Greater Morristown has an embarrassment of artistic riches. We know, because we burn the midnight oil putting out a Weekend Preview every Thursday.
Over this past weekend, we feasted on a few of these offerings: Lost in Yonkers at the Methodist Church, Phantom at St. Peter’s, and an over-the-top Troubadour Halloween show at the Unitarian Fellowship.
Who knew you could have so much fun in church?
In reverse chronology, let’s start with Sunday’s matinee of Lost In Yonkers.
L-R: Miriam Salerno, Noah Shidlovsky, Jon Beeler, Hedi Molnar, Bill Barry, Josiah Irwin, Lauren Proda. Photo by Penguin Moon Studios
‘EYES LIKE TWO DISTRICT ATTORNEYS’
Pioneer Productions, a community theatrical group that punches above its weight, has found a new ring: The little stage at the Morristown United Methodist Church.
Churchgoers are accustomed to seeing that space crammed with knickknacks and bric-a-brac, at the annual rummage sale. But from now through Nov. 5, 2023, it’s the living room of the Kurnitz clan, fiery figments of Neil Simon’s imagination that won him the 1991 Pulitzer Prize.
Lost in Yonkers is a study in family dysfunction, World War II-style. Generational melodramas revolve around widowed Grandma Kurnitz, whose heart is encased in a steel trap. Tough love is the only love for this German immigrant.
One of her sons, a small-time hood named Louie (Bill Barry), describes her eyes as “two district attorneys.”
Any metaphorical sweetness is downstairs, in the candy shop Grandma rules like a female Ebenezer Scrooge.
When her other son, the soft-hearted widower Eddie (Jon Beeler), falls on hard times, he begs her to take in his young teens, Jay (Josiah Irwin) and Arty (Noah Shidlovsky) for a few months.
Grandma treats Yakob and Arthur, as she insists on calling her grandsons, the same way she raised her own brood. It’s a rough ride for the boys, whose good humor sustains them and provides comic relief for the audience. Their asthmatic aunt Gert (Lauren Proda) also gets some wheezy laughs.
Directed by Pioneer co-founder Daniel Peter Vissers, this production features a pair of noteworthy stage debuts. Noah Shidlovsky’s only prior credit is Guys and Dolls, last spring at his middle school. And Grandma Kurnitz is the first role for 73-year-old Hedi Molnar, a writer and editor whose late parents were Holocaust survivors–a fact that informs her performance.
These newcomers acquit themselves well, and appear to have promising careers ahead of them.
In 1991, Tony awards went to Grandma, Uncle Louie and Bella, the play’s dominant characters. In Morristown, Bill Barry plays Louie with moxie to spare, a wise guy who wisely knows he’s no role model for his nephews.
Saving the best for last… Miriam Salerno is the story’s emotional core as the 35-year-old Bella, a jangly bundle of pent-up yearnings and desperate dreams, who is suffocating as caregiver for her mother, Grandma Kurnitz.
Every family pigeonholes its members. Bella is pegged as too infantile and fragile to survive in the mean outside world that her mean mother is hell-bent on sheltering her from. The role explores complex emotions, and Salerno, last seen in Morristown as Annette in God of Carnage, pulls it off with energy and passion.
When Salerno’s Bella finally stands up to her bullying mother, you want to take cover. But there’s no place to hide. The Methodist Church hall is so small, you are in the Kurnitz living room. The intimacy enhances the powerful climax. That’s the special power of good community theater.
Lost in Yonkers returns for three more performances: Nov. 3rd and 4th at 8 pm, and on Nov. 5 at 3 pm. Tickets are $25. The church is at 50 Park Place.
PHANTOM OF ST. PETER’S: Slideshow photos by Alice Cutler and Kevin Coughlin. Click/hover on images for captions:
PHANTOM OF ST. PETER’S
Anthony Hammond, who came from Edinburgh last year to become music director of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, is known for organ improvisation. He’s even written a book about the late Pierre Cochereau, famed for his improv as organist at Notre-Dame in Paris.
Hammond showed off his skills Saturday, accompanying Lon Chaney’s 1925 silent classic The Phantom of the Opera on St. Peter’s 1930 Skinner organ for a large audience that rewarded the musician with a standing ovation.
Playing along for 90 minutes as the horror movie unfolded in black-and-white on his laptop screen, Hammond deftly inserted melodic and amusing swatches of musical color, from the sweet Morning Mood from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite to an ominous, discordant Here Comes the Bride.
When the Phantom snorkeled through Paris sewers to hunt for a prowling boater, the Jaws theme reverberated off St. Peter’s stone walls.
In a tense scene when the Phantom’s alarm system — brass knockers–warned of trespassers in his subterranean lair, Hammond synchronized his organ chimes with laser precision.
He has practiced that part, he acknowledged afterward, wearing the depleted look of someone who has just concentrated for three sets of tennis.
Yet Hammond sure made it sound easy, in a performance likely to be remembered as a 2023 Halloween highlight by anyone who experienced it.
TROUB-OR-TREAT: Slideshow photos by Debbie Bearg, Todd Dennison and Kevin Coughlin. Click/hover on images for captions:
TROUB-OR-TREAT?
The Folk Project’s Troubadour concert series is fun on most weeks. But it’s hard to top the annual Halloween show, which was over the top last Friday.
Emcees Todd Dennison and Bob McNally and a brigade of volunteers transformed the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship in Morris Township into the spookiest house this side of Congress.
The place had enough skulls, limbs and pumpkins to stock a strip mall popup store. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed, on a stage where a graveyard backdrop welcomed local performers who were scary for all sorts of reasons.
Full disclosure: It’s Halloween.
Singers waxed nostalgic for online guillotines, and for the family funeral business. Mike Agranoff played the Addams Family theme on his squeezebox. The Wizard of Oz Scarecrow did a (really) soft-shoe rendition of If I Only Had a Brain. Tina Ross put a bewitching spin on Creedence’s I Put a Spell on You.
Some costumes were creative as well. One person came as Breakfast. And a buccaneer joke had legs.
Which is saying something at an affair where nobody dared take a bow, lest they lose an appendage. All in all, a howl of a good time, from folks who love to face the music.
BONUS: HAPPY FALLOWEEN
We would be remiss if we did not tip our pumpkin head to Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Don Henry (Where’ve You Been, Beautiful Fool), who sang selections from his Falloween album, on that same cozy Methodist stage mentioned here a few inches ago.
Henry was accompanied by illustrator Michael Moran of Florham Park, who sketched up a storm.
That Oct. 21 show included some spooky tunes. But here’s a pretty one, Beautiful Goodbye.
Don Henry sings ‘Beautiful Goodbye’ at Morristown Methodist Church, Oct. 21, 2023. Video by Kevin Coughlin for MorristownGreen.com:
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