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<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" align=center><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT
face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333>‘Talley's Folly’ given a tender rendering at
Actors’ Summit</FONT></FONT></SPAN></B></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT color=#333333
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
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face=Georgia>Bob Abelman</FONT></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"'></SPAN></P>
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align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
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face=Georgia>Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning
Journal</FONT></SPAN></I><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"'></SPAN></P>
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face=Georgia>Member, International Association of Theatre
Critics</FONT></SPAN><SPAN
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face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Georgia><SPAN><FONT
color=#333333>Olmsted Falls-born, Catholic-raised, Actors’ Summit-based Keith
Stevens sure makes a convincing Latvian </FONT>Jew<EM>.</EM></SPAN></FONT><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: "></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT color=#333333
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333>He does so
in Lanford Wilson’s romantic comedy "Talley's Folly,” which invites us to
eavesdrop on the courtship between two thoroughly mismatched but magnetically
drawn soulmates at a boathouse in rural Missouri in 1944.
</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333>The play
begins with Stevens, as 42-year-old Matt Friedman, directly addressing the
audience and confiding in his plans for the evening’s entertainment.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>“If everything goes well for me
tonight,” he says, “this should be a waltz… a no-holds-barred romantic
story.”</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT color=#333333
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333>Stevens
delivers this and all of Matt’s well-structured sentences with their
multisyllabic reader’s vocabulary with the Talmudic singsong cadence,
over-articulation and assertiveness of an orthodox émigré.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>He adds to the mix the immediately
ingratiating manner of a gentle man who is scarred by a traumatic past, living
in a very lonely present, and in desperate need of a more pleasant, promising
future. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT color=#333333
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333>That
future is in the arms of Sally Talley, a wealthy “old maid” daughter of a
bigoted Protestant textile mill owner.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Sally, played with just the right touch of southern gentility and
damaged-goods defensiveness by Shani Ferry, is also scarred by a traumatic past
and in desperate need to break away from the toxicity of her home on the
hill.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But she is not at all sure if
this “communist infidel” – her father’s words, not hers – or any man is her way
out.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT color=#333333
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT face=Georgia><FONT color=#333333>“Talley’s
Folly” – the second of Wilson’s trilogy (“Fifth of July” and “Talley & Son”)
about the Talley Family – won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, so there is no
doubt that this deceptively simple story is a complex, brilliantly told piece of
work.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The challenge facing any
performance of it is doing the foreshadowed waltz with grace and
conviction.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: "><FONT color=#333333
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><FONT
face=Georgia><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'>For
more of this review, go to </SPAN></I><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'><FONT
color=#0563c1>www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/</FONT></SPAN></I><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'>.
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