Prologue Season

The Price | The Gingerbread Lady | Cotton Patch Gospel

Cotton Patch Gospel (2 Reviews)

Gospel remake is a miracle on stage
By Linda Eisenstein, The Plain Dealer

There are miracles being performed in Akron. Oh, not the water-into-wine kind, though you get to hear about those, too. They're the kind of miracles actors can work in an empty space, filling it with light and warmth, music and humor, until it reverberates and overflows with feeling.

That's what's happening at the Actors' Summit, where an ensemble cast of six are performing "Cotton Patch Gospel", an adaptation of the Gospels of Matthew and John by Tom Key and Russell Treyz, with music by songwriter Harry Chapin. Staged with a simple purity by Neil Thackaberry, the storytelling is compelling and the acoustic bluegrass score soars through the space with angelic open harmonies.

"Cotton Patch Gospel" is based on a bold reinterpretation of the New Testament by translator Clarence Jordan, resetting the story of Jesus in rural Georgia. In finding contemporary parallels to Biblical references, it's full of sharp, comic surprises, including a potent critique of complacent establishment religion and politics -- particularly televangelism -- that is even more relevant today than in the show's early 1980's debut. When Jesus takes his sledgehammer to an upscale church mall or despairs over the media circus surrounding his healings, it's utterly convincing.

As the adult Jesus, Tony Sias' charismatic, layered portrayal unlocks the heart of the show. He shows us all the contradictions of a leader with extraordinary sensitivies: an empathic charmer with gentle good humor and a quicksilver temper, who grows increasingly frustrated that his followers don't understand his radical message. And when Sias (the cast's only black actor) sings with dread about his sure-to-come lynching in Atlanta while, in counterpoint, his enthusiastic disciples imagine their triumphal entry into the city as an uptempo hoedown, the resonances are overwhelming and moving.

The rest of the talented cast does excellent work, transforming themselves into the hundred or so characters who populate the story. Sally Groth is the most remarkable chameleon, moving effortlessly from Jesus' worried mother to a fiery, booming-voiced John the Baptist to a quietly remarkable cameo as a blind woman suddenly able to see -- and she can play a mean fiddle to boot.

Banjo player Scott Davis has a warm, homey pragmatism as Joe, Jesus' contractor father, and several wonderful scenes as Rock, a thickheaded fisherman who can't believe the size of the fish he's landed.

Elfin music director Kari Kandel has a crystalline soprano suitable for an angelic messenger. Her solo lullaby as a mother who has lost her infant to Herod's church bombing raises goose bumps, especially sung in counterpoint to a chorus of politicians congratulating themselves about making "the tough decisions" where some people have to be hurt.

Pony-tailed Roland Kausen (guitar and mandolin) is an able utility player with a sweet reedy bluegrass tenor, especially in Chapin's savagely parodic quartet of gospel musicians -- "Spitball me, Lord, over the home plate of life" -- who pass by a near-dead beating victim on the way to their album signing.

And fresh-faced Colin Cook is a surprisingly touching young "Jud" (Judas) who betrays the volatile Jesus to a trusted senior pastor because he's afraid Jesus is having a psychological breakdown and needs professional help.

MaryJo Alexander's elegantly simple costumes -- cotton fabrics with patchwork details -- look just right against Robert Stegmiller's warmly-lit platform set backed by an old timber barn wall. The inviting sixth floor space at the Masonic building in downtown Akron is also blissfully airconditioned.

Theater group plays Jesus for humor - find it's a tough act to follow
Actors' Summit presents thought-provoking, entertaining play
David Ritchey, West Side Leader

Playwrights who attempt to bring religious stories to the stage fight an uphill battle. Usually, they write to make religion more accessible to the public. Since the publication of the Gutenberg Bible right on down to the Gideons leaving a Bible in every hotel room, people have worked to make religion more accessible.

Since the Middle Ages, when religious drama began, church people and playwrights have recognized the power of a union of church and theater as well as the potential responsibility of the theater (or those involved in it) to attempt to educate or set a good example.

One of the earliest extant manuscripts, The Second Shepherd's Play, was a naughty burlesque that concluded with a serious treatment of the Nativity story.

Whether it is Everyman or Archiblad MacLeish's J.B. (a modern telling of the story of job), playwrights have wanted to tell stories with religious themes from the stage. In recent years, Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has played several times both in Cleveland and in Akron. Godspell has found several stages in our area, and Jesus Christ Superstar was presenting recently at Carousel Dinner Theatre.

There is a very real distinction between the plays that are based solely on stories from the Bible and those plays that have positive or good, reaffirming stories. I find that Cabaret, the nest show to be staged at Weathervane Community Playhouse, has important lessons to teach about intolerance as the Nazis attack one Jewish family in the show. The diary of Anne Frank is another example of the triumph of good over evil portrayed on stage. And certainly Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which has no direct ties to any religion, offers a powerful lesson about human dignity and the value of one person.

Somewhere in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Clarence Jordan wrote The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John, which is the basis for The Cotton Patch Gospel, The Greatest Story Ever Retold, the final production of the premiere season for Actors' Summit. Jordan has a doctoral degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Commenting on Jordan's work, a reviewer wrote that his books "explode in our ears the mighty ideas, which transformed the early disciples and enabled them to turn their world upside down."

Jordan, in The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John, took the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of Biblical times and Biblical places and moved it to Georgia. The characters seem uneducated and innocent. (Is this different than the Biblical Mary and Joseph?)

Harry Chapin wrote the music and lyrics, and Tome Key and Russell Treyz wrote the book for the staged version of Jordan's work. Most of the stories told in this version of the life of Christ can be found in most of the gospels. Only Luke, however, tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Chapin's music is knee slappin' and foot stompin' and forgettable.

How much comedy can this story carry? When Jesus has trouble turning the water into wine at the wedding feast, the scene becomes slapstick and somehow doesn't ring true.

The night I attended, one of the songs, "IT Isn't Easy Growing Up to be Jesus," seemed to make the audience uncomfortable. Lines such as "Man doesn't live by grits alone," become a parody, not a recasting of a famous line.

In this version of the story of the Good Samaritan, one of the groups to pass the man is a gospel quartet. This quartet sings brief songs that are meant as parodies - " There Ain't No Busy Signals on the Hotline to God" and "Spitball Me, Lord, Over the Home Plat of Life."

I've wrestled with the theological implications of this production and come out with one work - respect. I have great respect for the talent people in the case, Neil Thackaberry's excellent direction and the introspective people who sit in the audience each night. When Tony Sias, as Jesus, walked around the theater and attempted to shake hands with members of the audience, some people reached for his hand, some held back and waited for him to touch them, others sat on their hands and would not be touched.

Any play that sets me off on such a torrent of thoughts and emotions about religion has something to offer.

Cotton Patch Gospel does not preach. This production is silly at times, yet, the bottom line is simple - does the production entertain? Yes, this production entertains and provokes thoughts and conversation. Take a look for yourself between now and June 25.

The Gingerbread Lady (3 Reviews)

Play's cast keeps emotions high
Small theater's intimate setting adds to intensity of "Gingerbread Lady"
By William Bierman, The Akron Beacon Journal

Neil Simon's image as a playwright who never goes deeper than snappy wisecracks is belied by any number of plays that are in fact quite substantial. And among them is The Gingerbread Lady.

It's a network of vividly drawn character studies, focusing on a middle-aged woman who's fighting alcoholism and mostly losing.

The play is the second offering from Actors' Summit, Akron's new professional theater company, which performs in the downtown Masonic Building. The production maintains the high standards and taut emotional energy of the first, Arthur Miller's The Price.

In this show, MaryJo Alexander plays Evelyn, a former cabaret singer with a drinking problem who's just returned to her Long Island apartment after an expensive drying out at a sanitarium.

This can be a hard play to watch if there've been any alcoholics in your life. You keep eyeing the bottles and glasses on the set, hoping "Evy" won't succumb. But every time stress knocks at the door - bottoms up, cheers, here's lookin' atcha!

And stress never stops knocking, because Evelyn's social circle includes these specimens:

- A fickle, abusive leech of a boyfriend (played by Peter Voinovich) who's also a classic manipulators. Nothing's ever his fault.

- A female buddy named Toby (Tracey Huffman), whose narcissistic obsession with her own looks is, like her makeup, a cover for the fear of growing old and being rejected by her younger husband.

- A male buddy, a rarely employed gay actor, who's in a perpetual tizzy over his faltering career. The role is taken by Frank Jackman - a stocky, hyperactive fireball who's a master of his craft and reminiscent of Danny Devito. You have to see this guy in action.

The only steadying force in Evelyn's world is the teenage daughter from her failed marriage, very nicely played by Constance Thackaberry, who's more mature than any of the adults and is out to save Mom from herself.

In one climactic scene, Evelyn hosts a birthday party for her friend Toby that develops into a first-class nightmare.

Jimmy, the actor, is a whining mess because he's just been fired from a play.

Toby reports that her husband has taken a walk. Fraught with insecurity, she hysterically recites the history of her male conquests from puberty to the present. (It's Huffman's finest moment.)

Poor Evelyn crumples into her wine glass, and - well, let's not give everything away.

The biggest fault this reviewer could find: If the groceries are from a store called Delassandro's, the bags shouldn't say Giant Eagle. We can read, you know.

While the emotional heat of this production couldn't be generated without its very skilled cast, there's also a lot to be said for the setting. This theater is all of three rows deep on nights when the balcony isn't needed.

Now, in Akron, audiences can experience the whole different world of a venue like Cleveland's Dobama Theatre, where the spectators are in the ring with the combatants.

It's that kind of setting - combined with gutsy material and first-rate actors - that has made Dobama's productions a life experience instead of just a show.

Actors' Summit is on the way to giving us that joy in our own back yard. Step right up, folks.

Mother, daughter good in trying play
Marianne Evett, The Plain Dealer

Evy Meara is a tough-talking, funny woman with a yen for self-destruction. An alcoholic, she arrives back from 10 weeks of drying out at a sanitarium at the beginning of Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady." But she finds that her two best friends, who have seen her through some wild binges, have their won troubles, and that their love for her has its co-dependent side.

So will Evy find the strength to stay sober, get her singing career back on track and make a new life with her 17-year-old daughter, who has just moved in? Or will she go back to her old ways and her old lover, and abusive, second-rate musician?

"The Gingerbread Lady," written in 1970, is clearly not the usual Simon comedy. The one-liners still zing past, but the subject matter, a woman's painful struggle to stop drinking, is not funny. The dissonance makes it a difficult play to perform well.

It does, however, have a couple of terrific roles in Evy and her daughter Polly, and that is probably why it was chosen as the second play of the Actors' Summit prologue series, running through may 29 in the theater on the sixth floor of the Masonic Temple in Akron. It showcases the talents of MaryJo Alexander, the wife of artistic director Neil Thackaberry (who directed the show) and their real-life daughter Constance Thackaberry.

They provide an emotionally strong core for this production. Alexander gets Evy's wisecracking, tough facade, but she is even better at the hopeless and self-lacerating Evy of Act III, after a party at which she makes a spectacular fall off the wagon. Tucked up in a chair in a darkened room by her friend Jimmy (Frank Jackman), who is used to helping her flee the world, Evy is a pathetic creature, a long way from the assertive blonde of Act I. What is not as convincing in Alexander's performance is Evy's sexiness, her need to come on to every man.

Thackaberry as Polly moves from an innocent, pigtailed teen in a school uniform to a young woman convinced that she can help her mother recover her life. Thackaberry's pal fragility, her long curly hair like that of a pre-Raphaelite Ophelia, make Polly seem vulnerable, but her no-nonsense manner shows that her love from her mother has a steely core. Their scenes together work especially well.

Yet this production is not as satisfying as "The Price," the company's debut. Part of it is that this is not as good play; in spite of updated references (Jimmy singes a bit of the "Les Miz" score as he bustles around the apartment), its treatment of alcoholism seems dated. No Alcoholics Anonymous, no insight into co-dependency (surely these are exactly the sorts of people who read popular self-help books). And funny as some of the lines are, the laughs fall by the wayside, sometimes the victims of bad timing.

Jackman gives a superficial performance as Jimmy, especially in the opening scene as he gets Evy's apartment ready for her return. The character - an out-of-work gay actors - never becomes convincing. As Evy's other best friend, Toby, Tracey Huffman does better, and yet does not suggest the vulnerability under Toby's obsession with her own beauty.

Kent Le Mar has a nice bit as a man delivering groceries, but the flirtation with Evy doesn't really come off. Peter Voinovich is suitably surly as Evy's ex-lover, Lou.

Robert Stegmiller has once again provided an excellent set for the production. Since "the Price" opened, the company has improved the seating in this theater. It makes a comfortable setting.

Even an excellent cast can't spice up The Gingerbread Lady
Actors' Summit does best to overcome mediocrity of Neil Simon Play
David Ritchey, West Side Leader

Neil Simon stayed at the party too long. He should have left after writing Barefoot in the park or maybe The Odd Couple.

About 15 years ago, Simon rejuvenated his career with a trilogy of plays - Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985) and Broadway Bound (1986). Lost in Yonkers (1991) received the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Unfortunately, between his early successes and his Pulitzer Prize, Simon wrote many mediocre plays that come back to annoy us. One of those plays is The Gingerbread Lady, the show that's in production by Actors' Summit.

The company's first show, The Price, was excellent. Unfortunately, Actors' Summit followed that success with a Simon play.

The blame has to be placed on Simon, who has created a cast of dysfunctional misfits. The Gingerbread Lady is Evelyn, an alcoholic who at one time was an almost successful singer.

Her friend, Jimmy, wants to be a great theater star, even though he can't keep a job in a show. Evelyn's other friend, Toby, has worked all of her life to preserve her beauty so she can keep a man. She keeps her beauty, yet her husband now wants a divorce. Lou, a musician and composer, lost his creative must and retaliates by beating up the ladies in his life.

The problem with this production is that everyone in the audience wanted the show to be a success. The cast is good, really good. The cast is so much better than the material that the temptation is to shout, "Stop the show. Let's get new scripts for everyone."MaryJo Alexander (Evelyn) can plumb the emotional limits from dry and witty to drunk and dull. This Evelyn is needy for friends, men and her child. She finds peace in a bottle of Jack Daniels or whatever alcohol is handy. The great need and the bottle of booze don't make this Evelyn a sympathetic leading lady.

Frank Jackman, as Jimmy, has different needs than his friend Evelyn. He needs recognition and an outlet for his creativity. What he gets is a job in a department store. Jackman wears frustration like a badge of honor.

Tracey Huffman (Toby) plays a woman who built a world on her beauty. The shaky foundation of beauty provided Toby an unstable support for love or happiness.

The most likable character in the play is Polly, Evelyn's daughter, played with warmth and charm by Constance Thackaberry. The young actress makes the 17-year-old Polly believable. The audience pulls for all of the dysfunctional characters, hoping they won't damage the refreshing Polly, who has more maturity and common sense than any of the other characters on the stage.

The case worked hard for the 16-member audience on May 8, but the small number made the audience uncomfortable laughing at the jokes. In the theater, we need a crown do share the laughter.

How much laughter would we have heard if that theater had been packed? Who knows? Any topic can become the subject of comedy, but the loneliness the characters expressed came from a deep, dark pit of need that can't be filled by a friend or two. This may be the subject matter for melodrama, but not for comedy.

The Price (5 Reviews)

Off to a powerful start
'The Price' is right on in the hands of Actors' Summit, Akron's new drama troupe
By Mark Dawidziak, The Akron Beacon Journal

Introduced to an audience as the world's "greatest living playwright," Edward Albee thanked his host, but noted he was unworthy of the description as long as Arthur Miller was drawing a breath. Albee does not overstate the importance of his 83-year-old colleague.

Stirring proof of Miller's genius can be found in The Price, the electrifying premiere production of Akron's spanking-new professional theater, Actors' Summit. Miller's words are exhilarating, of course, but what good are those powerful words without powerful perrformances?

This intimate four-person play requires nothing less than four players capable of laser-like dramatic focus -- and that's precisely what you'll find in downtown Akron's Masonic Temple sixth-floor theater, where Actors' Summit is staging its inaugural season.

If just one of these actors were not equal to the other three, the full force of Miller's genius would be lost. The production would be hopelessly out of balance.

Digging bravely and deeply into the pain and regrets that lace Miller's play, this well-matched quartet expertly builds the emotional tension without ever sacrificing the robust humor inherent in the work.

Perhaps artistic director A. Neil Thackaberry wanted to set the bar this high to show how strenuously Actors' Summit would embrace its "professional theater" designation. Based on The Price, the new company deserves the designation. And it deserves the area's support.

Although not as well known as Miller's Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, The Price is yet another searing example of the playwright's fascination with the consequences of great moral decisions. Like Death of a Salesman (and All My Sons, for that matter), it examines the deep psychological wounds that can scar a family.

Two brothers stare at the tables, lamps and chairs so familiar to them from childhood. Collecting dust in a crowded attic room, this furniture is all that's left of their parents' possessions.

Both mother and father are dead. The building soon will be torn down. So the time has come for Vic (Morgan Lund), a New York City policeman, and Walter (Thackaberry), a wealthy doctor, to sell off these haunted remnants of their shared past.

Before that can happen, though, the estranged brothers must meet in this room cluttered with furniture and memories. They must at least address the hurts and resentments that have separated them for so many years.

This is where the showdown is destined to happen -- in a room where the most insignificant of items recalls a tragic disappointment or a soul-killing bitterness. Before they can accept an ancient used-furniture dealer's price, the brothers need to see the price they've paid for accepting and rejecting responsibilities.

"Grown men now," Miller wrote in his 1987 autobiography, Timebends, "they think they have achieved the indifference to the betrayals of the past that maturity confers. But it all comes back; the old angry symbols evoke the old emotions of injustice. Neither can accept that the world needs both of them -- the dutiful man of order and the ambitious, selfish creator who invents new cures."

Vic's wife, Esther (Paula Duesing), sees that these are two men stuck in the past. The 89-year-old furniture dealer, wisely called Solomon (Glen Colerider), sees the irony and tragedy of patterns that repeat themselves.

Walter and Vic might even see it. They can't get past it.

"What's the price?" Solomon asks. It's also the question Miller is asking.

The playwright first invited us to this family reunion in 1968. That was the year The Price debuted on Broadway

Unlike the family furniture, however, there's not a speck of dust on Miller's play. And the first Actors' Summit offering is a fully realized expression of a challenging work by the world's greatest living playwright.

The greatest? Don't take my word for it. Ask Edward Albee. Or, better yet, treat yourself to the Actors' Summit production of The Price.

New theater reaches Summit with 'Price'
By Robyn Murphy, Record Publishing

If you see one play this spring, see The Actors' Summit performance of Arthur Miller's "The Price," showing through May 1 in The Asylum Theater.

Neil Thackaberry, director of "The Price," and creator of the new Actors' Summit, a professional theater, had a mission. In starting his new theater he wanted to put the spotlight on Ohio artists.

If his first production is indicative of the theater's future success, this reviewer will be in the first row at each new performance.

Actually, being in the first row is not necessary, due to a "thrust stage" set-up in which every seat is within several feet of the stage.

Utilizing this design, Thackaberry has made it possible for every audience member to be near the action, contributing to an increased emotional involvement with the actors on stage.

The set design, complete with antiquated furniture and believable artifacts of "memory," coupled with the mood inspired by the high ceilinged Masonic temple and the superb acting make for a unique evening at the theater.

Four well developed characters drive the action of the play: Victor Franz, (Morgan Lund), a 28-year veteran of the New York City Police Department; his wife (Paula Duesing); Solomon (Glenn Colerider), a 90-year-old feisty furniture dealer; and Walter Franz (Thackaberry), a successful surgeon.

The two brothers (Victor and Walter) meet in a dusty old house while Victor is in the process of selling his father's old furniture to Solomon.

The price they will receive for the furniture is only the top layer of many levels of hurt, betrayal and misunderstandings. The real question, Miller asks, is what is the value of their lives? What is the price one must pay for happiness, success, compliance with society's standards and loyalty to one's dreams?

Colerider, making his comeback performance after 40 years (he's a veteran of the Weathervane and Coach House Theaters) plays the zany, wise Solomon to perfection, while Lund and Duesing shine as the American couple. Thackaberry, donning a camel coat, his armor of success, sweeps up the audience in a daunting performance.

Don't be detoured if you have trouble finding the theater - it's across the street from the John S. Knight Center, in the center of downtown Akron. Located on the sixth floor, at the top of the Masonic Temple building at the corner of Main and High streets, the theater's unlikely location is part of the experience.

Haunted Hearts In The Price,
Arthur Miller once again spanks the American Dream gone awry
By Keith A. Joseph, Cleveland Scene

To see a production as finely etched as Neil Thackaberry's rendering of Arthur Miller's The Price, one must make sacrifices. Astute theater lovers must, like missionaries, seek out a mysterious land to satiate their passion.

Thackaberry, the Brigham Young of Northeast Ohio theater, has loaded his wagon train with the area's most stalwart thespians. With script books and makeup kits in hand, they have headed to Akron, scouting the local bars, bordellos, and breweries for just the right mountain to place his Actors' Summit company. Thackaberry came upon the ideal promised land--the Masonic Temple at Mill and High streets.

This massive edifice was built in 1917 to house the rituals of the Masonic Order. The interior is carved entirely of oak, filled with massive purple velvet Tudor furniture, heirloom carpets, and enormous cabinets containing brocaded vestments from long-ago pageants. It all brings to mind the haunted hotel of The Shining, in that it seems to house generations of spirits, ready to spring out and reenact their falls from grace.

A virginal theater needs just the right play to accentuate its assets. The Price--which is set in the furniture-cluttered attic of a once-prosperous brownstone, steeped in a lost way of life and faded family rituals--makes an ideal melding of art and reality. The beautiful but aging artifacts of the Masonic Temple, including myriad old medals and faded photographs of past Masonic dignitaries, appear to mourn a lost civilization, as does the play.

Any Miller play is invariably a mournful experience: a rainy Sunday stroll through a deteriorating scrapbook. Past regrets are charted, and it's never quite easy to try to determine where the wrong turns were taken. The mantle of Death of a Salesman is not an easy one for a playwright to carry; it raises expectations. We expect thrilling object lessons learned at the knee of the best Sunday-school patriarch we've ever encountered. Miller is expected to whip us into moral shape.

If Salesman is a full-fledged symphony, The Price is a delicately constructed chamber piece. The time is 1967; two brothers who haven't seen each other in the sixteen years since their father's death reunite to sell off the furnishings which are the remnants of the family's once-abundant legacy.

One brother, a policeman, has managed to eke out an existence after quitting college to care for his once-wealthy but financially decimated father. The other, who refused to help beyond contributing $5 a month, has gone on to become a successful surgeon. The policeman has asked the surgeon to help dispose of the father's furniture, long moldering in the attic.

In Millerland, one can expect fascinating debates. Is it right, after a storm, to sacrifice your chances of advancement to save a drowning man? Or do you forge ahead without looking back? From Romulus and Remus to the Smothers Brothers, there persists the eternal theme of the weak and strong, the one who fulfills the expectations and the one who sacrifices his dreams to expediency.

Admittedly, there is little dramatized here; it all takes place after the storm. It's as if the Loman boys got together to rehash the damage sixteen years after father Willie's death. Yet, it is so beautifully constructed, it never loses momentum.

Miller behaves himself here: He never takes the stupefying high ground that mars many of his other works. He's at the top of his form, keeping things juicy and basted. He tosses in fascinating ambiguities. Neither brother is a prig; each has his story to tell.

There are as many surprises as in a good Agatha Christie whodunit, including nervous breakdowns, hidden money, and, best of all, the appearance of a perky 89-year-old used furniture buyer, the twinkling survivor of four wives and an Old Testament full of ups and downs. This character is Miller's own brand of dessert wine and might have hora-ed right off the pages of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Thackaberry pulls an Olivier by directing and starring. As the surgeon brother, wary and seeking reconciliation, he has an impeccable blend of high lama and used-car salesman. He manages to weave a passion play out of Miller's family-in-crisis minutiae.

The four-member cast is made up of the area's old-guard purist pilgrims. They dance a mesmerizing psychological tarantella on Robert Stegmiller's eerily beautiful set.

Morgan Lund and Paula Duesing, who have acted together on numerous occasions, seem to merge before the audience's eyes into Mike Nichols and Elaine May. A perfect entity, their every gesture--whether the caress of an old glove or the way Duesing enters a room clutching a piece of laundry--generates unvarnished truth. Lund tempers his trademark pantherish anger and flaxen sensuality with a heart-rending moral reticence built out of years of self-denial and sacrifice. Duesing, as the frustrated wife, seems to shrink before the audience's eyes with decades of anxiety. Smoky and careworn, she suggests a Studio One tragedienne.

As the furniture buyer, symbolically named Solomon, Glen Colerider is a frail, almost translucent life force with a borscht-belt sparkle--George Burns as painted by Michelangelo.

Overage adolescents cash in their IRAs to seek their lost youth at Disney World's high-priced gift shop, yet fortunate Cleveland theatergoers need only cross I-77 to find two hours of salvation at our latest greasepaint shrine.

New theater venue makes impressive debut
Arthur Miller's "The Price" is given riveting production at Actors' Summit theater in Akron
By Fran Heller, Cleveland Jewish News

Choices breed consequences, one of the eternal truths playwright Arthur Miller explores in his 1968 family drama, "The Price."

Actors' Summit, Akron's new professional theater, makes an impressive debut with the multilayered play about responsibility, sacrifice and guilt. Directed by and also starring A. Neil Thackaberry, founder and artistic director of Actors' Summit, the riveting production is a tribute to Miller's probing genius and a superlative ensemble.

Sixteen years have passed since Victor Franz and his brother Walter have either spoken to or laid eyes on each other. The building in which their deceased father's furniture has been stored is about to be torn down, and Victor has arranged for disposal of his father's effects with a used-furniture dealer. When Walter unexpectedly appears during the course of the transaction, the reunion becomes a battle ground of accusations and recriminations that lay bare their troubled family history.

Victor has spent 28 years at a job he despised to tend to his father, a once-prosperous man all but destroyed by the Depression. Abandoning his own dream to become a scientist, Victor supported their father so that Walter could finish medical school and become a successful surgeon. Victor's wife, Esther, feels that Walter owes his brother a moral debt, as does Victor, in his own way. To Walter, however, his brother willingly made a choice and paid the price.

Miller's willingness to reserve judgment while presenting both men's points of view with equal conviction and understanding gives his play its vitality and power.

The performances are impeccable. It is as if the veteran quartet of actors has been doing this all their lives.

As Victor, Morgan Lund is a smoldering cauldron of confusion, anger and resentment. Believing that he had no choice but to care for their impoverished father, Victor accuses his brother of renouncing his responsibility.

Walter (Thackaberry) systematically down-grades the value of his brother's martyrdom by proving it unnecessary. In his relentless pursuit of power and success, Walter has paid his own price, including a failed marriage, estranged children and a nervous breakdown. He now seeks his brother's friendship and acceptance. But tensions escalate as family secrets and betrayals are unearthed, and the parting words are filled not with hope but with hatred.

Outwardly smug but inwardly guild-ridden, Walter gradually decomposes to reveal his own disappointment, losses and hostility. When the final truths are revealed, the damage is irrevocable.

In a reprisal of roles they played together 20 years ago, Thackaberry and Lund fully plumb the complexities of the brothers' love-hate relationship.

Unseen, but a strong presence in both brothers' lives, is the ghost of their manipulative father. Each spent a lifetime trying to win his attention; one through love and the other through success.

Paula Duesing is Victor's loyal, but depressed wife Esther, who is greedy for the monetary comforts so long denied them. There is real affection between Esther and Victor, but bitterness over lost dreams as well. Duesing sensitively conveys defeat and utter exhaustion of a life of hardship.

Glen Colerider is Gregory Solomon, an almost 90 year old Jewish furniture dealer with the appropriate wisdom of his biblical namesake. It is Solomon who provides much of the play's humor. Families love each other until the parents die, then it's cats and dogs, says the wisecracking Solomon. Colerider is perfect as the crafty dealer who tries to whittle down the offering price in outrageous and extremely funny ways.

Solomon is also the voice of reason in the midst of rage. Intervening on Victor's behalf, he tries to prevent the brothers from destroying themselves and each other.

The thrust stage surrounded on three sides by close-in seating reduced the larger auditorium to a more intimate setting whereby one can readily eavesdrop on the family conversation in Robert Stegmiller's cluttered attic storage room. An old harp, a rusty oar, a tarnished fencing sword and mask are some of the detritus of the revisited past.

A deeply satisfying play. Actors' Summit makes "The Price" an absorbing theatrical experience - will worth the ride to Akron.

The Price of perfection is Actors' Summit
By David Ritchey, West Side Leader

A new professional theater company has made an auspicious debut in town. Actors' Summit opened its doors two weeks ago in the Masonic temple. If the opening production, The Price, previews the quality of theater we may anticipate from this company, expect a theater renaissance in Summit County.

Neil Thackaberry, the artistic director of Actors' Summit, selected the work of America's premiere playwright, Arthur Miller, to inaugurate this theater. The Price opened on Broadway in 1968, and although it has been overshadowed by Miller's Death of a Salesman, The Price is as moving and intellectually challenging as that earlier work.

The play is set in a brownstone apartment in New York City in October 1963. Victor Franz and his wife, Esther, have gone to Victor's Father's apartment to sell the contents of the apartment. His father died more than 16 years ago, and Victor must now dispose of his father's possessions because the brownstone is to be torn down.

Victor, a policeman, thinks the sale of his father's furniture will be a financial windfall, and he invites a used-furniture salesman to buy the contents of the apartment. The salesman, Solomon, has the wisdom of his Old Testament namesake. Yet, as Solomon knows, wisdom has value only when wisdom is heeded.

The old man putters through the stacks of furniture, the remnants of Victor's youth, and sirs up memories of parents, an alienated brother and personal failures. Finally, Solomon offers $1,100 for the contents of the apartment. Of course, Victor and Esther expected much more.

Walter Franz, the brother of Victor, surprises his brother by joining him in the apartment. The brothers were both excellent science students, but it was Walter who went to medical school and became a successful physician. Victor stayed home to care for their ailing father.

At one point in their past, Victor has asked Walter to loan him $500 for medical school tuition. Walter didn't respond. Years later, in a scene that the audience sees performed during the play, Walter relates that he was going to lend Victor the money, but their father didn't think Victor needed it. The old man, who told everyone he lost all of his wealth (he was a multimillionaire) in the Great Depression, did have money stashed away - enough money to help Victor through medical school, but the father never offered to help him.

This emotionally demanding play asks the questions, "Can the two brothers pay the price to trust each other at this late date in their lives?" and "Is a relationship between the two brothers worth the emotional price each will have to pay?"

These questions and many others about the family relationships are asked, debated and, perhaps, answered.

Thackaberry assembled a quality cast for this production. Morgan Lund (Victor) as the pivotal character creates a man who could delude himself and believe the lies and self-deceit that whirled around him all of his adult life. Lund, somehow, makes lies and self-deceit honest and personal, even if those lies have destroyed his life and his wife's. Lund shows a man who wants to hold the lies close to himself so those lies can cover his own personal failures. He delivers a powerful, moving performance. I was seated in the second row and could see the real tears in one of the final scenes.

Paula Duesing (Esther) plays a wide ranges of emotions - flirtatious, cruel, loving and demanding. Miller created a challenging role for a woman in this play, and Duesing lives up to those challenges.

Glen Colerider (Solomon) creates a character "as old as Solomon" and as wise. This character stops the action to offer advice. But the other characters are too self-absorbed to hear any wisdom. As an actor, Colerider is up to every turn and twist in the plot that Miller created for him.

Colerider was born in Akron and graduated from Garfield High School and The University of Akron. According to the program notes, he last performed at Weathervane Community Playhouse more than 40 years ago.

Thackaberry (Walter) is a gifted performer. I always think of him as an administrator or artistic director. Yet I saw Thackaberry in a most remarkable production of The Importance of Being Earnest a few years ago and saw him do well-timed, pie-in-the-face comic turns. In The Price, he shows that he is capable of high drama.

The members of this cast are perfectly balanced, with not a weak link in the lot. These four people work so well together that audience members can relax and watch a first-rate production of a good script.

Don't miss this production for a couple of reasons.

First, we need to encourage this fledgling production company. Akron needs a quality professional company - not only will it be good for the arts community, but it will be good for the business community.

Second, don't miss The Price because it's one of the best productions you'll see this year.

Actors' Summit is a professional, not for profit, 501-c-3 professional arts organization. We are seeking volunteers and board members. For more details, email us or call MaryJo or Neil at 330-342-0800.

Actors' Summit is working under a developmental agreement with Actors' Equity Association (the Union of professional Actors and Stage Managers.)