[NEohioPAL] "Italian American Reconciliation" opens Friday

Tue Apr 27 06:37:02 PDT 2010

Weathervane Playhouse's

Italian American Reconciliation

Explores the Pitfalls of Love and Marriage

Comedy is by the Oscar-, Pulitzer- and Tony-winning
 Writer of 'Doubt' and 'Moonstruck'

Weathervane Playhouse presents John Patrick Shanley's Italian American Reconciliation, a comic folktale of love and marriage and all its accompanying antics, live on stage from April 29 to May 16, 2010.

Set in New York City's Little Italy neighborhood, Italian American Reconciliation is a fanciful, lighthearted and zestfully comic exploration of male/female relationships, and the sometimes disconcerting (and very funny) dilemmas that can ensue.

Huey Maximilian Bonfigliano is a man with a problem: After divorcing his shrewish first wife, Janice, he feels he cannot regain his "manhood" until he woos and wins her one more time. Huey's plan might sound crazy, but it makes perfect sense to him - if for no other reason than to put his damaged marriage behind him permanently.

Huey's lifelong friend, Aldo Scalicki, tries to persuade Huey to forget about Janice and urges him to instead focus on winning the heart of his new lady friend, Teresa. Huey, though, won't take no for an answer and cajoles single-guy Aldo to plead his case to Janice. Will Janice capitulate to her ex-husband? And can love survive once Teresa learns of Huey's convoluted scheme? The heartwarming and comical Italian American Reconciliation demonstrates the lengths to which a man will go to prove his capacity to love and to be loved.

The Acting Ensemble

JEREMY JENKINS (Aldo Scalicki)

MICHAEL OLSON (Huey Maximilian Bonfigliano)

KAYCEE ZACK (Theresa)

MARCI PAOLUCCI (Aunt May)

AMANDA DAVIS (Janice)

ELYSE RAMIREZ (Girl)

The Design Team

Greg Bealer (Stage Manager)

Judy Willemsen (Sound Designer)

Jill Filo (Costume Designer)

David Ruggles (Lighting Designer)

Tom Abdoo and Sylvia Collier (Properties Co-Designers)

Alan Scott Ferrall (Scenic Designer/Technical Director)

Kathy Kohl (Assistant Technical Director)

About the Director
For Weathervane Playhouse, JIM FIPPIN directed last season's Love! Valour! Compassion! and Someone Who'll Watch Over Me in 2007. As the Artistic Director of Coach House Theatre in Akron from 2000 to 2007, Jim staged productions of Chapter Two, Betrayal, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Art, Private Lives, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Life in the Theatre. As an actor, he has appeared on stage at Porthouse Theatre, Weathervane Playhouse, Coach House Theatre and with the Ohio Shakespeare Festival. His acting resume includes roles in King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Another Antigone, The Lion in Winter, The Odd Couple, Uncle Vanya, The Real Thing, Macbeth and Custer. In 2005, the Akron Area Arts Alliance recognized him as the area's outstanding theater artist. Jim earned his bachelor of fine arts in theatre from Otterbein College, where he met his wife, Elaine. Together, they live in Wadsworth with their daughter, Emelie. 

About the Play's History

Italian American Reconciliation was originally presented as a staged reading at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Playwrights Conference. The show then opened in a full production off Broadway in New York City on Oct. 30, 1988 at Manhattan Theatre Club's City Center Stage II under the direction of the playwright. 

About the Playwright

American playwright, screenwriter and director John Patrick Shanley may perhaps be best known for his recent Broadway hit Doubt (2005) and his not-so-recent Oscar-winning screenplay for Moonstruck (1987).

Born in the Bronx, New York City, in 1950, he was the youngest of five children in an Irish-Catholic family. Shanley's father, an immigrant from Ireland, was a meatpacker, and his mother worked as a telephone operator. After being expelled from Cardinal Spellman High School, a priest arranged for Shanley to attend a private school, Thomas More Prep School, in New Hampshire, where he began to delve into writing. After high school, he enrolled at New York University but left after a year due to bad grades. Next, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he served for a two-year stint. He returned to New York University after his military service ended, and in 1977 he graduated at the top of his class.

Shanley had already started writing plays by then. In his early twenties, he later recalled, "I tried the dialogue form, and it was instantaneous," he told American Theatre. "I wrote a full-length play the first time I ever wrote in dialogue, and it was produced a few weeks later." By the early 1980s, he had written a half-dozen works, and some of the one-act plays were staged together in a 1982 production titled Welcome to the Moon.

Shanley's first major New York production was Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, which opened off-Broadway in 1984 with actor John Turtorro. 

A generous National Endowment for the Arts grant freed him from the long series of jobs he usually held in order to make ends meet, including elevator operator, apartment painter and bartender. When the NEA funds began running low, he thought that if he wrote a screenplay instead of a play, he might earn enough from selling it to Hollywood to get by for another year or so. The result was the romantic comedy Moonstruck, which won Shanley the Academy Award for best screenplay.

Shanley's success with Moonstruck created new Hollywood opportunities. He penned the screenplay for The January Man (1989) and Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), the latter of which he also directed. Even after his forays into Hollywood, continued to write plays into the 1980s and 1990s, usually working in off-Broadway theaters and often directing his own works. 

In 2005, Shanley scored a triple run of theatrical awards when his play, Doubt: A Parable, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Drama Desk Award for Best Play and the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2008, he directed a film version of Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis.

Ticket and Performance Information

Italian American Reconciliation plays on Weathervane Playhouse's Founders Theater stage from April 29 to May 16, 2010.

The low-cost preview performance is Thursday, April 29; the official opening-night performance is Friday, April 30 at 8 p.m.

Between April 29 and May 16, performance days and times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Tickets for the April 29 preview performance only are $15. Tickets for performances after April 29 are $21.

$19 tickets for seniors and college students are available for Thursday and Sunday performances. Tickets for children ages 17 and younger are $17 for all performances after April 29. Discounted tickets are also available for groups of 12 or larger. Due to language and adult situations, Italian American Reconciliation is not recommended for children under the age of 13.

For tickets, call the Weathervane Box Office at 330-836-2626 or connect online to www.weathervaneplayhouse.com.

* * *

The Mission of Weathervane Playhouse
To be a volunteer-based, professionally directed theater that serves the community by engaging, educating, entertaining and enriching the quality of life for Northeast Ohioans.

The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

Additional 2009-2010 Season Sponsors:

89.7 WKSU-FM

The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

The Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust, KeyBank Trustee

Janis Harcar
Director of Advancement
Weathervane Playhouse
330-836-2323 X16
www.weathervaneplayhouse.com
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