Michael Anthony Safran

AEA AFTRA SAG
Actor Narrator Spokesperson

P.O. Box 8380 Pittsburgh PA 15218 (412) 243-1684
E-mail: actormas@verizon.net

The Run of the River was written by William C. Kovacsik and directed by Leigh Silverman for Pittsburgh New Voices.

Curiously, two of the last five plays in the `95 festival are two character dramas that share a premise: someone deceased visits a survivor. In the moving Run of the River, by far the better, elderly Jim McCandless (Tom Isenhour) is in a boat fishing alone 26 years after the death of his son Tom (Michael Anthony Safran).

He is visited---not really, I think---but in his heart, as he probably has a thousand times before, by the memory of his son he loved and lost. A proud World War II veteran, Jim was blamed by his wife for Tom's efforts, implicitly in Vietnam, to live up to his father's earlier heroics.

As if they simply hadn't spoken for a while---as if Tom were visiting from a distant part of the country after several years, they exchange small talk about the high school that closed and the football field that became a parking lot, before settling into the most quietly understated and powerful moments of the whole festival.

Everything about The Run of the River is superior, including the lighting and directing. This is a deeply affecting work, beautifully performed that sets a festival standard.

Bitter social satire, assisted suicide and ghostly settling of accounts---yes, indeed, it's a cheery final week at the 1995 Pittsburgh New Works Festival.

More seriously, it's a chance to see their work in front of a live audience, providing an essential check on their accomplishment. Actors, directors and audiences are all guinea pigs in the theater laboratory.

If that's a grim metaphor (considering what usually happens to lab animals) it feels justified this week. Usually a New Works trio includes at least one comedy. But theatrical pleasure comes primarily from execution (writing, production), not subject, and on these grounds, this final week satisfies.

The most accomplished of the trio is William Kovacsik's "The Run of the River," staged by Pittsburgh New Voices, though to be fair, it doesn't aim as high as the others. A touching piece of generational peace making, it never surprises, but it hits hardly a false note. Call it a Hallmark card of gentle appeal and irresistable sentiment.

Middle-aged Jim (Tom Isenhour) is adrift in a skiff whe he's suddenly joined by his son, Tom (Michael Anthony Safran)---who's been dead 26 years. They reminisce, clarify, argue, forgive and discover what they already knew, that they love each other. Meanwhile, river and fish provide an allegorical framework of then, now and forever.

Much of the charm is in Leigh Silverman's modest direction, with only a few forced moments, and in the quiet skill of the two men. Safran, I know, but Isenhour is a welcome find.

The New Theatre Factory and director Kim Martin have come up with a crackerjack cast for Neil Simon's "Rumors", opening this weekend: Michael Safran, Rosemary Mizerak, Eve Amplas, Phil Winters, Kelly Buzalka, Harold Love, Martin Giles and Cathy Hallam.

You'll never get an argument from me about how funny Neil Simon's plays are. On a bad day, he's still funnier than anyone else writing comedy today. Even in less effective works like "Fools," "Jake's Women" and the recent "Laughter on the 23 rd Floor," he's still a genius at setting up and delivering the comic punch.

"Rumors," written after the "Brighton Beach Trilogy," is one of those lesser efforts. It is a farce that delivers all we expect but whose contrivances ultimately wear thin.

The new Theatre Factory in Trafford is giving this often riotous comedy a lively treatment, making you forget the script's inherent weaknesses.

Skillfully directed by Kim Martin at breakneck speed, the cast turns "Rumors" into a hilarious evening of cover ups, mix-ups and gossipy infidelities...the usual merry medley of adult games.

The plot is quite simple: a deputy of mayor and his wife have invited four well-heeled couples to a 10 th wedding anniversary celebration at their posh home.

When the first couple arrives, they discover the host in the bedroom with a bullet hole in his right ear lobe, his wife missing, no food or gone. They try to conceal these scandalous events from the next couple, who do the same for the next and so on. Most of the fun is in how inept their subterfuges are.

Along the way we discover that the guests are stranger than the concealed events. Phil Winters and Eve Amplas play the first couple to perfection; Winters, fluttering about the stage in panic and Amplas, dancing on point arount the living room like a demented sandpiper.

Equally hilarious are Kelly Buzalka and Harold Love as a couple with a smashed BMW. Buzalka does expert dead-pan takes which are worth the price of admission, and Love proves an off-the-wall nut case worried about his whiplash. His Act II monologue about what really happened to the host, spoken to Nick Jokola's nicely played policeman, is a marvel of measured lunacy.

Not to be outdone is Martin Giles maddeningly funny, really goofy psychoanalyst who conducts a group therapy session by phone. His doting wife (Cathy Hallam) is either on the floor avoiding back pain or in the kitchen cooking.

Finally, Michael Safran and Rosemary Mizerak neatly play the final couple, a harassed candidate for state senate and his barracuda wife who obsesses over her pet quartz and flirts with all the husbands.

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