out their interpretations of her unresolved conflict (Chet’s affair). There are a few glimpses of depth, as Sarah (Sharon Freedman) co-opts Eve’s story to work out her frustrated relationship with fellow patients Dave (Vincent Madero) and the diva-like Jemma (Cynthia Sylvia), but these are quickly flattened out by absurd actions (a fixation on cake); poor, overly coy dialogue (“Kindly remove your face from my face, please”); and a series of characters who are either crude (like a stereotypically Jewish shopkeeper and morally authoritative priest) or unexplainably shallow (like Eve’s angry brother and carefree father).

Such exaggerated caricatures and situations make it hard to ever see Eve as a real person, even though Ms. Hayon does her best to remain level-headed. And there’s something to the pace of the play, the way Erica Gould smoothly transitions between the last three months of Eve’s life, that does, at times, get across the idea of a woman struggling to stay afloat in a distant and barely comprehensible world. But while Eve may be stuck in the past, rudderless, it makes little sense for the characters around her to be just as childish and lost: Lou abruptly demands that Eve beg him for help, Dave has a desire to play one of the female parts in their reinterpretations of Eve’s past, and for some reason, a fourth “actor” is called in to provide another viewpoint for the group sessions–he doesn’t, just like these moments utterly fail to shed any light on Eve’s life. Even the play’s ending is unnecessarily vague: after all that unrelated chaos, it turns out that Eve’s had the solidity she craves–a sense of purpose and belonging–all along?

Partial Comfort Productions often end up as exaggerated urban tales, but they’ve never been so grossly comic, never so unfocused. The seams of this world’s makebelieve are too visible, hastily stitched into an hour-long sketch, and they leave the audience with nothing to invest in. It also leaves us unable to even pretend that Kidstuff is a good play.

Sidenote: Ms. Freni lists all her reviews on her webpage as well- the ones I did not include here, I had problems loading. http://www.edithfreni.com/Plays.html