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review Welcome to Donaghy, New Jersey – a place of green grass, home improvement and secrets, a town where Mamet is in the water supply and people rarely speak more than two sentences at a time. Just off the exit and just over the neighbor's fence awaits "The Beginning of August" - a rewarding, poignant and awesomely acted comedy, now in its world premiere at South Coast Repertory. Okay, so "The Beginning of August" isn't specifically set in New Jersey (although with a character living in someplace called "Fairmont Heights," how New Jersey could it not be?). But it's certainly informed and inspired by the suburban life of the Metropolitan Area, and its author, New Jersey-raised Tom Donaghy, hints at both the comfort and void of that life in a way which would make John Cheever and John Updike proud. Of course, that life is also our suburban life - which is why this play seems so at home on SCR's cozy Second Stage. Thirtysomething Jackie (Geoffrey Nauffts) is trying to mind for a three-month old baby with the help of his stepmom, Joyce (Barbara Tarbuck of "General Hospital", in a pitch-perfect performance). The reason? Jackie's wife (Mary B. McCann) just took off. Two local guys are standing around concerned for the kid too - Ted (Jeff Allin), Jackie's neighbor from two doors down, and Ben (Todd Lowe), a handyman more knowing than he appears. Together, they'll play family; in fact, they'll have to. Donaghy's comic thesis - that it really does take a whole village to raise a child - will be proven adroitly. (An arch-conservative of some kind in Row DD didn't seem to think the script was funny - and probably didn't like the sight of men kissing - but it most certainly is.) Donaghy is not a "literary" playwright; he's a very funny one. It's all piloted by the great Neil Pepe, one of Off-Broadway's very best directors. And Pepe, Donaghy, and McCann have something in common: New York's great Atlantic Theater Company, of which they are all founding members. (This is the company that David Mamet founded with some very bright NYU students in the mid-1980s.) This core ensemble helps Donaghy's play sound as good as it should; Nauffts, who was one of the stars of David Marshall Grant's acclaimed "Snakebit" in New York, is also a big asset. "What would friends know about being lonely?" Joyce asks in Act One. What's arresting about the question is the context: she's not crying out to a person, but into a tape recorder, alone in a backyard, while searching for false and cheery phrases she can include in a holiday letter to the acquaintances who have abandonded her since her husband's death. It's a sadly funny moment that sums up the guts and truth of this smart, honest play. "The Beginning of
August", Tues-Sun thru May 24 at South Coast Repertory, Copyright © 2000 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |