Saturday, February 22, 1986
Honolulu Advertiser
Cast adds flavor to Simon's 'Second Avenue'
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
'The Prisoner of Second Avenue' is Neil Simon's comedy of anguish set against the backdrop
of a New York highrise. It's written in the sardonic and urban Simon style, but the setup playes like a
variation on Jackie Gleason's old 'Honeymooners' series.
The raving husband and the long-suffering wife are trapped by their small apartment in the big
city. He bangs on the pipes for the 'super' and shouts out the windows at the neighbors. She is tolerant of
his bad behavior and supportive of his masculine image. Simon even borrows some of the Gleason
slapstick and gets the man doused by a bucketful of water from a higher floor. But instead of Ralph and
Alice Cramden, we have Mel and Edna Edison. Mel is an advertising executive who gets fired and has a
nervous breakdown. Edna decides to hold the marriage together by going back to work--only to watch her
own employer go bankrupt.
There's a message play about coping hidden deep among the profound calamaties and
surface stresses that fill up the script. Despite the heat, the garbage, the noise, crime and dirt, people
can live--and sometimes be happy. There are enough of Simon's wisecracks and one-liners in the
script to pad out the simple premise. And although it lacks the maturity to bring believable depth to the
characters, the Army Hawaii Community Theatre cast is good enough to give us the flavor of the play.
R. J. Galvan directs the show, and draws some workmanlike performances from
his people, adding some needed variety to the two-character format that accounts for four of the play's five
scenes.
Steven Swartz plays Mel with a soft and cuddly center that has been overlayered by bad
temper and environmental abuse. Once the favorite younger brother in a doting family, Mel has become
exploited and driven to extremes. Swartz shows us both sides of the character and warms to the absurd
comedy in the role with a natural feeling for mimicry.
Charlotte Speir has the right tone for Edna, showing her alternately helpless and resouceful,
nut always steadfastly behind her man. Speir also has the necessary style to make the character the butt
of her own dialogue.
Simon writes a single group scene for Mel's brother and sisters. Collectively, they're
a clutch of Jewish siblings who have never outgrown their petty selfishness and self-importance. Their
appearance results in fine comic interplay as they wrangle over offering money to Mel and Edna.
The Schofield group plays the family with a range of Jewish accents that take a wrong
turn somewhere between Flatbush and Miami Beach, but the characters are clear and distinct. Christy
Tharp is penny-pinching Pauline, Melissa Burton is emotional Jessie, and Linda Peterson is grasping
Pearl. Bill Reynolds ties the group together as Harry, the pompous, successful older brother who thinks
he has always envied Mel's position in the family.
In a nice touch to cover the scene changes, a television monitor with local personalities
Kirk Matthews, Linda Coble and Ted Scott reporting on the latest bad news items from New York City.
Friday, February 21, 1986
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
'Prisoner' Is a Pleasure After Slow Start
By Pierre Bowman
Mel is sitting in the dark, in the middle of the night, in the living room of the 14th story
apartment he shares with his wife Edna on Manhattan's East Side. The good-time German stewardesses
next door are keeping him awake. The air-conditioning in the bedroom is too cold. The air outside is too
warm--and too dirty and too noisy.
And so begins another Neil Simon comedy based on urban distress,
Manhattan style, an evening of laughter at a basically serious situation. By the second scene, Edna and
Mel have been robbed of virtually everything in their apartment--including a dead cactus. By Act II, Mel has
had a full-fledged nervous breakdown. And at the final curtain, there is a semblance of a happy ending.
The question with this kind of business is how funny can you make it?
The Army Hawaii Community Theatre production, under the direction of R. J. Galvan,
presents its own answer: fairly funny. Things start slowly, partly because the play takes a while to
get going, partly because Steven C. Swartz and Charlotte Speir, as Mel and Edna, take a while to
settle comfortably into character.
Once Swartz and Speir get their footing, things begin to take off. Swartz manages to fall
apart convincingly and as he builds his role, he begins to display a flair for physical comedy, funny
accents and precise timing. Speir, on the other hand, does an extended turn as the long-suffering wife
without becoming tiresome--and then convincingly falls apart herself.
The puzzle in the production is one of the second-act scenes, when Mel's brother and
three sisters are presented in a discussion about how much money they're willing to contribute to the
solution of Mel's distress.
Bill Reynolds is effective as brother Harry, smarting because he's never been 'the
favorite' but nevertheless a faithful sibling. But the three sisters appear to be from another play
altogether. Perhaps they were sidetracked during an audition for 'Arsenic and Old Lace.' They appear
in peculiar period costumes and attempt their roles with forced accents--while the rest of the players
make no attempt at sounding 'New York.'
Nevertheless, 'Prisoner' spins along briskly and Swartz and Speir eventually prove
to be quite a pleasure.
Friday, April 22, 1986
Honolulu Advertiser
'Da' is a play reaching out with humanity
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Sometimes everything clicks. And this is one of those times for the Army Hawaii Community
Theatre, as Joyce Maltby directs 'Da'--an Irish memory piece by Hugh Leonard. The show is well chosen,
remarkably well cast and carefully directed. It results in a production that reaches out to touch its audience
with warmth and humanity.
Billed as a comedy, the play is a son's bittersweet remembrance and a Dublin equivalent
of 'I Never Sang for My Father.' But 'Da' is drawn with such dogged optimism that, while tragedy may lurk
in the wings, it is never allowed to take center stage.
'Da' is the story of a man who enjoyed his life, and who was resented by his son as being
too ignorant to feel pain. 'He could be hit by a car,' says an observer, 'and say thanks for the lift.' Da is
the father who never used his son's gifts, and thereby avoided any obligation. He is also the living proof
that love--upside down--is love nevertheless.
Charlie is the grown son who still regards the old man's dog as the smartest one in the
family. But Charlie has returned home for Da's funeral--and while sorting through personal belongings,
is unable to drive his father from his mind.
Long-dead characters appear, and remembered scenes overlap with reality. In Charlie's mind,
he gets into new arguments with his parents and with himself as a young boy. Three time planes--of now,
then and imagination--are kept clear by Maltby's direction, and a skillful lighting plot, designed by Frank
Hermann.
By the play's end, we are thoroughly ensnared by its interwoven elements, and know that Charlie will never be totally rid of his past.
The characters are well done, down to the smallest supporting role. While most of the cast
will be familiar to local audiences from personal successes on other stages, 'Da' gives each of them a new
triumph in a new setting. Walt Robertson has the title role, and not only makes the Irish dialogue believable--
he turns it to music. Exasperating and appealing, Robertson is every shred in character. He has the lean
frame and uncluttered philosophy of someone who has survived war and famine. His major qualities are
good nature, dumb luck and a bovine acceptance of fate. Robertson makes Da the right blend of caricature
and truth to be charming to an outsider, but an embarrassment to his son.
Tom Triggs is the adult Charlie, and slowly brings depth and compassion to the role. We see
him relive old hopes and pain, and grow to understand his eventual estrangement. One of Triggs' best
scenes has him as a child of 7, totally loving and believing his father. It is a tribute to director and actors
that the moment is one of the play's strongest.
Mary Kirkham is the doting, nagging mother, and a straight-forward combination of simple
drives and modest expectations. Kirkham makes her immediately recognizable as an extra in the great
scheme of things, but a major player in the small drama of her family.
Michael Brown plays young Charlie and is a believable mix of awkwardness and resentment,
freshness and energy. Dean Turner does fine character work as an opinionated head clerk, and Regina
Ewing is important in a small role as Da's longtime, ungenerous employer. Bill Wiley has a midly slimy
boyhood friend and Becky Maltby has a small but nicely shaded part as young Charlie's first temptation.
Wayne Kisher's set design successfully combines the family parlor with a forestage area
representing sidewalk and city streets. Costumes by D Steber give the right period tone.
Friday, June 13, 1986
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Wrenching Drama of 'Purple Hearts'
By John W. White
'Purple Hearts,' Hawaii playwright Brian Clark's drama about three Navy men trapped
for almost three weeks in a battleship sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor, was first produced two years
ago by Kumu Kahua. In the new Army Hawaii Cummunity Theatre production which premiered last night
at Schofield Barracks, Clark also directs. The resultiing unity of effect makes me wish more writers
would direct their own plays. Or maybe Clark is an exception: after all, he's also an actor (his most
recent role being that of Mozart in the local production of 'Amadeus'), as well as a lecturer in acting
at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; it might be this pan-theatrical experience that makes him so
effective in the role of director.
The play deals not only with the three men in the sunken battleship, but also with their
three women--one a mother, one a wife, and one a girl friend. As the men come to accept the fact that
they will not be rescued, the women come to a parallel realization that 'missing in action' translates
more accurately into 'dead.'
The cast of six, eidely varying in acting experience, delivers six flawless performances in
six demanding roles. There's a uniform conciseness to their delivery which moves the play along
steadily, even though the second act seems slightly to drag. Especially impressive is the work of Eric
Edson (Lewis) and Kate Sullivan (Cassie), who communicate their anguished emotions with a great
degree of subtlety.
The single flaw in the play is not in the directing or the acting, but in the writing. The
character of Whitman, played by Gene Shofner, is not fully realized, and it's not Shofner's fault.
The audience is never given a clue as to how Whitman became what he is--the weakest of the
three men even though he outranks the other two. His character emerges only as he descends into
madness, but this expresses only the effect and not the cause.
Although the other two--Spooner (played by Tom Ruble) and Lewis--are introduced as
stereotypes, their unique characters soon emerge. We come to understand Spooner as more than
just a hard-assed, whoring enlisted man, and Lewis as more than just an innocent child.
But we're given no reason, no cause for Whitman's wiminess--it's just there, yet it's such a
dominant part of his character that he's the first to lose his composure and sanity, and he permits
his subordinates to abuse him continually. It also causes his wife to forget about him in less than
two weeks.
Tom Deishley's set design is almost literally a blank platform for the actors; with
the exception of a couple of crates to sit on and a few props to handle, the actors are left to their
own inner resources to create and communicate the illusion of place and time. And they handle the job
admirably.
If you missed 'Purple Hearts' in its original production, don't miss it now. It's an
excellent piece of homegrown theater, showcasing local talent and subject matter that's close to the
hearts of practically everyone in Hawaii. Saturday, June 21, 1986
Honolulu Advertiser
Clark directs his own 'Purple,' and it's still dynamic
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek Where do you take a plot when there's no place to go? In 'Purple Hearts,' Brian Clark
takes us inside the characters and makes it a very dynamic 2-hour trip. The new production by the Army Hawaii Community Theatre is the story of three men
trapped in a sunken ship following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. They survive for
19 days. While the story is based on an actual incident, the characters are entirely fictional. It is
clear from the start that there is no practical hope of rescue. And while the plot alternates between the
men and the women who love them, the characters gradually face reality in their own way. But it is
the human act of hoping, and then replacing that hope with a decision to move on, that unites the play
and raises it above potential despair. 'Purple Hearts' was first presented by Kumu Kahana in 1984 and has since had a
five-month run by the Hollywood Theatre Club. This is the first production to be directed by the
playwright. The Schofield Barracks production gives the play a larger and more realistic set and a
more suble lighting plot than the earlier Kumu showing. The play is well cast, and all performances are
consistently convincing. The tension between the three sailors is the key to the play's dramatic life. Tom Ruble plays Spooner, a swaggering enlisted man with a pronounced love for whiskey,
cigarettes and lots of women. Spooner is the dark threat in the piece and the source for most of its
unexpected humor. Gene Shofner is Whitman, an ineffectual officer driven by fear and insecurity. Eric
C. Edson appears as Lewis, the young sailor caught between Spooner's bravado and Whitman's
withdrawal. The women appear in isolated monologues that blend together in a universal pattern of pain
and waiting. Kate Sullivan is Cassie, the steadfast sales clerk who stubbornly waits for Spooner,
seeming unaware that shw is only one of his many girls and not the one who fills his last thoughts.
Kimberly Bak is Joanne, Whitman's wife, angered by his reported death and coming to the realization
that their life together was based on a lie. Gloria Spangler is Mama, holding onto hope for her lost
Lewis, bitterly rejecting consolation and struggling to hold onto normalcy. All the pieces fit together in this production, with a very professional result for Army
Theatre.
