Tag Archives: Peter Maloney

ON THE SHORE OF THE WIDE WORLD

A British family tries to cope following tragedy in Atlantic production of On the Shore of the Wide World (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 8, $65-$85
866-811-4111
www.atlantictheater.org

British playwright Simon Stephens has been making quite an impact on the world of New York theater recently, with the MCC production of Punk Rock, the Atlantic Theater Company’s stagings of Bluebird and Harper Regan, and the Broadway versions of Heisenberg and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, all since 2011. He’s now back at the Atlantic with his 2005 Olivier Award winner, On the Shore of the Wide World, a tightly wound, exquisitely written story of family and fidelity involving three generations of couples in Stephens’s hometown of Stockport, a working-class suburb of Manchester. Ellen (Blair Brown) and Charlie Holmes (Peter Maloney) are the old-timers, living out their golden years, but Ellen suddenly wants more. “We could buy something. Do something unusual. . . . Sell up and go somewhere we’ve never been to before,” she says. “Why?” an incredulous Charlie asks. “Just because we can,” Ellen replies. Their son, Peter (C. J. Wilson), a house restorer, is married to Alice (Mary McCann), who appears ready for a change now that their children, Alex (Ben Rosenfield) and Christopher (Wesley Zurick), are getting older. Alex, who is eighteen, is bringing home his new girlfriend, Sarah (Tedra Millan), whom the younger Christopher, who might be on the autism spectrum, instantly falls in love with. “Is he a little bit mentally ill?” Sarah, who does not have much of a filter, asks Peter, who is taken aback by the question. When tragedy strikes, the characters — which also include Paul Danzinger (Odiseas Georgiadis), Alex’s drug-dealing friend; Susan Reynolds (Amelia Workman), a pregnant woman who hires Peter to restore her house; and John Robinson (LeRoy McClain), a married man who pays an unexpected visit to Alice — reevaluate what they desire out of life as all three main couples face new crises, whether they want to or not. “You have no right to call me a coward. Nobody has any right to call another person a coward,” Charlie tells Alex. “We’re all of us cowards. All of us.”

Ellen (Blair Brown) and Alice (Mary McCann) have some harsh words for each other in Simon Stephens’s Olivier Award winner (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Originally called Helsinki as a tribute to the bleak films of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, On the Shore of the Wide World — named for a quote from a Keats sonnet that is cited in the play — is intricately directed by Atlantic Theater artistic director Neil Pepe (Speed-the-Plow, Celebration). Christopher Akerlind’s lighting alerts the audience as to which part of Scott Pask’s all-in-one set, comprising an abandoned hotel, Peter and Alice’s kitchen, and Charlie and Ellen’s living room, the action will be taking place next. The excellent cast of American actors all speak in Mancunian accents that only seldom feel a bit strained. Wilson (Hold on to Me Darling, The Lady from Dubuque), one of our best, most dependable actors, excels as Peter, the house restorer who suddenly loses control of his own home. Rising star Millan (Present Laughter, The Wolves) is quirkily compelling as Sarah, who calls them as she sees them, while McCann (Ghost Stories: The Shawl, Harper Regan), who is Pepe’s wife, brings a soft vulnerability to Alice. Old pros Brown (Copenhagen, Orange Is the New Black) and Maloney (Dying for It, Outside Mullingar) rise above a few awkward moments in the script. And Workman (Tender Napalm, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World) is tantalizingly sexy and flirtatious as the pregnant Susan; it’s no accident that the story occurs over the course of nine months. At its core, On the Shore of the Wide World, is very much about the concept of marriage and monogamy, the idea that two people dedicate themselves to each other as they grow old together. “I think it’s repressive. I think it fucks people up,” Sarah says of wedlock. “I think it stops people doing what they want to do. Shouldn’t let it. Should just live, I think.” In the end, the characters all do exactly that, on the shores of the wide world, looking out from within the house of marriage and family.

MEMORIAL FOR FRITZ WEAVER

The life and career of Tony-winning, Emmy-nominated, Theatre Hall of Fame inductee Fritz Weaver will be honored at Symphony Space on January 23

Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharpe Theatre
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Monday, January 23, free, 6:30
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org

One of the very first actors I felt a real bond with was Fritz William Weaver, the Pittsburgh-born star of stage, screen, and television who passed away in November at the age of ninety. On January 23 at 6:30, a very informal memorial service will be held at Symphony Space, the Upper West Side institution where he was a regular participant in the “Selected Shorts” series and the annual “Bloomsday” reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Speakers will include Sherrill Milnes, Jay O. Sanders, Barbara Barrie, Peter Maloney, Harold Holzer, and several family members. I first saw Weaver in such films as The Day of the Dolphin, Marathon Man, and Black Sunday before being blown away by his Emmy-nominated performance in 1978’s Holocaust, which, following on the heels of 1977’s Roots, helped redefine what a miniseries could be. In 1979, I was breathless with anticipation at seeing Weaver on Broadway in Arthur Miller’s The Price, in which Weaver portrayed Walter Franz. I even stuck around to have him sign the program. Comfortable with being the star or as a character actor, in a Shakespeare play or strange films (Demon Seed, The Maltese Bippy), the Tony winner (Child’s Play) and Theatre Hall of Fame inductee appeared in more than one hundred movies and television shows, from Rawhide, The Fugitive, and Gunsmoke to The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Murder, She Wrote. He also starred in two of the best Twilight Zone episodes, Third from the Sun and The Obsolete Man. The late Isaiah Sheffer, one of the founders of Symphony Space, referred to Weaver as “Symphony Space’s leading man,” so it is only fitting that the celebration will occur there, where he also made his last public appearance.

NITEHAWK CABIN FEVER MIDNITE SCREENINGS: THE THING

A crew of scientists in Antarctica can’t believe its latest discovery in John Carpenter’s THE THING

THE THING (John Carpenter, 1982)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Friday, February 19, and Saturday, February 20, 12:10 am
Series continues through February 27
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

“What were they doing flying that low, shooting at a dog, at us?” meteorologist Bennings (Peter Maloney) asks Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) after watching a Norwegian helicopter pilot pursue a dog in the Antarctic, at the beginning of John Carpenter’s The Thing. “Stir crazy. Cabin fever. Who knows?” the doc answers, more than justifying Nitehawk Cinema’s inclusion of the cult film in its February Midnite series Cabin Fever. Carpenter’s 1982 remake of Christian Nyby’s 1951 Cold War sci-fi classic, The Thing from Another World, adds touches of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien, with Kurt Russell leading an all-star cast of familiar character actors set up like a Vietnam War platoon. Russell is the cowboy-hat-wearing R. J. MacReady, part of a group of men at U.S. National Science Institute Station 4 in the frozen Antarctic. The crew also includes soft-spoken biologist Dr. Blair (Wilford Brimley), pot-smoking hippie assistant mechanic Palmer (David Clennon), nice guy geophysicist Vance Norris (Charles Hallahan), dedicated dog handler Clark (Richard Masur), funkster cook Nauls (T. K. Carter), assistant biologist Fuchs (Joel Polis), excitable communications officer Windows (Thomas G. Waites), serious station commander M. T. Garry (Donald Moffat), and skeptical chief mechanic Childs (Keith David). Soon some kind of monster from outer space is on the loose, able to disguise itself as other living creatures, making everyone suspicious of one another, the paranoia growing along with the terror and violence.

Kurt Russell fights a foreign terror in John Carpenter’s remake of Cold War classic

Based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s novella Who Goes There?, The Thing was the third of former child star Russell’s four films with Carpenter, following Elvis and Escape from New York and preceding Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from L.A. The film was shot by longtime Carpenter and Robert Zemeckis cinematographer Dean Cundey (Halloween, Back to the Future) and written by Bill Lancaster, Burt’s son, who died in 1997 at the age of forty-nine after penning only three scripts: the first two Bad News Bears movies along with The Thing. Carpenter composed the creepy, pulsating music for most of his films, but he got spaghetti Western genius Ennio Morricone to write the score this time around. (Carpenter is about to set out on his first-ever concert tour, coming to New York City in July, playing music from his films as well as songs from his recent albums.) Carpenter’s wife at the time, Adrienne Barbeau, is the voice of the fantastically old-fashioned Chess Wizard computer game that frustrates MacReady. The special effects, by Rob Bottin (The Fog, RoboCop) and Oscar winner Stan Winston (Aliens, Jurassic Park), hold up pretty well, as does the general feeling of peril, although, like with many Carpenter films, the plot doesn’t always make sense. But Carpenter is nothing if not a master of dark mood, and he nails it again in this thriller. The first of Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy (to be followed by Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness), The Thing is being shown February 19-20 at 12:10 am as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s February Midnite: Cabin Fever series, which concludes February 26-27 with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

THE QUARE LAND

Hugh Pugh (Peter Maloney) tries to teach Rob McNulty (Rufus Collins) a lesson in drab revival (photo © Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 15, $70
212-727-2737
www.irishrep.org

Something magical happens during the Irish Rep’s revival of John McManus’s The Quare Land. Unfortunately, it’s not the play itself but a bit of mysterious stagecraft. Star Peter Maloney spends the entire show in a cast-iron bathtub — and the bubbles never go away during the ninety minutes. I don’t know which brand of bubbles he uses, but I can’t get the bubbles in my bath to stay afloat for more than a handful of minutes. Otherwise, The Quare Land is a rather ordinary work that offers no new takes on a familiar story. Maloney plays the silly-named Hugh Pugh, an old farmer living in a ramshackle house on the Irish countryside in County Cavan. (The wonderful set is by Charlie Corcoran.) Pugh is relaxing in the tub with his rubber ducky, listening to Bobby Darin on his ancient phonograph, enjoying beer he retrieves via a complex pulley system that brings him bottles from inside a filthy toilet, when the well-dressed Rob McNulty (Rufus Collins) shows up unannounced and walks into the bathroom. McNulty is a real-estate developer who wants to purchase land from Pugh that he didn’t even know he owned, in order to turn a nine-hole golf course into an eighteen-holer to attract professional events. McNulty assumes the sale is a slam dunk, but he can barely get a word in edgewise as Pugh shares stories from his life nonstop, cannily dodging McNulty’s best efforts. The play, directed by Ciaran O’Reilly, starts out well enough, but as it continues, it grows more and more annoying, the plot turning into a stale retread of such films as The Field and Local Hero, except neither character here turns out to be very likable. The play is billed as a “Cantankerous Comedy,” and cantankerous it is, but not in the intended way. Maloney (Outside Mullingar) and Collins (The Royal Family) give fine performances, but the sour script ultimately lets them down. Now, about those bubbles….

DYING FOR IT

Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) tells his wife (Jeanine Serralles) and mother-in-law (Mary Beth Peil) that he’s had enough in DYING FOR IT (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 18, $20-$86.50
866-811-4111
www.atlantictheater.org

Living in 1920s Russia was no walk in the park, as so cleverly depicted in Moira Buffini’s Dying for It, a rollicking good “free adaptation” of Nikolai Erdman’s long-banned 1928 play, The Suicide. Twenty-seven-year-old Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) is at the end of his rope. “I’m a parasite,” he tells his wife, Masha (Jeanine Serralles). “I’m a bloodsucking leech. I have no work in this worker’s paradise.” They have such little money, they live in the hallway of a miserable apartment building, their bed under the stairs. One of their upstairs neighbors, the hulking, recently widowed Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin (C. J. Wilson), tries to convince him that “life is a miracle, full of wonder,” but Semyon is adamant that it’s too late to change his mind. “I have no dignity, no labor, no value at all,” he says. But shortly after he decides to off himself, he is bombarded by various members of Soviet society, each of whom wants to make him their martyr — one imploring him to write a suicide note crying out about what they believe is wrong with the social order, another protesting the revolution, the next a victim of Communism, et al. Too afraid to speak out themselves, they want the soon-to-be-dead Semyon to be their personal mouthpiece. Among those who want to turn Semyon’s last act into a heroic gesture are comrade Aristarkh Dominikovich Grand-Skubik (Robert Stanton), an intellectual who tells him, “You are in a position of great power. . . . Nowadays, only the dead may say what the living think”; Kleopatra “Kiki” Maximovna (Clea Lewis), a kittenish romantic who believes she has found a kindred soul in Semyon; Father Yelpidy (Peter Maloney), a priest who wants Semyon to consider the damnation he faces; and Viktor Viktorovich (Patch Darragh), “the people’s poet,” who sees this as an important career opportunity for himself. Also involved in the festivities are Masha’s mother, Serafima Ilyinichna (Mary Beth Peil), who can’t wait for Semyon to be out of her daughter’s life; Yegor Timoveivich (Ben Beckley), a postman who prefers to play by the very strict rules; and Margarita Ivanovna Peryesvetova (Mia Barron), a married, carefree vamp having an affair with Alexander. Semyon might have had no purpose in life, but he has suddenly found his true calling in death.

Kleopatra “Kiki” Maximovna (Clea Lewis) and Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin (C. J. Wilson) have an idea for Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) as his suicide approaches (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Dying for It gets off to a rocky start, with silly, lackluster slapstick that quickly grows tiresome. But once Semyon gets rid of the blood sausage and the tuba, the play, keenly helmed by Atlantic Theater artistic director Neil Pepe (3 Kinds of Exile, A Life in the Theatre), finds its groove on Walt Spangler’s appropriately dilapidated boarding-house set, evolving into an engaging farce about trying to find meaning in one’s life. The cast is a mixed bag: Slotnick (Boston Public, The Altruists ) is charming as the suicidal Semyon, Lewis (Ellen, Writer’s Block) is delightful as the spirited Kiki, Stanton (A Free Man of Color, All in the Timing) is stalwart as the determined Aristarkh, Barron (Domesticated, Knickerbocker) is fiery as the wild Margarita, and Wilson (The Lady from Dubuque, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man) proves once again that he is one of New York theater’s finest character actors as the bold and beefy Alexander, but Serralles (The Jammer, Stunning) is too brusque as Masha, the usually dependable Maloney (Outside Mullingar, Glengarry Glen Ross) falters with comedic timing as the priest, and Darragh (The Jammer, Appropriate) overdoes it as the poet. The Suicide was never staged in Erdman’s lifetime (he died in Moscow in 1970); it made a brief run on Broadway in 1980, with Derek Jacobi in the lead role. With Dying for It, Buffini (Gabriel, Handbagged) has thankfully brought it back from the dead, reinvigorating it for another time, when rampant surveillance, cyber-bullying, and terrorism have people around the world questioning what they say and do in public.

20at20 FALL 2014

Famed drug smuggler Billy Hayes shares his real-life story in RIDING THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Multiple venues
September 9-28, $20, 20 minutes before showtime
www.20at20.com

In addition to Broadway Week (September 1-14), during which two-for-one tickets are available in advance for such Great White Way shows as Cabaret, Pippin, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Matilda, Kinky Boots, and others, 20at20 is about to get under way, with twenty-dollar seats on sale twenty minutes before curtain for nearly four dozen off-Broadway productions. For twenty days, September 9-28, a Jackson will get you in to such shows as Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the Woods with Kathleen Chalfant at the Clurman, Sean J Quinn’s Money Grubbin’ Whores at the Lion, Zoey Martinson’s Fringe 2013 hit Ndebele Funeral at 59E59, Samuel J. Bernstein and Marguerite Krupp’s Olympics Über Alles about Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller at St. Luke’s, Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story at the Signature, Riding the Midnight Express with Billy Hayes at the Barrow Street Theatre, Conor McPherson’s Port Authority with Peter Maloney at DR2, Mario Correa’s Tail! Spin! with Sean Dugan and Rachel Dratch at the Lynn Redgrave Theater, George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness at the Mint, and Tony winner Billy Porter’s While I Yet Live at Primary Stages. With the price of off-Broadway shows on the rise, this is a great opportunity to sample some fine theater on the cheap.

OUTSIDE MULLINGAR

Tony Reilly (Peter Maloney) shares his questionable plans with son Anthony (Brían F. O’Byrne) and neighbor Aoife Muldoon (Dearbhla Molloy) in OUTSIDE MULLINGAR (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 16, $67-$135
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.outsidemullingarbroadway.com

Ten years ago, Manhattan Theatre Club presented Bronx-born playwright John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, starring Brían F. O’Byrne, directed by Doug Hughes, and with scenic design by John Lee Beatty. That group has teamed up again for the world premiere of Outside Mullinger, a charming little tale that opened last week at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. A dark romantic comedy, Outside Mullingar takes place in County Westmeath in the home of Tony Reilly (a wonderful Peter Maloney) and his ne’er-do-well son, Anthony (five-time Tony nominee O’Byrne). An elderly widower, Tony tells his neighbor, Aoife Muldoon (Dearbhla Molloy), that he is considering selling his farm to his nephew in America rather than leave it to Anthony. Aoife, who has just buried her husband, Christopher, can’t believe Tony would do that to his son, who is distressed when he is told of the possibility that he might not get the family land he has worked on his whole life. Discussion also turns to a forty-meter strip of land on the Reilly property that is actually owned by the Muldoons because of an old loan. The strip divides the front of the Reilly home so Tony and Anthony have to walk through a pair of gates to get from the road to their front door. Now that Christopher Muldoon has died, the Reillys believe they can get that narrow bit of land back, but Muldoon’s daughter, Rosemary (Debra Messing), is not about to hand it over, as it holds a very special memory for her. As the two families bicker both playfully and seriously, attention soon turns to Anthony and Rosemary, two lonely, difficult people who clearly don’t know what’s best for them.

Anthony Reilly (Brían F. O’Byrne) and neighbor Rosemary Muldoon (Debra Messing) battle it out during a soft rainstorm in new John Patrick Shanley play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Shanley, who won a Tony and a Pulitzer for Doubt and an Oscar for his screenplay for Moonstruck, keeps things simple in Outside Mullingar, which works as a timeless character study, performed by an engaging cast. Maloney (To Be or Not to Be, Judgment at Nuremberg) nearly steals the show as the crotchety old man, while Molloy (Dancing at Lughnasa, The Cripple of Inishmaan) is stalwart as the widow dressed in black. One of the genuine treasures of the New York stage, O’Byrne (Frozen, The Beauty Queen of Leenane) plays the unpredictable Tony with just the right mix of ambiguity and crazy. And in her Broadway debut — although she has performed often off Broadway, including as Mary Louise Parker’s understudy in Shanley’s Four Dogs and a Bone — Emmy Award winner Messing (Will & Grace, Smash) is a delight, employing an Irish brogue as she battles with Tony both in his house and outdoors in a gentle rainstorm. Here’s hoping it’s not another ten years before this talented team works together again.