Come 'Waltz' on the West Side with CHT

By PETER HECK pheckchespub.com
Published: Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:40 AM CST

CHESTERTOWN "The West Side Waltz," a 1978 comedy by Ernest Thompson, is the final Church Hill Theatre production of 2009. The play is directed by Michael Whitehill and produced by Sylvia Maloney.

Thompson is probably best known for "On Golden Pond," especially the film version featuring Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda. Like that play, "The West Side Waltz" is about the challenges of growing older in a world where anyone past retirement age is seen as a nonperson. As such, it's a comedy with a very serious core.

The link to "On Golden Pond" includes the fact that Hepburn played the lead role in the 1981 Broadway production of "The West Side Waltz." She was nominated for a Tony award for the performance. A 1995 TV movie adaptation cast Shirley McLain and Lisa Minelli in the lead roles.

The play centers on Margaret Mary Elderdice, a reclusive pianist, and Cara Varnum, her younger neighbor who plays violin. Their relationship is built around playing music together. Their lives are changed by the arrival of a young would-be actress, Robin Bird, whom the older woman hires as a live-in companion.

The plot builds around the interaction of the three, whose different ages and personalities create tensions between them. Margaret Mary, a widow pushing 70, is an accomplished pianist who never found the concert career she moved to New York in hopes of pursuing. She has retained her curiosity about the world, although she disdains the other women in the building who gather to exchange gossip.

Cara is closer to 50, a good bit more conservative in her outlook than her friend, and considerably more naive. She is shocked when Margaret Mary befriends a bag lady in the park near their building. Unlike her older friend, she takes an active role in the building's tenants association, and regularly reports on the gossip among the other women in the building.

Robin, at 30, is less educated than either of the older women, though a bit more worldly than Cara. She has gone through the dissolution of a marriage and several jobs that didn't work out. Her efforts toward an acting career are perfunctory; she signs up for an acting class but doesn't study for an audition required of all students. Her decision to take a job as Mary Margaret's live-in companion is clearly a case of taking the easiest course through life.

The themes of relationships and aging make the play more suitable for mature audiences than for the pre-teen set. But adults will love the witty dialogue and physical comedy, along with the thoughtful exploration of the complex issues of women aging alone.

Juanita Wieczoreck plays Margaret Mary. A CHT veteran who appeared in "The Fantasticks" and "The Cemetery Club," she does an excellent job of portraying how her character ages over the course of the play. Exuberant despite her increasing infirmity (she progresses from walking with a cane to occupying a wheelchair over the course of the play), Margaret Mary has most of the play's best lines.

Christine Valeo, who plays the role of Cara, is a newcomer to CHT, though she has been active at the Tred Avon theater. Valeo deftly manages to make her stiff, somewhat puritanical character sympathetic. The softening of her character as the play progresses is a subtle development that adds to the play's depth.

Becca Van Aken, who has performed in several plays at CHT, takes the role of Robin Bird. Her working-class New York accent is spot-on. On opening night, Van Aken's aunt Deborah Ebersole, herself a regular CHT performer, teased her about Bird's salty language. "I'm not really like that," protested Van Aken, who teaches first grade in Centreville. She said she had to dissuade her students' parents from bringing them to the play because they might get the wrong image of their teacher.

The only two male characters take decidedly subordinate roles but provide important comic relief.

Christian Rogers nearly steals the show as Serge Barrescu, the building superintendent. With a thick Romanian accent and expansive gestures, he is a reliable comic presence and recognizably authentic to anyone who's lived in New York.

Doug Kaufmann, who has most often worked behind the CHT scenes with lighting and sound, moves onstage as Glen Dabrinsky, a Long Island lawyer who shows up as Robin's party guest and ends up marrying her. He does a good job with the character, but it's his costume change that gets one of the play's biggest laughs a real hoot.

Special note should go to the excellent set and lighting. All the action takes place in Margaret Mary's apartment. Set designer Brian Draper has done a good job of creating an attractive living room for her. But the piece de resistance is the fabulous New York skyline visible through the large picture window on the back wall. Subtle lighting changes hint at the changes in seasons and the time of day.

The cast changes costumes during the scene changes to indicate the passage of time. While this is an effective visual device, it does slow the pace of the production.

Whitehill said on opening night that he had taken over direction of the play after the original director dropped out. As a result, the cast had only 18 rehearsals, compared to about 24 for the majority of plays. It's a credit to the entire crew that it comes off so well.

Special kudos are in order for Steve Payne, who did the sound design and ran the sound system. Synchronizing pre-recorded music with the onstage actors' movements including false starts and sudden stops has to be one of the trickier technical challenges. That it all came across as completely natural is as much to his credit as to the actors' ability to mime playing their instruments. Also, Alpena Civic Theatre in Michigan helped by lending a CD with sound cues, saving countless rehearsal hours for CHT's cast and crew.

Cara's violin playing was dubbed by Albert Briggs, a retired math professor. His recorded performance includes just the right number of deliberate errors a slightly flat note here, a stuttered rhythm there to capture the emotional underpinnings of the musical numbers.

The production is also something of a Kaufmann family affair, with Doug taking an onstage role in addition to designing the lighting, his wife Laura doing the makeup for the cast, and daughter Kat as stage manager.

The opening night audience stayed for complimentary refreshments chicken wings, a variety of desserts and wine and a chance to mingle with the cast. This has become a CHT tradition, and a nice incentive for theater buffs to come see the debut performance.

"West Side Waltz" runs through Nov. 22, with performances Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students; Church Hill Theatre members receive a $3 discount. For more information, call the theater at 410-758-1331, or visit its Website at www.churchilltheatre.org.