THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR

WPCNR Phantom of the Theatre. By John F. Bailey. March 5, 2005: Forget American Idol. Forget about the old Our Gang comedies. You want a show — you go to Westco!

The 62 talented lads and lassies from 5 to 15 and some talented alumni of Westco Productions had an appreciative audience of over 350 persons clapping, teary-eyed, and foot-tapping at the Weschester youth theatre group’s twenty-fifth Anniversary Show, Give My Regards to Broadway Saturday afternoon at Westchester Broadway Theatre.

They did it all in one take, with no fluffs, no muffs, with only one dress rehearsal on the complex WBT stage!

 

The Westco Company in their grand finale, finishing with a rousing, “You’re a good woman, Susan Katz!” saluting the founder of children’s theatre in Westchester to conclude the show Saturday afternoon. Photo by WPCNR StageCam

 

Most touching numbers of the day that brought tears of joy to the hardbitten, seen-it-all papparazzi snapping the show were the 6 performances of Westco’s disabled actors and actresses with Down Syndrome.  The disabled troupers performed with joy and concentration, and showed no one acts harder, concentrates more, works harder or enjoys the opportunity to peform more than a disabled person. The kids literally skipped and jumped for joy when they left the stage after their numbers to thunderous applause and no dry eyes. Westco stages acting groups for disabled youngsters, who showed they can sing and dance and showcase! Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

 

 

 

Susan Katz, Westco Founder and Executive Director, right,  honoring two of the giants of Westco, Kelly Budde, center,  Director of the Children’s Workshops, and Cindy Moore, left, their Musical Director. Showstopper after showstopper by the little thespians showed the professionals how it is done as the group performed 25 Broadway Classics from the title tune to their topper, Copacabana. Photo by WPCNR StageCam

WESTCO ALUMNA Tracy Tummarello, who formerly played Sally Brown in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, for Westco cavorts in the group number My New Philosophy, responding to her “class.” Photo by WPCNR StageCam

Listen to those Dancin’ Feet: The Company performing 42nd Street  in the footlights. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

Give me that Old Soft Shoe! Graduating Westco stars, graduating “dancing queen” Allison Shlom, left, and Jake Meiner performing “I Can Do That!” . The talent Westco has brought out of Westchester’s youngsters was something to see. Photo by WPCNR StageCam

The Telephone Hour performed with Westco oriented lyrics, was one of the highlights of the show. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

DEBONAIR EMCEE Jason Summers in tux, and the three Westco Graduates, left to right, honored with roses during the show: Jake Meiner, Allison Shlom, and Nicholas Brovender. Mr. Summers started with Westco when he was 8 years old, and now makes his living as a director and an actor at the tender age of 23. He could easily replace Conan O’Brien or Jay Leno on the networks, because his patter from scene to scene in the show, his quips were funny that genuinely got the laughs from the adult audience, and he writes all his own material. He sings, too, doing Happy Face with the contingent and improvising ditties inbetween the acts. He’s pleasant to listen to, commands the stage and recalls the elegance of Fred Astaire. Photo by WPCNR StageCam

WPCNR asked Mr. Summers, and the three graduating Westco youngsters about what makes the Westco children’s theater experience special.

Ms. Shlom said she had done 13 shows with Westco, and said “Every time I get on stage I really enjoy myself.” She plans to go to an acting camp this summer and continue her stage work. Asked what she likes best about her Westco career, she said, “It helps me get confidence for going on stage, and it helps me make friends also.

Mr. Summers, the veteran emcee who turned his Westco experience into his profession said, “I was eight years old and a neighbor actually brought us the brochure. I was always a ham as a child, and it seemed like a natural progression to come to Westco. I’ve been here for fifteen years now.”

Westco seems to have worked for Mr. Summers, who works professionally as an actor and director. He’s directed off-Broadway, on national tours and in regional theatre in Florida and California. He has also performed off-Broadway and on tour. Asked if he was making his living in theatre, Mr. Summers said, “Yes, making my living in theatre. It can be done.” 

Young Mr. Meiner is in his tenth show with Westco in three years. He joined them at 10 years of age, and says “I love it.”

Bringing out the Confidence.

Asked what Westco does that makes him enjoy it, Meiner said, “Everyone’s so kind. Everyone, like the directors are so open to all your ideas, and they’re so considerate of you, and like “Alix” (Shlom) said, it really helps you make friends and learn to really…you grow to love Westco.”

Mr. Meiner, now that he is graduating Westco, plans to continue acting in his school shows. WPCNR asked if Westco helps him with the ability to audition. Meiner said,

“Yes, Cindy (Musical Director), has really helped us with being able to sing, and projection from what we learn from Cindy, we can go on to further auditions and learn further information.”

Nicholas Brovender has been in 13 Westco shows, his 10th workshop. Asked what his favorite show was, he said, “Well, just the whole idea of being here. We’ve become really good friends over time. It’s just getting to come here every Saturday (Rochambeau School-Westco’s home stage), visit with your friends.”

The First Lady of Children’s Theatre, Susan Katz, Westco Founder and Executive Director thanks her production crew for their help over the years. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

WPCNR caught up with Ms. Katz after the show and asked her to tell us how Westco began. She recalls she was just coming off the road in about 1977, after being road manager for Godspell that had just come off Broadway.

“I’d been touring all around and I came back in from the road, and said you know, I like doing theatre and all, and I have no idea what got into my head about doing theatre for children, like adult performances for children like we do. I went to the Westchester County Recreation and Parks Department, and they were very receptive to partnering with me. That’s when Westco Productions was born in 1979. Then we become nonprofit in 1983. We were doing a lot of shows in the Little Theatre in the Westchester County Center.”

Ms. Katz’s shows attracted a large  number of handicapped children in wheelchairs who came to the Little Theatre and had to be carried up stairs to see the shows. She then moved her shows to the Church Street School auditorium that was not used by the Board of Education. They rented the auditorium from the White Plains Child Day Care Association. When the Board of Edcuation reopened Church Street School, Westco moved to the Music Hall in Tarrytown. Now Westco operates out of Rochambeau School in White Plains.

Judging from the happiness of the young performers Saturday afternoon, the talent’s out there and Westco’s bringing it out of our youngest and brightest.

Saturday’s show was produced with eight weeks of rehearsals, only one dress rehearsal at the Westchester Broadway Theatre, and the troupers got it right on the very first take. They received five minutes of applause.

In the 2005-06 season Westco promises The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Littlest Pilgram, Frosty the Snowman (the longest running children’s show in the country), Adventures in Storyland, The Rainbow Fish, Miss Nelson Is Missing!!!, and Let’s Explore The Explorers. Each of these shows are schedule for next year. Next year’s Westco Workshops where every child gets a part, and feature singing, dancing and acting have not been programmed yet. The workshops rehearse on Saturdays.  Workshops coming up are Anastasia and Jr. Rockin Rollers.

Westco is beloved all over the metropolitan area for their performances in some 80 hospitals around the area for children recovering from illnesses and injuries. Westco also performs specialty shows in schools of an educational nature. Upcoming shows are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs April 7,8 and 9th at Rochambeau Theatre on 220 Fisher Avenue, White Plains, and The Town Mouse & The Country Mouse, May 5,6,7, at Rochambeau and May 9 to 13 in Suffern and May 14.

For more information on Westco, they have their website, www.westcoprods.com.

 

 

 

 

 

WPCNR PHANTOM OF THE THEATRE. By John F. Bailey. March 5, 2005: For one week only, White Plains and Westchester can see the last  great American character actor, the great Jack Klugman, giving a clinic on why you act, how to act, and what a professional is in The Value of Names.

 

 

THE SET of  the new play on the White Plains Performing Arts Center block, launched in L.A.’s Matrix Theatre,  a sellout in its Midwest run, a one night show in Manhattan. It boldly grapples with subjects we don’t like: age, old hurt and forgiveness, father-daughter understanding, hypocrisy, and unforgivable (perhaps) betrayal on the White Plains stage. Jack Klugman, Louis Zorich and Montclair State University graduate, Megan Muckelmann deliver a thought-provoking, amusing examination of the politics of forgiveness through March 13. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

 

The last great American character actor is of course, the 83 year old Jack Klugman,  television’s Oscar Madison and Quincy, M.E. His voice is raspy from his severe attack of cancer twelve years ago that cost him use of his voice for four years.  Klugman brought back his voice  and is now back on stage perhaps playing his greatest role at The White Plains Performing Arts Center. He is shown signing autographs after the Opening Night Performance. (Where else can you meet the actors after a show but the White Plains Performing Arts Center?) Photo by WPCNR StageCam

 

If the play had  Neil Simon’s or Harold Pinter’s name on it, everyone would write how clever and moving it is, how deep and how many different levels it has, how vivid, painful, and exact its emotional expressions are, and how the laughs make the medicine go down.

 

The Value of Names  though is written by  Jeffrey Sweet, a playwright who has won awards, but  no blockbuster hits yet,  who writes productions for the Chicago theater renaissance and teaches on the faculty of Lehman College. He has written a sharp, stingingly humored work that showsintriguing facets of forgiveness and rehabilitation with a lively script that shows what grudges are made of.

 

The play does not have a lot of uproarious laughs in it, but it’s got enough.  Rather, like so many Pinter/Simon  plays and the Pinter imitation plays like Art,  Sweet combines laughs with pathos, wisdom and a melancholy.

 

The laughs are bursts that take the edge off the keen knife of the play, while it slices up your preconceived notions of forgiveness.

 

It makes you think and feel the pain of  Benny Silverman, the Blacklisted actor who has never gotten over the pain of not working.  It uses a lot of four-letter words, has a lot of tough, off-color expressions.

 

Three on a Gauntlet.

 

Here are insightful, profound understandings and  all-too-stirring portrayals of the depths of human hurt, including very real portrayal of the the heights and depths of father-daughter relationships. They are acted by  three fine protagonists, Mr. Klugman,  Megan Muckelmann and  Louis Zorich to deliver the long one actor (about an hour and fifteen minutes with no scene breaks). They interact with precisely nuanced reactions delivering their hypocrisies, rationalizations and cold hollow hurts that do not go away.

 

Fortunately, Mr. Sweet, the playwright has  the great Klugman.

 

Klugman, the master of  wisecracking, outrage, sensitivity, nuance and sarcasm plays the embittered Mr. Silverman.

 

The play begins with an awkward reunion on a  patio overlooking Malibu Beach with his actress daughter, played “just-young-enough, just-old-enough, just-sassy-enough-to-stand-up-to-Dad” by Ms. Muckelmann, followed by a lively, spellbinding confrontation with Zorich, as the director who betrayed him out to the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the 1950s.

 

Klugman plays the former actor Benny Silverman, whose daughter is unexpectedly about to act in a play directed by the man who cost Silverman those years of work.

 

Muckelmann plays Norma Silverman, who has come out to Los Angeles to explain her name change to her father, because she wants to be on her own, rather than rely on her father (a famous former sitcom actor). The play opens with Klugman painting on his Malibu terrace.  Muckelmann narrates the scene-changes in the play, using the time-honored Our Town Stage Manager device. She did them a little too quickly in the Opening Night performance I felt. She orients the audience as the action takes place over several weeks. A little slowdown and she’ll be fine on those narration bits.

 

A Father-Daughter Relationship Dead Solid Perfect.

 

Muckelmann as daughter and Klugman as Dad, spar in just-dead-on father-daughter disputes at the top of the play.

 

Ms. M. and Mr. Klugman  deliver sharp funny exchanges (the way Oscar and Felix used to do) on why she is changing her name. They argue over the script of the new play she has gotten a part for that has some good chuckles on audience reaction to that scene. A sample funny line: “You think the scene is about ideas and metaphors, it’ll be about tits.” 

 

 Klugman delivers his humorous lines in that classic Oscar Madison style we have always loved. He always gets the laugh, and can go from laugh to serious in an instant. It is a pleasure to watch a personality like Mr. Klugman’s who gives it all he has and nails every line and keeps you rivetted.

 

 

Ms Muckelmann is his worthy, attractive foil, and together the pair paint a typical father-daughter friendly antagonism of daughter seeking approval, dad seeking control that is all too familiar to any father of a daughter.

 

The pair then get into Norma’s unhappiness at learning about the problems her father had had with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee from TV Guide. This exchange between the two explores a lot of those family hypocrisy issues that every dad may very well face some day when discussing their behavior and their child’s need to know. It’s done in a humorous way, and defines the issues about to unfold.

 

It becomes clear through Muckelmann’s narration that after she has gotten the part, the director has fallen ill and has been replaced with Leo Greshen, played by Mr. Zorich.

 

When Zorich comes around to the beach house to convince Ms. Muckelmann to stay in the part, he and Benny meet for the first time since the 1950s. The play then takes on the character of Pinter’s Old Times with the two former friends, and sworn enemies thrashing out the unhealed wound of Greshen betraying  Silverman to the House Committee that cost Silverman years of not acting, because it resulted in Silverman being placed on the Black List. But, this is not simply a Pinter knockoff, but rivals the humanity and reality of the Pinter hits.

 

The Old Protagonists go at it.

 

At first they are shocked to see each other, and the great lines we have heard so far between Klugman and Muckelmann, get even better as the master Klugman and his protagonist, Zorich begin the confrontation for the balance of the act.

 

The lines keep on coming: “Bring the Bastard a beer,” “You collect old injuries,” “You celebrate who died.” “ F—g critics are everywhere,” “the dirty ritual of public cleansings,” “The spirit of  Blacklist Chic,” “We’re starting to die,” and my favorite, the most powerful in the play by Mr. Klugman, “You don’t understand a thing, not being allowed to be what you could.”  

There are a lot of great lines in this play that strike the heart, especially Mr. Klugman’s last line of the play. It is worth hearing him deliver it.

 

The Best Bits.

 

Mr. Zorich has the best  sequences: his description of how he made up with a former colleague; his recount and sendup of “The New Labor Players,” (Klugman’s old theatre group), his hilarious satire (with bite) of his trip to a New Hampshire college where he is asked about his committee testimony, and his rationalization of weakness.

 

The Zorich sequences are parried powerfully  by Mr. Klugman’s refusals  to “buy” the rationalizations. The Zorich rationalizations  will be familiar to those with deeds they have done they would like not to have done or been strong enough not to have done them.

 

Zorich and Klugman circle each other and need each other and the tension and uneasiness gets a hold on the audience.

 

Zorich has the bombast and the giant stature to wilt Klugman’s four decades of bitterness. Will he? How much will be beg? How much will Klugman give? Who will Klugman give in to? Zorich? His daughter? Or both?  The circling of the due the dynamics of the trio fascinate.

 

Megan Muckelman, a redheaded ingénue (what is it about the CitizeNetReporter and redheaded actresses?)  with a BFA from Montclair State university, is versatile as the catalyst between the two volatile creative personalities. She mirrors the pain and anxiety on her face befitting her dilemma (to please her father or follow her own career), something many a daughter has to confront. She delivers her lines confidently, sensitively, and they are not lost in the male testosterone bombasting and strutting their hour on the stage.  For an actress in what appears to be her first really big shot on a national tour, she’s well-cast, has her lines down with inflection, grit, and moxie and is coming into it. I liked her.

 

Zorich delivers high dudgeon director mystique (though some of his long sequences need a stronger polish to blend well),  he delivers the haunting aura of the man who has moved on from a bad moment in his life, and cannot understand why anyone cannot understand why he did what he did when he did it.

 

Jack Klugman is just an inspiration to watch. He is of course the Jack Klugman  with not as strong a voice, but it fits the part. He has a note in the program saying “Mr. Klugman would like you to know that it is not painful to speak. In fact, the more he talks, the stronger his voice becomes. After not being able to speak for several years, he considers it a privilege.”

 

Klugman’s range of emotion, expression and sense of timing have not faltered. He is flawless in punching up a laugh from a gagline, or in wringing a wince of pain in the viewer by a just-right delivery of a killer line.

 

The set by Evelyn Sakash evokes that end-of-life place great actors go to on the coast, where they paint, as Mr. Klugman as Benny Silverman is seen doing. The set evokes that “end-of-the-road” feeling and reserve that subtlely reflect the reserve that the Blacklist built into Mr. Silverman’s life.

 

The direction of James Glossman keeps the three-actor play using the set nicely, but the set is simply a showcase for the words and moods set by the play.

 

Mr. and Mrs. White Plains should not miss this chance to see the last great American character actor still acting at 83 and bringing out his best.

 

Thank you, Jack, for coming to White Plains. It’s great to see a new good play again.

 

The Value of Names plays the WPPAC  through March 13. The box office number is 1-888-977-2250. The website is www.wppac.com.