The Late Henry Moss
by Sam Shepard
October 2012
Director: Robbin Joyce
Producer: Frank Bartucca
Set Design: Robbin Joyce
Sound Design: Robbin Gabrielli
Lighting Design: David Anderson
Photography: Frank Bartucca
Stage Manager: Tasha Matthews
Cast:
Henry Moss…..Frank Bartucca
Earl Moss…..Christopher O’Connor
Ray Moss…..Sean Stanco
Esteban…..Fred D’Angelo
Taxi…..Michael Carr
Sam Shepard continues to explore the yet untamed American West in this semi-autobiographical drama about an abusive father and husband whose emotional death occurs on the day he finally understands the depth of his wife’s grief and love. The Late Henry Moss is “a journey through classic Shepard country . . . at once familiar and heartbreakingly new. The play . . . a flashback-driven mystery that uncovers the circumstances and emotional heat of Henry Moss’ death . . .rises, in a transfixing third-act encounter with death itself, to a rare state of theatrical grace. The playwright reaches uncharted emotional depths in his recurring theme of scarred and haunted families in a mythically vanquished American West.”
Two antagonistic brothers, Ray and Earl, are brought together after their father, Henry Moss, is found dead in his seedy New Mexico home. Henry was a harassing, arrogant drunk, and his sons have inherited his worst qualities. Roy is determined to uncover the mysterious circumstances of Henry’s death. In three acts, the story of the father’s last days unfolds in flashbacks.
4th Wall returns with blistering show
THEATER REVIEW
By Paul Kolas TELEGRAM & GAZETTE REVIEWER
‘The Late Henry Moss’
“Playwright Sam Shepard has made a living mining his own harrowing familial experiences, in such works as “True West,” Lie of the Mind” and “Buried Child.”
“The Late Henry Moss” is no exception, a mesmerizing, volatile fever dream of a play that 4th Wall Stage Company brought to scorching life Saturday evening. . . . .
Director Robbin Joyce has done a stellar job of pitching her superb cast through this minefield at just the right volume or corrosive emotion and, believe it or not, dark humor. . . . .
Shepard uses dialogue as a battering ram to raise scenes to the level of unsettling confrontation, a series of steady jabs of repetition leading to a knockout blow, mostly brutal, sometimes comic. . . . .
D’Angelo and Carr are great comic relief, responding in different ways to the pressure of Ray’s schoolyard tactics to get to the bottom of the facts, D’Angelo with a devilishly wry sense of humor and Carr with nervous patronizing. Sears plays the temptress Conchalla with fine, sexually-charged insouciance, especially in a flashback bathtub scene, after she and Henry have returned from their fishing expedition.
But Bartucca, O’Connor and Stanco are the powerhouse trio of this remarkable production. Bartucca is nothing short of scary as Henry in the play’s flashbacks, delivering every line with an impressive assortment of vitriol, sometimes in an idling, low growl, mostly at a full throttle roar that would send any son out the door for good. With overwhelming command, he makes Henry an abusive, contemptible father figure . . . . .
. . . . It’s no accident that this play follows 4th Wall Stage Company’s splendid presentation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” another tale of a dysfuntional, alcoholic family, starring an irreparably damaged father and two inimical brothers.
O’Connor does a terrific job of shielding Earl’s interior wounded psyche with a performance rich in exterior bluster. His voice rumbles with an underlying tone of irritability, impatience and muddled distraction, sadly the heir apparent to his father’s drinking prowess, minus the cruelty.
Stanco defines Ray with pit bull brilliance, chewing through Shepard’s circuitous writing style with perfect cadence, long stretches of confounded silence shattered by alarming bursts of verbal and physical violence. His Ray is a fidgety powder keg that prods Earl to unwanted levels of exasperation and temper that O’Connor imparts with gravelly authority.
. . . . 4th Wall Stage Company, now in its second season, deserves a salute for providing the local theater scene with such an unusual and provocative work, and doing it so well.”
From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story
by Melinda Lopez
February 2013
Director: Whit Wales
Producer: Frank Bartucca
Sound Design: Robin Gabrielli
Lighting Design: Whit Wales
Photography: Whit Wales and Frank Bartucca
Stage Managers: Joanna Tivnan and Valery Evans
Mural and Mural Images: David Fichter
Cast:
Emma Earls…..Annie Darwin, Girl
Melissa Earls…..Emma Darwin, Doctor, Tiktaalik, Cow 2
Sean Gardell…..Charles, Farish Jenkins, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Malthus, Cow 1, TB, Mary the Cook
Michael Legge…..Carnival Barker, Charles Darwin
Eve Passeltiner…..Emma
Meet the Carnival Barker! The Two-Headed Cow! T Rex the Dinosaur! Add these together and mix with art and science, love and anxiety, the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, Charles Darwin and the fears of an expectant mother.
Melinda Lopez’s From Orchids to Octopi is a love story spanning two centuries, from Darwin to the modern age. There is love, sorrow, beauty and change: in a word, evolution. In the 21st century, Emma’s and Charles’ careers are achieving pinnacles of success and are also pulling them to live on different continents, just as Emma discovers that she is pregnant. Their concerns for their coming child, and their struggle to keep alive the love in their marriage, create a compelling story at once heart-rendering, comic, and tender.
In the 19th century, Charles Darwin prepares to leave his beloved Emma to set sail on the Beagle. Emma and Darwin struggle to reconcile his theories with their religion, and they both have to face the death from tuberculosis of their beloved child.
Theater Review:
By Paul Kolas TELEGRAM & GAZETTE REVIEWER
“From Orchids To Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story”
WHITINSVILLE — Can a theater reviewer feel the thrill of discovery as keenly as Charles Darwin must have felt during his scientific exploits? Oh yes. Yes indeed. One of the mantras of Melinda Lopez’s extraordinary “From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story” is “Mutation, Adaptation, Procreation, Domination.” If the human species is at the top of the food chain — although Sean Gardell’s sneering and ominous representation of TB would laughingly disagree — then 4th Wall Stage Company’s exhilarating production can lay claim to being at the top of the community theater chain.
You may ask yourself, how does one play tuberculosis? If you take the time to see what a marvelous experience director Whit Wales and his wonderful cast have in store for you at the Singh Performance Center in Whitinsville, you’ll find out. You’ll also be witness to a two-headed cow, a prehistoric fish called Tiktaalik, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Go ahead and scratch your head at all that, but “From Orchids to Octopi” is a surprisingly comprehensive, supremely nourishing piece of theater, the Discovery Channel brought to life onstage. What Lopez has done with great, facile skill is to create a love story — two love stories actually — from the seamless blending of science and art, fantasy and reality.
At the heart of Lopez’s work is the character of Emma (Eve Passeltiner), a young, pregnant, mildly dyslexic artist who has been commissioned to create a huge mural celebrating the 150th birthday of Charles Darwin (Michael Legge), and his monumental theory of evolution. Emma has concerns about her baby being healthy, which her doctor (an excellently officious Melissa Earls) addresses with slap-on-the-back clinical detachment in place of a comforting bedside manner. Emma’s anxiety over her baby’s welfare, and shaping her mural, manifests itself in hallucinatory dreams. A carnival barker (Legge) appears before her, asking her to “pick a card,” telling her she might get lucky and improve the DNA of the human species. Darwin guides her through her mind-bursting questions about the wonders and mysteries of evolution. Enter Tiktaalik (Earls), the link between fish and land animal, hilariously exclaiming, “I have a neck!” Darwin informs Emma a neck gave Tiktaalik an evolutionary advantage over its competitors. Gardell’s T-Rex, prancing around with a green, toothy, hood of a head, is told by Darwin that instead of getting longer arms, all he’s going to do is get bigger. Gardell just snorts “Bigger! I always get bigger!” Gardell and Earls’ uproarious impersonation of that two-headed cow, introduced by Legge’s carnival barker is another example of humorous mutation at work.
“Octopi” is both strange and strangely captivating. It’s instructive without being pedantic. It makes one take a closer look at who we are, what we are, inviting us to see how nature keeps moving forward. Legge exhibits brilliant elasticity as the probing, and fascinatingly informative, Darwin, and as the cunning carnival barker. His Darwin is a warm and thoughtful man who prefers the journey of discovery to the acquisition of knowledge. Among her many roles, Earls is eloquently moving as Darwin’s wife, Emma, a ballast of stately, loving support to her famous husband. Earls’ daughter, Emma Earls, plays the Darwins’ daughter, Annie, with enchanting perspicacity. And she garnered the biggest laugh on Saturday night, with a perfectly timed “why did you choose Dad?” to her stage AND real-life mother. It’s Passeltiner’s Emma who holds this singular mosaic together with remarkable heart and conviction. Her Emma is as restless as Legge’s Darwin to discover, to know, to feel, to love. It’s a performance filled with passion, wonder, curiosity, and fear. She and Gardell, who also plays her restaurateur husband Charles, bring a terrific, urgent tension to their relationship when Charles’ business starts to take off in unexpected ways, and Emma is given the opportunity to go to Paris. What holds them together, after Emma is scared half to death by, ironically enough, Gardell’s boogeyman stint as tuberculosis bacillus, is the new life they’re bringing into the world, as the image of Emma’s stunning mural, projected on a background wall, brings this memorable work to a close with the voice of a child saying, “Mama, it’s time.” It’s top of the chain, all right.
Simpatico
by Sam Shepard
May 2013
Director: Barbara Guertin
Producer: Frank Bartucca
Sound Design: Robin Gabrielli
Lighting Design: Whit Wales and David Anderson
Photography: Frank Bartucca
Stage Managers: Robbin Joyce, Ginny Sears, Amanda Hoegen
Cast:
Cindy Bell…..Rosie
Michael Carr…..Vinnie
Allison Matteodo…..Kelly
Ed Savage…..Simms
Sean Stanco…..Carter
Jourdan Spruill…..Cecilia
Horse racing and con men mix in a “cross between a modern film noir, Ibsenesque thriller and revenge drama.” Shady past crosses with present yearning in this dark comedy-drama which is “. . . Mr. Shepard writing at his distinctive, savage best.”
Three men, their lives entangled by a past horse racing swindle, are woven together again in the present in this intriguing tale of mendacity and greed. We are witnesses to a world, where men are “ . . . disconnected from any sense of purpose and community. They hustle and scheme without moral compass, trying to survive by making accommodations that are at best temporary, more often delusional.” There is Rosie, who divorced one of the men, married the second, and set up the third man in a blackmailing scheme which cost him career and family. And also Cecilia, who has a lifelong dream of going to the Kentucky Derby.
Theater Review:
By Paul Kolas TELEGRAM & GAZETTE REVIEWER
“From Orchids To Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story”
‘WHITINSVILLE — Sam Shepard’s “Simpatico” overflows with the stench of deception, moral depravity and good old-fashioned greed. Its characters circle around each other like boxers looking for a moment of opportunity to exploit an advantage, at times throwing verbal punches with premeditated savagery.
You could practically smell the boozy fumes of Vincent T. Webb’s (Michael Carr) bourbon permeating through the Singh Performance Center in Whitinsville on Wednesday evening, in 4th Wall Stage Company’s preview performance of “Simpatico,” prior to its official opening this weekend.
And what a preview it was, another scintillating demonstration that Frank Bartucca’s theater company continues to make good on its vow to bring challenging, unconventional theater to Central Massachusetts. And to do it justice once again, with director Barbara Guertin navigating a superb cast perceptively through the concentric, jabbing rhythms of Shepard’s shadowy world.
The play opens in Cucamonga, Calif., in a dumpy apartment strewn with dirty clothes and half empty whiskey bottles. Vinnie has asked an old friend, Carter (Sean Stanco), to fly out from Lexington, Ky., to help him out of a jam. He tells Carter that a woman, Cecilia (Jourdan Spruill), he met at a local watering hole got him thrown in jail for trespassing, invasion of privacy and harassment.
Or did she? And is Vinnie really a detective? What Shepard does is to keep you initially in the dark about what is really going on here, using his swirling dialogue to artfully, teasingly reveal the facts one step at a time. Fifteen years earlier, Carter and Vinnie made money at the race track by swapping out horses and betting on the long shots. When the racing commissioner, Simms (Ed Savage), uncovered the scam, he threatened to expose Vinnie and Carter, and revoke their racing permits.
With delectable perversity, Vinnie had his wife, Rosie (Cindy Bell), lure Simms into a compromising position, take photos of the two “in flagrante delicto,” and use them to keep Simms quiet. Vinnie kept the photos in a shoe box, and Carter ran off with Rosie to Lexington, where he became a horse breeder, living the high life with Rosie and their kids. Now the past has come back to haunt Carter, even though he’s been paying both Vinnie and Simms blackmail money to keep the past at bay.
How it all plays out is a serpentine reversal of fortune that the cast enacts with memorable distinctiveness. Carr’s Vinnie is a drunken, disheveled, self-pitying mess when we first see him, a real loser at the mercy — or so it seems — of Stanco’s well-groomed, impeccably attired Carter.
Carr plays Vinnie with cunning, strategic finesse, an ostensibly weak and helpless bum who lures Carter out of his supposedly superior vantage by irritating the hell out of him by not directly addressing his reasons for wanting him there. Carr’s mocking tone of voice at his friend’s higher social position is absolutely spot-on.
And Stanco plays off of it perfectly, with an underlying sense of unease that manifests itself in the form of impatience, derision and explosive temper. There’s raw energy in their volatile scenes together, right up to their last, electrifying encounter.
Spruill invests Cecilia with exquisitely gentrified grace, a mint julep in high heels who wends her way through the male traffic with unerring poise and style. When Cecilia approaches Simms with bribe money late in the play, you can understand why he is so entranced by her, telling her repeatedly how stunning she is. Savage somehow makes Simms’ obsessive flattery both oddly charming and a bit creepy, while Spruill deflects it with feathery politeness.
Bell is marvelous in her smaller role as Rosie, playing her with the sort of flaunting, flamboyant and cynical posture that Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond would envy. Allison Matteodo enacts Rosie’s maid, Kelly, with a nice touch of protective perplexity. It all adds up to a terrific evening with fascinating social misfits.
