SEASON 2005

AT&T's FAMILY WEEK AT THE THEATER
CHILDREN FREE!!!  TWO PERFORMANCES!!!
MARCH 5, 2005
THE LITTLE MERMAID !! by William Glennon

ALL SEASON!
April 18, June 27,  August 15, October 25

March 30 - April 17

SEASON OPENS!  --  SPECIAL MATINEES FOR SCHOOLS!
A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM
By William Shakespeare

LOVE GONE WILD IN THE WOODS!
March 30 - April 17
 

SOURCES

SYNOPSIS

PHOTOS

CAST

SOURCES
Probably composed in 1595 or 1596, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is one of Shakespeare's
early comedies but can be distinguished from his other works in this group by describing it specifically as the Bard's original wedding play. Most scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM as a light entertainment to accompany a marriage celebration; and while the identity of the historical couple for whom it was meant has never been conclusively established, there is good textual and background evidence available to support this claim. At the same time, unlike the vast majority of his works (including all of his comedies), in concocting this story Shakespeare did not rely directly upon existing plays, narrative poetry, historical chronicles or any other primary source materials, making it a truly original piece.

SYNOPSIS
MIDSUMMER involves two sets of couples (Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius) whose romantic cross-purposes are complicated still further by their entrance into the play's fairyland woods where the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon and Titania) preside and the impish folk character of Puck ( Robin Goodfellow) plies his trade. Less subplot than a brilliant satirical device, another set of characters are Bottom the Weaver and his bumptious band of "rude mechanicals" who stumble into the main doings when they go into the same enchanted woods to rehearse a play that is very loosely (and comically) based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, their hilarious home-spun piece taking up Act V of Shakespeare's comedy.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM contains some wonderfully lyrical expressions of lighter Shakespearean themes, most notably those of  love, dreams, and the stuff of both, the creative imagination itself.

Tri-State Actors Theater presents A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in a setting, with music, costumes, and the finest actors and artists that will carry you from the thrills of the Renaissance to the sights, sounds and wonders of 2005. William Shakespeare presents a world in which the passion, despair, and absurdity of love are revealed for our pleasure and entertainment.  He understood that love, while a serious emotion, constantly leads us to the comic insanity of our closest relationships. This theme of love at its funniest and most outrageous is indeed as current as our latest secret crush on a rock star, or our yearning that our dreams and hidden fantasies will come true!
 

May 18 – June 5

GRACE AND GLORIE
By Tom Ziegler
City meets the Country, and tears and laughs explode!

                                                                SYNOPSIS
Anne Barclay and Clodagh Bowyer star in this charmer set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grace, a feisty 90 year old cancer patient, has checked herself out of the hospital and returned to her beloved homestead cottage to die alone. Glorie, the volunteer hospice worker who appears with the pain medication Grace willfully left behind is a Harvard MBA recently transplanted to this rural backwater from New York. Glorie is tense, unhappy and guilt ridden, her only child having been killed in an auto accident when she was driving. As she attempts to care for and comfort the cantankerous rustic, this sophisticated urbanite gains new perspectives on values and life's highs and lows.

"A lot of good humor ... artfully designed to confirm hopes.... Offers the opportunity for good, honest, grandstanding acting."
                                                                                                            ---N.Y. Post.

"A slick entertainment."
                                                                                                           ---N.Y. Daily News

 July 6 – July 24

                                           July 6 – July 24
   FULLY COMMITTED
             An Outlandish Comedy
                                by
                        Becky Mode

  Starring John Manzelli                                         Cast     Synopsis    Reviews    Photos

JOHN MANZELLI (Sam, and 40 Other Characters!)-- a member of Actors Equity Association, Mr. Manzelli is an acclaimed comedic actor who has performed throughout the United States from New York to the Midwest to Pennsylvania to Florida.  His credits include playing Yvan in the hit play ART (Dixie Theatre-Florida); Bob Cratchit in A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Northeast Theatre Ensemble--Pennsylvania); Norman in AND A NIGHTENGALE SANG, Jeremy in THE SPIDER WEB (Horsecave Theatre--Kentucky); the Lead (many roles) in THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP, Macduff in MACBETH, Tybalt in ROMEO AND JULIET (Florida Playwrites Theatre); Richmond in RICHARD III (Illinois Shakespeare  Festival); the Lead in the musical, THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (Public Theatre of Ft. Lauderdale--Florida); and starred as Sam and the other forty characters in FULLY COMMITTED at the New Stage, Jackson Mississippi.

Mr. Manzelli is a recognized Actor/Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors (1995), and has choreographed  various types of fights and combat in over twenty-five theatrical productions. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting from Illinois State University.

The central character, Sam, is a reservation operator in the restaurant. All of the other characters appear via phone calls to the reservation line or through the intercom from upstairs in the restaurant itself. Through the course of the evening, we meet Sam's father, a likeable guy from South Bend; the temperamental chef; Jean-Claude, the snooty Maitre D'; Naomi Campbell's annoying (but funny) assistant; and several powerful New York types, among many other zany and hilarious characters.

07/22/05 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom  

Review of Tri-State Production

Manzelli covers entire menu in Tri-State's 'Fully Committed'

By William Westhoven, Special to the Daily Record

Ever want to smack one of those obnoxious people on the phone who insist you'll have to wait for an appointment or reservation? Well, contrary to popular opinion, especially when you're experiencing reservation rage, they're not all sadists like the David Spade character on those Capital One commercials.

Here's another surprise - their workaday world makes for some pretty funny theater, at least at Tri-State Actor's Theater in Sussex, where the blue plate special is Becky Mode's "Fully Committed."

Mode, a former writer for "The Cosby Show," has drawn on experiences from the early phase of her career, when she made ends meet by working in a typically trendy Manhattan restaurant ("fully committed" is a pretentious euphemism for "booked solid").

"Fully Committed" represents her all-too-common situation with Sam Peliczowski, a young actor from South Bend, Ind., who is paying his dues by suffering as a reservation booker for a preposterously posh Big Apple trattoria frequented by celebs, sheiks and chic socialites.

We neither see the restaurant nor hear its name. All we are privy to is the dank, dingy underbelly of the glittery restaurant scene. Sam does his business in the restaurant's windowless basement, which is strewn with storage, laundry, clunky file cabinets and other clutter (scenic artist Jacqueline Perry's set is detailed and gloriously unattractive). His only connections to the real - and surreal - world are two telephones. One he feverishly works with multiple lines and a headset. The other has a large red light bulb, which blinks ominously when Sam's boss, a stressed-out chef, demands his attention.

John Manzelli, an affable everyman sort, deftly embodies every character, hopping from one side of the conversation to the other with a swift change of voice, posture and manner. In addition to the chef, who holds the phone tightly clenched in front of his face, there are many customers who keep calling their way back into the action. They include a snooty rich woman who keeps making impossible demands and a mobster who wants a waiter to croon "The Lady is a Tramp" for his mother. Staff members range from Jean Claude, the useless maitre d', to Bob, a fellow reservation booker whose car is stuck on the Long Island Expressway.

Then there's Sam's aging dad, a widower who keeps hoping his son can get home for Christmas. Whenever Dad's on the line, Manzelli swings his chair around to use it as a walker.

Sam's holiday schedule becomes one of several plot lines that cut through the shtick and eventually point the play to a clever and positive climax. The ending comes as surprise after a long day of disasters, including a bungled visit from Zagat's.

Of course, performing artists aren't the only people whose dreams are waylaid by necessary day jobs. So Sam's predicament is accessible to a large audience, certainly a bigger one than Tri-State's Crescent Theater can hold.

Perhaps that's why, more than a week into its limited run, "Fully Committed" was still filling a respectable number of seats. This is a good sign for Tri-State, which, like many theaters, has been feeling a pinch at the box office over the last year or so. In fact, artistic director Paul Meacham said before Saturday night's performance that one reason "Fully Committed" replaced "Proof" on the 2005 schedule was because this one-man show was less expensive to produce.

So much the better for North Jersey theater patrons, who have had myriad productions of "Proof" to choose from. Instead, they can look forward to this fresh bit of fun, because "Fully Committed" is a choice entrée. Manzelli resists the urge to indulge himself by plowing through the 40-plus characters (some of which appear only for seconds) with a Red Bull-rush of comic hysteria. Instead, he inhabits them with stylishly subtle panache. His fluid delivery and smooth segues give you a chance to digest the characters along with the comedy.

Sure, Robin Williams could have you rolling in the aisles with this material, but Manzelli's method, wisely cultivated by Meacham's direction, makes it a night at the theater instead of a night at the improv."

Other Reviews

“"An immensely entertaining, scaldingly funny play about the bad behavior good food can inspire.”                                                                                 --NYTimes                  
                                                                                              
 ". . . hilarious and touching, gallops along at a swift, almost frantic pace."
                                                                                                --Time Out New York

" . . .a sparkling one-man tour de force . . . very funny and very believable . . . "
                                                                                                 --The New York Post

"What makes the play so delightful is that all of the frustrating characters in the play get their comeuppance, and we are cheering on the inside at the resolution . . ."
                                                                                                 --Centerstage, Chicago

AUGUST 3 -  AUGUST 13

      THE TAT  INTERN ACTING COMPANY
                                               PRESENTS
  NARNIA, the Musical 
                based on C.S. lewis'
     THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE
          Music by Thomas TiernEY, Lyrics by ted drachman, book by jules tasca
                                 SYNOPOSIS   PHOTOS

 SYNOPSIS
C. S. Lewis' classic tale of four English school children who become caught up in an epic battle between good and evil in which they are key players.  Joining Aslan the great lion in a war against the White Witch, they learn valuable lessons in courage, and heroism, unselfishness and wisdom that will help them grow into competent and compassionate adults.

                                                     September 14 – October 2

                                            "You shed all sense of time at this beautiful and  devious new play."NYTIMES
                  "...a spellbinder that transfixes you..." THE GUARDIAN
 THE WEIR
               By Conor McPherson

  AN IRISH GHOST STORY --TO CHILL YOUR BONES!
                          [Suitable for Adults]
                                                       CAST   SYNOPSIS    HAUNTINGS    REVIEWS  PHOTOS

                                                            1-973-875-2950, or ORDER ONLINE                                                         

On arriving at a local bar in a remote part of Ireland, Valerie, a mysterious outsider who brings with her promises of a new lease on life, fascinates the pub regulars and yet finds herself spellbound by an evening of ghostly stories spun by the area’s bachelors. Through these tales, both funny and chilling, each person at the pub acheives new understanding and acceptance.

Simply put, a "weir," according to Webster’s is "a dam - to raise the water level or divert its flow." In the context of Conor McPherson’s play, the weir still represents a dam but, on one side the water is still, deep and peaceful yet on the other side of the weir, the water is powerful and forceful - held at bay by the dam. The metaphor can be extended to our culture, or the dynamic of people’s lives that are dammed up.  It is interesting that the entomology of the word derives from an Old English word meaning "to guard" or "to protect."

Irish wunderkind McPherson’s breakthrough Broadway hit, winner of two 1998 Olivier Awards including Best Play, is a stirring tale about people losing and looking for kindred spirits. The London Evening Standard said that "eavesdropping in rural Irish bars, where time stands dead still, can never have been such a pleasure as Conor McPherson makes it."
                                               from an interview with Theatre Director James J. Christy

NEW YORK and LONDON REVIEWS--

Conor McPherson won the 1997 Evening Standard 'Most Promising Playwright' Award for this play, as well as the The 1999 Olivier Award for 'Best New Play'.

"You shed all sense of time at this beautiful and devious new play."
                                                                                                                   --THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Exceptional - a spellbinder that transfixes you...No praise, in fact, is too high...The Weir offers the most exciting evening in theatrical London"
                                                                                                                     --THE GUARDIAN
"A real coup de theatre . . ."
                                                                                                                     --EVENING STANDARD

"Sheer theatrical magic . . .You can even smell the peat smoke...delightfully drawn characters . . .tremendous."
                                                                                                                         --DAILY TELEGRAPH

"Ireland keeps sending us gifted playwrights and none more promising in recent years than Conor McPherson"                                                                                                   --SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

"Hauntings and Crossways":

Conor McPherson's The Weir.

The English word "haunt" is one of many that we take for granted but which runs back along crossing roads to telling origins. Not only are places haunted, but we might say that we feel, or even look, haunted. This is a step away from the ghosts that so often have the hold on the word, but it is not too far off.

The origins of the word echoes across The Weir to us. One explanation for where the word comes from is the Middle English word, haunten, which means roughly "to frequent" somewhere. The other origin looks towards the Icelandic word, heimta, that is similar to the meaning of haunten, which means "to regain," but draws its root from the word for home, heim. A haunting may then simply, yet eloquently, be a longing for return to home; whether on the part of the living or the dead.

Conor McPherson's critically-acclaimed and awarded play, The Weir (1998) is truly haunted. It is not just about a typically empty pub in the transforming Irish countryside, but tells actual ghost stories. Looking back to the origins of hauntings at the time when the so-called civilized world first came into contact with the peoples of the island of Ireland, we might gain a bit more respect for ghost stories and hauntings than we might normally have. How many of the 40 million Americans of Irish descent might be thought in these terms to be "haunted" by Ireland? How again might the great waves of emigration-of soldiers and gentry in the eighteenth-century; of the working and poor in the nineteenth-century; and of the educated and young in the twentieth-century made Ireland a place that is haunted? The Weir deftly raises all of these issues while never losing sight of the great stories which provide the center of this play.

            Conor McPherson's The Weir is set in a fictional place, near "Carrick," that clearly resembles his home county of Leitrim. In discussion, McPherson has cited his grandfather's solitary life in the Irish countryside as an inspiration for the play. The setting too holds some power. Of all the counties in the Republic, only Co. Leitrim has had a continuous decline in population since 1841. Today, the county's population is the smallest of any in Ireland. Within the play, the characters laugh about the tourists who'll soon overrun their quiet pub for their yearly tour. But they also clearly feel the absences, both personal and cultural.

            In partaking in pub settings and ghost stories, the then twenty-eight year old McPherson was handling well trod materials in both Irish culture and Irish drama. The Irish National Theatre, limited by venues such as the Antient Concert Rooms on New Brunswick (now Pearse) Street and the 16' by 9' stage of the original Abbey Theatre, set most of its dramas in spartan, rural settings. The interior of the shebeen (rural drinking establishment, to use the term loosely) or of the country cottage became so familiar that the running joke during the mid-century seasons of the Abbey was that the only "set change" was a new coat of paint. Revising this ghost of the national theatre, McPherson populates the setting with particularly new characters: small-time real estate developers, career women from Dublin, sons of the publicans, and even just off stage, marauding EU tourists. This tension between the old set-our familiar context through which to understand the people-and the new characters returns stories to the stage in a striking and memorable way.

            Ghost stories have an equally complex, if not more daunting, history than the setting. Irish ghost stories are recounted even in the very first travel account of the island written by the Norman Gerald Cambrensis in the twelfth century. Within the twentieth century, from the efforts of the Irish literary revivalists like W. B. Yeats to extremely important government efforts, Irish folklore has been assured a central place within the identity of the Republic of Ireland. Ireland's folklore enjoyed a place on the world's literary stage as early as the 1820s, when the Brothers Grimm were translating T. Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. One of the first cultural initiatives of the Fianna F·il government within the Free State of Ireland was to establish, under the direction of the dynamic SÈamus  Duilearga, the Folklore of Ireland Society (1927). The Society was subsumed by the Irish Folklore Institute (1930), Irish Folklore Commission (1935), and eventually the Department of Folklore / Roinn BhÈal Oideas …ireann (1970), whose massive holdings are open to the public through the auspices of the National University of Ireland, University College Dublin.

            Throughout both popular memory and official holdings, the importance of the Otherworld (an Saol Eile) is everywhere evident. The Irish name for the Otherworld itself sets it up as the "other place," yet  (like haunting), this word too has its echoes. The slight variation, saoil, meaning "to think, or wonder," with saoi, meaning a wise man, lends an understanding not distant from our own thinking about wisdom as the knowledge of heaven as an ultimate meaning. In fact, from Cambrensis forward the Roman church had taken great issue with Irish folklore's tendency-inherited from Celtic myth-to mix too freely the mortal and immortal worlds.

As early as the passage grave at Newgrange 5,000 years ago, there is evidence that the mysterious first inhabitants of the island had complex and immediate beliefs about the afterlife. Later, the Celts were one of the first to believe in the immortality of the soul. When the island was converted to Christianity in the fifth century, St. Padraig sometimes demonstrated a disturbingly pagan tendency for later Church writers. The trinity as demonstrated through the shamrock may have made perfect sense to audiences who had been trained by druids like Padraig to not only believe in an afterlife that effects us but to practice all curses and invocations through triads. Even the moving prayer, "St. Patrick's Breastplate," with its invocations of the elements against "witches and smiths and wizards," is also known as "The Deer's Cry," because it is said to have been chanted just as Padraig turned himself and his followers into deer so as to escape from their persecutors. (Shapeshifting is a standard pre-Christian trick of the trade.) Through all the transformations, invasions, and assimilations, there appears to have always been a traffic between this world and the next. Whether Celts, Vikings, Normans, or Lucifer's angels who weren't thrown all the way into hell, Ireland has assimilated multitudes.

            Bordered by Sligo, Roscommon, Cavan, Longford, Fermanagh, Donegal, and the North Atlantic, Co. Leitrim itself is at a sort of crossways and the stories told in The Weir have specific lineage throughout Irish folklore. Touched by the West of Ireland opened up through W. B. Yeats' Sligo and the Northern Gaeltacht through Donegal, it is a county suspended between traditions but perhaps always looking elsewhere. In this sense alone, it is the perfect setting for the haunted characters (and perhaps audiences) to whom the play appeals so strongly.---  (from  James J. Christy, Professor of Theatre at Villanova University)

DECEMBER, 2005
Purchase Tickets Online!

                                                           SYNOPSIS
A holiday treat for the whole family! The great Christmas classic by Charles Dickens: the miserly Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim,  the ghosts of past, present and future, in this wonderful recreation. Make A CHRISTMAS CAROL part of your holiday at Tri-State!

*[Selection of plays subject to change without notice]