Making Magic at Center Playhouse!

If you are a writer and you’re lucky enough to have your novel published, your story is read by people you will never meet.  You’ll never know their reactions to your characters and their journey.  If you sell a screenplay to Hollywood, your script gets placed in the hands of many people and the end result could be a story you’d hardly recognize.  But if you write a stage play and it’s produced, you get to see your characters come alive.  A stage play is magic.  It asks an audience to suspend disbelief and join the actors for an hour or two in a world that doesn’t exist.  It is an enjoyable time that passes quickly.  The audience leaves the theater buzzing with excitement. 

A great play can make you believe that you are in Atlanta, Georgia spending twenty five years (1948-1973) with Miss Daisy and her chauffeur, Hoke, as they struggle with the changing mores of their time. A great play can transport you to the home of Professor Morrie Schwartz and the Tuesday visits with his former student Mitch Albom while they discuss life and death as ALS ravages Morrie’s body until he succumbs to the disease. A great play can bring you to the secret annex of a building in Amsterdam during World War ll as you watch Anne Frank record her family’s struggle to survive in hiding until their capture two years later.  Driving Miss Daisy, Tuesdays With Morrie and The Diary Of Anne Frank, are several of the plays that I’ve enjoyed with Center Players.

Center Playhouse is a small theater with a big heart. The 49-seat theater is nestled around the corner from restaurant row on South Street, Freehold, New Jersey. Recently I had the pleasure to attend the rehearsals of Arsenic And Old Lace directed by Bernice Garfield Szita, which will be showing at the Playhouse October 18 through November 17, 2013.   During the first night of rehearsal, even though several of the actors were new to the Center Players, they all quickly developed a sense of playfulness as they stumbled through their lines.  The stage still held the set from You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, which made it awkward for the actors.  It was rather amusing watching them recite lines from Arsenic And Old Lace then turn and bump into Snoopy’s dog house!  

By the third night of rehearsals, a new world began to unfold for me.  No longer was I in 2013 in Freehold, New Jersey but I was in the year 1941 in Brooklyn, New York at the Brewster’s family home.  Now Jill Zaitchick and Colleen DeFelice were Miss Abbey and Miss Martha, the spinster Brewster sisters and not just actors playing a part.

The characters are a bit out of their element.  Ken Bropson, who I now think of as Teddy Brewster believes he’s Teddy Roosevelt.   The sisters do not recognize their nephew Jonathan Brewster (Eric McDonough) because a botched plastic surgery, performed by Dr. Einstein (Michael Tota), leaves him looking like Boris Karloff. Then there’s Mortimer Brewster (Jeff Cox) who tries to bring sanity to the household of his insane relatives as his bewildered fiancée (Yvette Cataneo) wonders what on earth is going on.  There are hilarious scenes of people, dead and alive, coming and going in the Brewster’s home.  And who could believe that the sweet elderly Brewster sisters could be responsible for the twelve dead bodies buried in the basement!  It is a pleasure to watch this remarkable cast bring this classic dark comedy to life and I look forward to opening night.

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Arsenic and Old Lace opens at Center Playhouse, located at 35 South Street in downtown Freehold, on Friday, October 18th and runs for five weekends through November 17th, with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM and Sundays at 2:00 PM. Tickets are $25 for Adults and $23 for Seniors & Students and includes gourmet desserts and refreshments. Group rates for parties of ten or more are available. Seating is limited so call the box office at (732) 462-9093 or visit us online at www.CenterPlayers.org to purchase your tickets.

Gloria Moro of Manalapan is a guest blogger for Center Players.  She has studied playwriting at The Playwrights Theater, New Jersey Rep and McCarter Theater.