I saw a very impressive new play, “Songs & Statues,” at the Stella Adler Studio in Manhattan Saturday night.
The piece by Peter Nickowitz (left) was developed over the last year at the famed acting studio as part of the Fairfield native’s position as playwright-in-residence.Since there were only two weekends of performances and the play was being done at an acting school, I expected some sort of modest semi-staged reading, but “Songs & Statues” was given a very polished production in a small theater space at the studio. The production elements were impressive, but it was the play and the performances that made the night so special.
Nickowitz takes us back to 1958 suburban Connecticut and into the life of a Jewish family struggling to fit into the community. The father (Tom Oppenheim) commutes in and out of Manhattan where he is expecting a major promotion. In anticipation of the added income, Frank has allowed his wife Ann (Angela Vitale) to hire a maid to help out with the housework. The maid Helen (Elizabeth Shepherd) is a recent Hungarian immigrant.
Ann’s mother, Rachel (Elizabeth Parrish), is a German Jew who worries that her daughter and her family is losing its heritage through assimilation. Rachel dotes on her grandson Day (Chase Fein) who is home for a visit from the Massachusetts prep school he attends.
Nickowitz takes us into what appears to be a happy and prosperous family of 50 years ago — reveling in the good life of the Eisenhower era — but then he reveals the cracks just under the surface.
We get to see that the family is not as comfortable in Connecticut as they might appear to be. Anti-Semitism isn’t overt in their upscale community, but it is still all around them — Frank’s promotion is not as certain as he thinks it to be and his Jewishness is a key factor.
The beloved Day wants to be a sculptor, but Frank wants him to plan a career in the business world. The boy also turns out to be under a cloud at his school because of a “decadent” sculpture.
The shocking and tragic events of the second act are triggered by a seemingly innocuous dinner guest, Andrew Wilbur (Ben Rathbun). Andrew is an Ohio business acquaintance of Frank’s who delivers the shocking news that he’s “heard” Frank will be passed over for the promotion — Andrew suggests that Frank come to work with him in the Midwest.
Nickowitz starts the play in a very realistic vein and then subtly introduces surreal elements that become more powerful and more disturbing as the story progresses. It is to Nickowitz’s credit that despite a huge and very upsetting surprise in Act Two, everything fits together at the end (and we can look back at all of the portents we overlooked in the first act).
“Songs & Statues” finished its limited run at the Stella Adler Studio on Sunday, but I hope we will be seeing it again soon in a commercial or regional theater production — it’s a very powerful drama with the sort of challenging and substantial roles that actors hunger to play.
