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The year is 1959. Rudy is studying for confirmation in the Catholic church in Buffalo, N.Y. but he’s not willing to swallow the party line on Father, Son and Holy Ghost. “Why?” is his most frequent riposte to Sister Clarissa, who’s schooling him in the right and wrong of the catechism and, by extension, the mystery that is God’s work.
Flummoxed by Rudy’s show of intellectual independence, and his refusal to back down, Sister Clarissa comes to see his parents, Chet and Annie Pazinski. Perpetually exhausted from raising a family of four children on Chet’s modest income as the owner of a tavern below their apartment, Chet and Annie are not really in the mood to contend with a son who persists in questioning dogma.
Further, Rudy’s older siblings Eddie and Ellen are mired in their own adolescent dramas while brother Georgie, who has developmental disabilities, has discovered how gratifying it is, and how quickly he gets attention, when he drops a pithy expletive beginning with S into the conversation.
Dudzick is familiar to Shaker Bridge Theatre audiences from Miracle on South Division Street, one of a trilogy of plays, which includes Over the Tavern and Hail Mary!, set in Dudzick’s hometown of Buffalo.
Miracle on South Division Street had become something of a staple around holiday season at Shaker Bridge, so it’s a pleasure to see another iteration of Dudzick’s good-natured brand of comedy, which does not depend on irony, meanness or vulgarity to get a laugh. Even his satire of the Catholic Church is more of a gentle poke than a scathing take-down. Sister Clarissa is a stickler for the rules, but she also has a tender side.
In a way, Dudzick does for Catholic families in Buffalo what Neil Simon did for mid-20th century Jewish life in New York with his later, autobiographical plays Lost in Yonkers and Biloxi Blues. The humor and pathos are very much rooted in character, and in a time and place when such institutions as organized religion, the family and the neighborhood were tightly interwoven, and seemed to promise both societal and financial stability.
Of course, the past 30 years have shown us the danger of waxing too sentimental about the Catholic church, the old neighborhood and the inviolable bonds of family. They harbored their own secrets and lies.
But Over the Tavern is not pure nostalgia, because Dudzick scrabbles around in the messier aspects of family life, the events that may not seem so funny at the time and which speak to dysfunction, but which, in time, take on a rueful tinge of “Do you remember when…?”
Chet, who also must care for his alcoholic father, is anxious and insecure; Annie is the tougher and stronger of the two, but sometimes impatient. Husband and wife seem to connect only fleetingly. The children love their parents but see their flaws. The atmosphere is one of controlled chaos.
Over the Tavern has a marvelous cast. As the impudent Rudy, Kyle Hines has charm and smarts to spare. He is funny and charismatic but he also gets across Rudy’s questing nature. Yes, he’s a smart aleck, but his talking back isn’t for its own sake but because he is genuinely pondering the larger questions of life: why we are here, what role God plays, why the church’s laws seem, on occasion, illogical and unfair and hard. Hines, who lives in Plainfield with his family (which includes his mother, Shaker Bridge actor Jeannie Hines), is just 12 himself, but he has a big talent.
Hines’s sister Keira Hines plays Rudy’s older sister Annie. If Rudy is unflappable, Annie is at the other end of the spectrum. She is a changeable teenage girl, worried about boys, friends, her appearance. Keira Hines shares with her brother an ability to do comedy without seeming to try too hard. Another Plainfield resident, Will Sandman, plays Eddie, the oldest child, with the right edge of adolescent bravado, impatience and frustration. And as Georgie, Jonathan Eylander, of Lebanon, has a natural sweetness and exuberance which suits his character well.
Beata Randall, of Hanover, is terrific as Sister Clarissa, wielding a ruler one minute and trying earnestly to reckon with Rudy’s litany of questions the next. The specter of the fearsome Catholic nun is something of a staple in comedy but Randall also catches the sister’s more astute and forgiving side.
The husband-and-wife acting duo Grant Neale (as Chet) and LeeAnne Hutchison (Annie) are back for their fifth appearance at Shaker Bridge, having acted previously in Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and Israel Horovitz’s North Shore Fish, among other plays.
Neale finds the right balance between Chet’s gruffness and vulnerability, both of which come out of his own fears about money, his father’s health and whether his wife and children take him seriously as head of household. He’s held for so long to an image of how he should behave with his family that he can’t quite conceive of how to do it differently, until his wife clues him in.
Hutchison is very effective as the harried mother who must tend not only to her husband’s moodiness but also to the wide-ranging needs of her four kids. Hutchison puts across Annie’s sharpness, but also her wisdom in dealing with her children’s ever-shifting feelings,
In one lovely scene Hutchison and Neale try to recapture their first feelings of romantic ardor by dancing together. It’s beautifully staged by director Bill Coons, and winningly performed by Hutchison and Neale. No dialogue could accomplish what the two actors, and playwright Dudzick, do in this wordless scene in which they sway, waltz and polka with a youthful exuberance and delight in each other’s physical presence. They fit into each other.
Coons has also designed a set that aptly reflects the era, from issues of Life magazine to the rudimentary furniture, and an old TV and radio set. The sound of 1950s doo wop and popular music standards wafts through the theater. Dudzick’s portrait of the sorrows, consolations and humor of family life is very much in keeping with what draws people together at the holidays.
Shaker Bridge Theatre’s production of
Nicola Smith can be reached at mail@nicolasmith.org.