“An
Afternoon with the Piney Fork Press Theater” - January 7, 2012
Reviewed
by Anthony Esposito
During the winter, even
a winter as mild as this one, you don’t want to take an almost spring-like day
for granted. In other words, on such a gorgeous day, you don’t want to spend
the better part of it indoors – in a library no less.
That’s what I was
thinking when I stepped inside the slightly worn and somber Grand Central
Library on East Forty-Sixth Street to see a slate of one-act play-readings
written by Johnny Culver of the Piney Fork Press Theater of New York. I knew
Johnny Culver was no novice at the theater arts but still - 55 degrees - in
January!
There were seven
one-acts in all, five rapid-fire scenarios book-ended by Parts One and Two of
the longer work, New Year’s Eve, from which the heart and soul of the
lot emanated. All seven works take us back to the 70’s with enough pop-culture
references to make you believe in time machines. But who needs such a
contraption when you have the imagination of Johnny Culver personified by Petey ______, a gentle, warmhearted fellow who wants
nothing more than to be true to himself in love and aspiration.
We leave Petey abruptly to join Love of Life already in
progress where Mother is in the living room making TV love to Bennett Cerf on What’s My Line? and
Anna Mae, her daughter and nag, who wants to be rid of her mother and all too
neatly, by the end of this funny but oddly malicious creation, gets her wish.
Not to worry though. Next up is The Bionic Woman’s Scrapbook where
Johnny Culver’s imagination fires on all twelve cylinders – deep into the
future on a spaceship – where our friend Petey
rejoins us, only this time, as a parakeet! I’ll leave the interpretation of
this Star Trekian zaniness to future audiences but I
confess to great relief when Petey the Parakeet finds
himself happily back home in his cage. Perhaps this play is yet another answer
to Maya Angelou’s poem, Why the Caged Bird
Sings!
But who has time for
farce when the best has yet to come? The next three pieces,
Sit and Spin in the Krazy Kar, Fred and Shirley and Where’d I Leave
My Eyeglasses? become the sad ride home to Petey in New Year’s Eve, Part Two. Without a single
wasted word, these three little gems reveal the true strength of Johnny Culver
as a playwright. His use of a poster-sized photograph in Krazy Kar
turned an already touching reminiscence into a personal brush with one woman’s
unspeakable tragedy. Fred and Shirley, in barely ten minutes,
demonstrates why even couples that have had enough of each other need each other
terribly when a terrible event strikes them hard and forever. And Where’d I Leave My Eyeglasses? Although it
lacks the poignancy and verisimilitude of the other two works, it still leaves
you with the unsettled feeling of a loose end fluttering in an ill wind.
But, for all the heavy
emotion that Johnny Culver lays on you, he has the good sense to bring you back
to Petey who we find as hopeful as ever finishing up
a reading of his works to an audience of one, a friend, who offers him this
sage advice: you might not be a famous writer, Petey,
but you are a good writer. And it’s at that moment when you realize that you
were Petey’s audience all along. A deftly written
string of one-acts made even better by an excellent group of actors performing
with all their heart and enthusiasm for you in a windowless room in a library
on an almost spring-like day. What more could an audience want? Together,
playwright and actors, artists all, they represent the best that talent and
hard work have to offer.