Photo credit – Rebecca Harris and Dan Kremer. Photo by Meghan Moore.

Merrimack Repertory Theatre
Lowell, MA
April 19 – May 13, 2012
by Michael Hollinger
Directed by Charles Towers

Ghost Writer has a slow start, but has its rewards.  The first ten minutes (or was it an hour?) are spent with Myra Baggage (Rebecca Harris who looks uncannily like Kate Winslet in the Titanic) sitting perfectly still at her secretary’s desk in a sparse office, delivering a monologue that easily could have been chopped in half or made more engaging with a little movement.  I finally realized that Ghost Writer is a minimalist play…a small cast, a simple set, a singular plot, with the briefest show of emotion or movement, yet it earns some genuine laughs as the characters finally draw us in as they warm up with dialogue. Since the characters have such reserve, small gestures have a large impact.

The story itself has merit.  Do we embody the soul and creative voice of our soul mates?  It’s a worthy question worth exploring. Dan Kremer’s performance as the writer, Franklin Wooley was wonderful and I loved the passages that he dictated.  His wife Vivan (Maureen Garrett), a jealous dilettante, spiced-up the story that otherwise  could have been a snooze.  This was not my favorite MRT show this year, but certainly worth seeing.
-Jenny Hudson

Book by Terrence McNally
Musi and Lyrics David Yazbek
Directed by Caitlin Lowans

The show opens in a warehouse, so perfectly constructed, I wasn’t sure if it was simply the real backstage, but when the airbrush pink and blue daylight streamed from the factory windows with the overture of some really great live jazz, I knew I was in good hands. It only got better from there.  The Full Monty at the Stoneham Theatre couldn’t be better.. and it’s the best production I’ve seen there to date.

We know the story from the movie, a laid off dad tries to make some money to make his child support payments so that he can keep seeing his son, but this version is set in Buffalo, NY, saving the cast the embarrassment of faking British accents to stay true to the original. The story rings as true for the USA’s unemployed, as the original version did in the UK.  The casting was perfect and each character was played perfectly, engaging the audience in his or her own unique way through the contemporary, spunky, and belly-laugh provoking lines and songs, all delivered with great voices. However, I would remiss if not mentioning the lead, Jerry (Michael Timothy Howell), who is a stand out.  The music is all blues, jazz, and funk.  Heaven. I can’t say enough.

The set, basically two levels that looked structurally simple, was a perfect reconstruction of a factory, complete with bricks, concrete, and tall windows, but it doubled as a rehearsal hall, a bedroom, and even a church with realistic stained glass windows. The lighting was ingenious, making the set work for all.

This feel-good, hystrericaly funny show runs through May 6th.  DO NOT MISS IT.

- Jenny Hudson

Photo: Left to right – Michael Timothy Howell (as Jerry Lukowski), Corey Jackson (as Dave Bukatinsky), David L. Jiles, Jr. (as Noah “Horse” T. Simmons), Steve Gagliastro (as Harold Nichols), Andrew Oberstein (as Ethan Girard), Nick Sulfaro (as Malcolm MacGregor). Photo by Carla Donaghey

Here he has a case of delirium tremens (or DTs), which is truly horrific. As his male nurse Biff tells him (and I paraphrase), “All that stuff about pink elephants is all the bunk. It’s the little animals, the tiny monkeys in straw hats crawling through the keyhole!” Enjoy the “floor show,” as Biff calls it.

photo by Meghan Moore

Mrs. Whitney is the truly sad tale of people afraid to be alone and have a desperate neediness to be with another person, no matter how inappropriate the match.  The show is advertised as a comedy, but there were only a few truly funny lines, the rest of the jokes reminded me of a bad sit com with canned laughter and it got worse from there. “He’s a savior.  I’ve heard the same thing about Jesus Christ.”

Margaret Whitney (Deidre Madigan), divorced and alone for 20 years, appears to have no life… no friends, no lovers, an absent daughter mentioned only in passing as is her career, when she begs her ex husband Tom Whitney (Dennis Parlato), who is married at the time to someone else, to reunite.  The script is a painful throwback to archaic stereotypes where women can’t have a full life unless they have a man to fulfill them.  Most of the single women I know, have vibrant, exciting lives, and the Margaret’s character is not only insulting to single women, but painfully flat and desperate. Who would live for twenty years like that?  It’s not believable.The only real and bright piece of writing is the dialogue for Finn (Jay Ben Markson), Tom’s college aged son. Without it, the play would have been a completely waste of time. John Kolvenbach’s  low opinion of women is evident since he wrote them as such flat, dull, and desperate people. If his point was that romance is the drug of such people to substitute for a full life, then he made it, but with the exception of Finn, his characters are cartoons and shallow.

Other opportunities for interesting characters are also lost. Louisa, (Rebecca Harris) Tom’s current wife, at least has some spunk, but she too finally becomes needy and desperate. Francis (Joel Colodner), Margaret’s neighbor and a tangental character, reveals his real feelings, but his character is so stilted, that they are not to be believed.  As if to cover this embarrassment, the program states that John Kolvenbach writes with a lot of pauses so that the audience can read between between the lines.  This reviewer read between the lines that the writer is pretentious, cynical and a failure at love and communication so that he has little to draw from to write a deeper script.

The actor’s can’t be faulted for a poor script, and probably did the best they could with their characters…. but the lines just weren’t there. t can’t fault the set and the terrific jazz between scenes… all are far better than the script deserves.

- Jenny Chava Hudson