The Journal News

Love, New York-style at Pleasantville's Axial Theatre

April 19, 2007

By BOB HEISLER

When you find a playwright who speaks your language, rush to her, even if it means climbing the steep stairs to a third-floor studio theater in Pleasantville.

In the Axial Theatre's latest creation, "Two Hearts: Chance Encounters and Unlikely Connections," Linda Giuliano proves herself an authentic New York theater voice.
Make that an authentic New York cacophony of voices.

The result is a thoughtful and emotionally engaging evening of new theater. You'll see yourself, or a friend or an ex-friend on stage, and you'll be talking about the four vignettes long after you climb back down onto Wheeler Avenue.

Giuliano gives us four one-acts set on the same snowy Saturday night in Brooklyn. The first two are laugh-out-loud funny-sweet. The last two offer desperate reaching. Each scene has its own director and its own pace, though they are connected by the appearances of a Chinese-food bicycle-delivery person. He's aided by Anita J. LaScala's sets that spread out across the long, narrow stage area.

Weekday rush-hour subway pals Tom (Ryan Mallon) and Sonia (Margie Ferris) meet in familiar territory but out of their comfort zone in "One Hour Martinizing."
She has memorized their fleeting conversations and thinks it's time to take the next step and shoot for a relationship on solid ground.
He thinks she's fat, below his fantasy standard. People, they stay within their categories, he says.
She cries. He comforts her: Your have nice hair, he says. Your hands don't look fat. There are countries where chubby women are worshiped.

She blows her nose in his jacket, then offers to have it cleaned. He says that's OK. You really memorized my stories?

So he stays on past his stop. Love isn't the object here, just potential. Isn't ease of conversation one foundation of a relationship?

Ferris and Mallon easily establish their characters as the kind of people you see talking every day, but never notice. He preens appropriately. She cringes, then gets angry, then sad.

Give credit to the playwright for not throwing them together with the wobble of the subway car.

"Cuban Chinese" is a trio. Emily (Rachel Ann Jones) is a social worker who is taking swimming lessons for phobics - it takes four classes before she puts her face in the water - and the very New York pilgrimage to adult driving lessons. David (Neil Mautone) is an analyst who wants Emily to join his practice. No, that's not right. He just wants Emily to stop dithering and realize he wants her. And Luke (Stephen Palgon) is a famous actor who picks up his takeout order at Los Cucharachas Orientales and starts eating it with them rather than going home to his empty apartment.

Each is his own sitcom. "I don't want to be competent," she says. "I want to be creative."

That won't work, David says. "It's grandiose and deflective."

Who needs fortune cookies when you're dining with an analyst?

Yes. David and Emily are meant for each other. Their fears and coping tools fit like chow mein and yellow rice. All it takes is The Big Gesture, if the committed analyst is capable of competing with emotionally vacant movie star.

Jones is a marvelous mess as Emily, the kind of person who would sniffle rather than blow. Mautone is asked to make less of an emotional shift, but he's capable of fighting for his girl. Palgon, who directs "One-Hour Martinizing," is a correctly over-the-top caricature with a heart of gold, all ego and bluster.

We're beginning to get the idea that love has nothing to do with happiness - though someone to share the dinner check would help.

The evening's title piece, "Two Hearts" opens the second act with a "Will & Grace" relationship. But there's nothing remotely funny about the love of Anna (Melissa Gerth) for Thomas (Brian Quirk) - just dumped by his boyfriend and, oddly, willing to explore his hetero side. Only he won't do it with his best friend.

His "seeking women" classified ad and her desperation bring them to a raw, physical showdown. Neither can love anyone else, but can they love each other?

Among all of Giuliano's characters, Brian is the hardest to accept. If he's gay, why would he want to experiment with women? Is he practicing for Anna?

Gerth, an Axial apprentice, is someone to watch. You believe when Anna pulls the switch and goes for broke with Brian. She makes a good match with Quirk, who also serves as the director for "Cuban Chinese."

The delivery boy (Ryosuke Yamada) who has appeared on the subway, and at the restaurant picking up a delivery for Anna and Brian, shares centerstage in the final piece, "The Last Delivery," directed with patience and a choreographer's eye by Axial's artistic director Howard Meyer.

This is going to be creepy, you think as the boy arrives at the home of an old priest (92-year-old Cliff Carpenter) and is enticed to stay for tea. But loneliness is the only sin here.
Pay attention to the pauses as old pro Carpenter struggles to find words to draw the delivery boy into conversation. This is a well-conceived, wonderfully acted piece.

Carpenter and Yamada are the real deal as they dance their way around cultural differences. Their timing becomes fascinating as layer by layer, two lives are revealed on a winter night in Brooklyn.

Axial Theatre | 1305 White Hill Road | Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
(914) 962-8828

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