A WEDDING STORY

REVIEWS
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The Daily Gazette
Stageworks team scores a hit with brilliant 'Wedding Story'

The Independent
At Stageworks, a moving and funny story about love

WAMC - Northeast Public Radio
"A Wedding Story" is an honest look at love and relationships.

The Daily Gazette

July 17, 2007
THEATER REVIEW

Memo: 'A Wedding Story'
WHERE: Stageworks/Hudson, 41A Cross St., Hudson
WHEN: Through July 29
HOW MUCH: $27 to $16
MORE INFO: 822-9667

Stageworks team scores a hit with brilliant 'Wedding Story'

CAROL KING
For the Daily Gazette

Don't miss Stageworks' latest presentation, "A Wedding Story." It is brilliantly written by Bryony Lavery and sharply directed by Laura Margolis. And it is finely acted and technically superior to most productions I've experienced this season. The combination makes for a seamlessly gratifying theatrical experience. Enough cannot be said in praise of the remarkable text. Lavery has taken on themes of family values, love and sex, aging and commitment and, finally, the manner in which we face life's twists and sometimes cruel turns. She packs it into 90 fast-moving minutes and, just as in real life, we find ourselves touched and amused, sad and often joyful -- even in the most tearful of times.

The story opens during a troubling moment when Peter (Brian Massman) enters to tell his wife, Evelyn (Eileen Schuyler), about a wedding he has attended. Evelyn seems vaguely inattentive, though Peter's story is amusing. We get the idea that something is not quite right. Then, snap! We realize, through their daughter Sally's (Emma Parsons) short narrative that this is a memory play, switching back and forth between the present and the past.

We are then taken back to a time when things were relatively normal. We discover that Peter and Evelyn were an elegant, educated couple -- he a professor, she a physician. They know wines and make cosmopolitan fun of their pretentious friends. He quotes Shakespeare and Chaucer, and she gives medical lectures.

Still in the past, Evelyn, at the urging of her daughter, offers a treatise on the subject of Alzheimer's disease, then pitiably and simply diagnoses herself. "I've got it, haven't I?" she says.

In the more recent past, Sally meets Grace (Kim Sykes) in the bathroom of a hotel. They make passionate love in one of the stalls, and though Grace would like a long-term relationship, even a marriage, Sally insists their ensuing affair is fired by lust not love.

Now in the present, her brother, Robin (David Sedgwick), a success by all standards, though with a failed marriage behind him, enters and attempts with Sally to make sense of their mother's illness and, with dark and sparkling humor, their own attitudes toward love. Though their parents have enjoyed what one might refer to as "the grand passion," neither Sally nor Robin seems capable of the same commitment.

Schuyler as Evelyn offers a courageous performance as she suffers the often humiliating realities of her life. Massman is gallant and flawed and vulnerable in his portrayal of a man overwhelmed. Parsons, in her role as daughter and narrator, commands the stage. Sykes, though her character is given short shrift by the text, portrays passion and nobility. And Sedgwick, as Robin, displays glorious comic timing.

Special accolades must be offered to Byron Nilsson's sound design. It seems Evelyn's favorite movie is "Casablanca" and the lush musical themes of that film linger and swell throughout the production along with an almost fantastical wind chime effect, creating an ethereal unreality that underscores Evelyn's confusion.

Copyright (c) 2007 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.

The Independent

Entertainment

At Stageworks, a moving and funny story about love

By: CHARLES KONDEK
07/20/2007

STAGEWORKS/HUDSON'S second production of the current season is a sensitive rendition of a sensitive play dealing with unconditional love and commitment-love between partners, siblings, and parents and children.

This is the American premiere of A Wedding Story, an untraditional work that balances human comedy and tragedy, written by award-winning British playwright, Bryony Lavery. The production has been expertly directed by Laura Margolis, the company's artistic director, assisted by first-rate actors.

Emma Parsons is Sally, a single gay woman happily living an ordered, regulated, unfussy life. It is her poignant memory of family events and relationships that shapes the play.

Her long married, still much-in love parents, Peter (Brian Massman) and Evelyn (Eileen Schuyler) are slowly beginning to accept signs of Evelyn's encroaching Alzheimer's disease. Evelyn's periods of forgetfulness are becoming more frequent and more pronounced.

Peter is exhausted and frightened of being left alone, but he resolutely, uncomplainingly continues to care for his wife (mostly with his daughter's help) long after Evelyn has become completely incontinent and is institutionalized.

Sally's brother, Robin (David Sedgwick), a divorced filmmaker, is not sure how to handle the situation except by pretending it's all a movie filled with black humor.

And then there's Grace. Sally meets Grace at a wedding, and what was only meant to be a quick, one-time thing quickly spirals out of control, escalating into a dizzying, intense and passion-filled romance. Soon Grace wants to cement the affair with a marriage ceremony of some sorts, and Sally runs the other way. But she soon relents and returns, and the two are joined, only again to become at odds with each other when the question of children arises: Grace wants them; Sally doesn't.

Their scenes together, both tender and argumentative, are punctuated by and contrasted with scenes of the deteriorating state of Sally's parents' life and marriage.

Author Lavery treats-grapples with, really-all of this with considerable depth of feeling, a refreshing lightness, clear understanding and mature wisdom, and in language that at times borders on poetry. She doesn't miss the humor, nor does she ignore the pathos.

Parsons is a consummate actress, clean and unmannered. She gives a bold and daring performance. As an actress and as the character, Sally, she holds the play together, keeping it from dissolving, fragmenting. Sally is highly selective about which memories and events of the past she will recall and when and in what chronological order, all designed to assist her in understanding and dealing with her emotional non-involvement in the present.

In doing so, Sally eventually becomes, and it's very clear in Parsons' reading of the role, as fierce in her willingness to give and accept love as she once was in totally rejecting it.

Veteran Stageworks/Hudson actress Eileen Schuyler is astonishing as the rapidly declining Evelyn, mischievously smiling one moment as she makes fart jokes, and awkwardly slumped in a chair the next, unfocused and unaware of who or what or where she is. It is a wrenchingly honest and uninhibited performance.

Kim Sykes, who has appeared in recurring roles on One Life to Live and The Guiding Light, is also quite effective as Grace, someone who knows what she wants and is willing to work hard to get it, a regular Miss Positive, without the treacle.

Newly arrived from Montana and teaching at Siena College, Brian Massman, gives a genuinely warm and cozy, hot chocolate and biscuits performance as "Saint" Peter (how else to describe him?), the unflappable, non-judgmental, unconditionally devoted husband and father. With his infectious grin, he makes you and everyone around you feel good, until suddenly the grin becomes a grimace with a groan and the enormity of his ordeal is voiced. It is a devastating scene, superbly executed.

Quite frankly, after only one viewing, I'm not sure why Sally's brother is in the play. He is slightly superfluous, but David Sedgwick as Robin, is appropriately funny and flummoxed as a filmmaker whose life seems to have no future, and all he can rely on are impersonations of movie stars like Humphrey Bogart to get attention.
The invaluable sound design bridging myriad scenes shifts is by Byron Nilsson.

Margolis has once again proven herself to be a visionary. By finding new and challenging plays and producing and directing them with unquestionable taste and artistry, she does a service to us all.

A Wedding Story is a story worth telling, and at Stageworks/Hudson, it is beautifully told and worth listening to, a story about people with whom one can readily identify, people one meets every day.

Performances of A Wedding Story will continue through Sunday, July 29, at the Max and Lillian Katzman Theater at 41-A Cross Street in Hudson.
Tickets: (518) 822-9667.

©The Independent 2007

WAMC - Northeast Public Radio

Review "A Wedding Story" Stageworks, Hudson, NY through July 29
by Bob Goepfert

HUDSON - Stageworks in Hudson has earned a reputation for producing off-beat, edgy work - the kind of stuff that is usually neglected by less adventurous theater companies. Unfortunately, for some audiences, edgier translates into uncomfortable and that can result in too many people missing good theater.

A case in point is "A Wedding Story," which runs at Stageworks through Sunday July 29. It has an edge, but it’s also a sweet work that uses one family to show why dedicating your life to another human being is something be treasured.

This might not sound edgy, but the play is not afraid to emphasize that no matter how deep the love, the reality of life is that the future is uncertain. At some point, it is likely that love will be tested.

"A Wedding Story" uses a woman’s affliction with Alzheimer’s Disease to explore the conflict between love and duty. Peter, Evelyn’s devoted husband, has his patience strained by the chores of caring for a person who no longer recognizes. Her occasional violent outbursts become a genuine concern to all.

Her adult son and daughter don’t know how to cope with the situation and try to comfort their parents - but they are concerned about sacrificing their own lives.

Not unlike the mother, each person finds an alternative reality where they can retreat. The father avoids the present by absorbing himself in literature from past centuries. The son escapes to the world of film where he invents funny screenplays that provide him with a happy endings. The daughter shuns responsibility through casual relationships.

What prevents "A Wedding Story" from becoming a mere "illness de jour" work, is the family comes to realize, each in their own way, that the painful experiences of life are offset by the joy that comes from sharing life with a partner. This is especially true for Sally, the daughter who is grateful she’s a lesbian because it precludes marriage. All of a sudden she meets Grace at a wedding and before long Grace wants a committed relationship including a marriage ceremony and, eventually, children. Sally’s worst nightmare has arrived in the form of a person she loves. She comes to realize an alternative life-style doesn’t protect her from a commitment-free emotional relationship.

"A Wedding Story" is an honest look at love and relationships. It is touching and cynical as it often mixes humor with truthful observations on life. A scene where the family has to chase a meandering mom in order to change her diaper is as heartbreaking as it is funny.

Throughout the work the fine cast always finds respect for a character’s dignity and personal integrity. Eileen Schuyler is able to make Evelyn a complicated touching figure as she shifts from peaceful complacency to near violent behavior whenever her disorientation fills her with fear.

Most of all Schuyler’s portrait of a pre-Alzheimer’s vital professional woman, makes us understand what the family lost when she became ill. Emma Parsons also does a marvelous job in the equally difficult role of Sally. The woman could easily become a self-involved, selfish exploiter, but Parsons makes the audience see Sally as an intelligent caring person who is afraid to care.

That is what you should expect from the Stageworks production of "A Wedding Story. Be prepared to care about people and a topic you would ordinarily be afraid to care about.

"A Wedding Story" at Stageworks in Hudson, NY continues through Sunday July 29. For tickets and information call 518-822-9667