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Mar. 30--Who says you can't go home again? Yeah, we know: Thomas Wolfe. But when your father's in the hospital for what he says is the last time, any good son comes home, and Eric Weiss is a good son.
"Brooklyn Boy" is an artistically accessible choice for the opening show at a new venue. The Northport Theater, with its history as a movie house in the village, celebrates its rebirth as a live theater with the drama "Brooklyn Boy" by Donald Margulies, who won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for "Dinner With Friends." "Brooklyn Boy," which opened on Broadway just more than a year ago, is not the author's best work, but its setting resonates with a Long Island audience.
The writing shines: The dialogue is so natural that the cast, under Jeff Bennett's direction, hardly seems to be acting, except in one misguided scene.
Eric, played with a novelist's introspection by Rick Imberman, has good news for his dying father (the crotchety Gene Durney). His new, semiautobiographical novel, "Brooklyn Boy," has just cracked the bestseller list.
Eric's friend from their bar mitzvah days, Ira, affably played by Stephen Shelowitz, is thrilled to recognize himself in the novel. Ira's even more thrilled to hear that a movie adaptation will follow. Eric is headed to L.A. in the morning. But first he must present his book to his father, and then deliver carryout to his wife in a last-ditch bid to save their marriage. Nina, played by Christine Copley with determined resignation, gives herself and Eric permission to get on with their lives.
Eric takes her at her word, bringing a college girl back to his hotel room once he gets to L.A. Alison, self-conscious in her nervous banter, seems both crestfallen and relieved when Eric calls her a cab. It's not just that he has business in the morning. Adultery would be out of character for Eric, even with his marriage in shambles.
His script is also in shambles following a meeting with producer Melissa (Christine Nelson). Eric finds himself reading lines with Tyler, a goyim TV heartthrob (a cartoonishly bewigged Ben Intonato) anxious to "play against type." Melissa warns Eric that his script is "too Jewish," but the insult is all but lost in the banality of a broad comic interpretation. The resulting farce subverts the final scene. That Eric comes home in more ways than one is not troubling, except that we could see it coming from the opening scene.
As a venue, Northport Theater offers love seats sprinkled among its 500 comfortable single seats. Its proscenium stage is too narrow, which may account for the cluttered look of Charles Townsend Wittreich Jr.'s set. Still, it looks as though Northport - which already has a literary history, given that Jack Kerouac used to live there - has a future in the performing arts, like other Long Island villages that have taken the theater-renovation route.
BROOKLYN BOY. A Long Island premiere by Donald Margulies. Bare Bones Theater Company at Northport
Theater for the Performing Arts, 250 Main St., Northport, through April 2. Tickets $20. Call 631-261-2900. Seen last Thursday.
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