Church Hill Theatre Kicks off with “I’m Not Rappaport”

Opening Friday night at 8 pm on February 26th, Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport! sets the stage for an outstanding 2010 season at Church Hill Theatre. Church Hill brings this award-winning script to life, adding to the show’s rich performance history. Gardner is best-known for his 1962 play A Thousand Clowns which ran for two years. He received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay for the successful 1965-movie adaptation. The play was revived in 1996 and 2001. However, Gardner’s biggest commercial success is Rappaport!

After its 1984 debut in Seattle, Rappaport! opened on Broadway with a cast and crew that earned the show three Tony awards: best play, best lighting design, and best performance by Judd Hirsch as Jewish day dreamer Nat Moyer. Hirsch rounded out an all-star cast including Cleavon Little, Jace Alexander and Mercedes Ruehl.  Hirsch led the cast once more during the show’s 2002 Broadway revival which saw Ben Vereen take on the role of Midge Carter, Nat’s long-suffering friend (of Blazing Saddles fame, Cleavon Little’s life was tragically cut short). Gardner also would write the screenplay featuring Walter Matthau, Ossie Davis, Amy Irving, Craig T. Nelson, and Martha Plimpton in the 1996 film.

Directed by Michael C. Whitehill, Gardner’s script offers local actors a set of the particular creatures that are distinctly New Yorkers, yet are the everymen that occupy park benches in the collective imaginations of audiences everywhere. “I am certain you will see this indomitable and spirited fight for relevance not only on our stage, but in your own hearts as well,” says Whitehill. “At the end of the day, we all must mean something.  We all must be useful and valued.  All the characters we bring you are searching for just that simplest relevance,” he adds, “Oddly, no one with friends or who is loved can ever be invisible.  We seek the courage to do and fight the urge to regret.  Let’s remember to do it with great good humor.” Whitehill leads a dedicated cast and crew with a deep connection to the roles they play and the world they populate.

The production team has collaborated with Whitehill on a wide array of shows over the years at CHT. Katherine “Kat” Kaufmann is the show’s Stage Manager and the rest of the team consists of Laura Kaufmann (Producer/Makeup), Doug Kaufmann, (Lighting and Sound), Brian Draper (Set Decoration), and Steve Payne (Sound Design and Operator, Special Effects).

Rappaport! takes place in the shadow of a bridge in Central Park, where two octogenarians, one white, Nat Moyer, and one black, Midge Carter, meet regularly, determined to fight off all attempts to put them out to pasture.  Nat Moyer is played by Charles ‘Pat’ Patterson who has recently appeared in CHT’s 2008 staging of Driving Miss Daisy and as the poignant one-handed Candy in 2009’s production of Of Mice and Men. Having played Murray Burns in Herb Gardner’s award-winning Clowns three decades ago, Patternson sees Nat as Murray if he’d survived his precocious son’s “rehabilitation.” “Nat embodies Dylan Thomas’s call not to go gentle into the night,” Patternson adds, “But, besides ‘raging against the dying of the light,’ Nat’s wants to lighten the journey and wants others–Midge, in particular–to see the light, too, and, in that way, perhaps discovering who is Rappaport and who is not”.

Nat’s daughter Clara, played by regional theatre favorite Rena Cherry Brown, is urging him into an old folk’s home. Having portrayed Clara twenty-five years ago in Northern Virginia, Brown says she “was challenged by approaching the role again, five years following the passing of my own father, a colorful character in my life, who was a professional musician in Washington. I share many angles of Clara’s personal journey, and, as an actor, I have only one scene to convey the entire life of this woman and her father.”

With his outrageous yarns, Nat intrigues and infuriates fellow octogenarian Midge, played by Ray Randall who will be remembered for his powerful, tender portrayal of Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy.  Midge is the half-blind building superintendent who spends his days in the park hiding both from his disgruntled tenants and his past. Over the years Randall has been with the Kent County Theatre Guilde of Delaware appearing in stage productions such as Dearly Departed, Thief, Soup du Jour, Flaming Idiots, and Proposals.  He has also stage-managed shows and is currently the Assistant Director for the KCTG production of The Guys.

Tenant representative Peter Danforth, is played by Chris Rogers who describes Danforth as the play’s Everyman. For all his academic success, he’s uncomfortable in his role as the bad guy sent to hand Midge his walking papers.  But Rogers notes, “As do we all in similar situations, Danforth tries to put up a brave front.  But that front starts quickly to crumble when Midge the concept turns out to be Midge the person”.

Heading up the cast of anti-heroes is Jon Hodgson, who returns to the CHT stage as the Cowboy. “The most dangerous and violent character in the play,” Hodgson says, “It is Cowboy who brings the play to its crisis and causes Nat to accept that there are forces in nature that can not be overcome.”. Gunston Day School student Natalie Clemens debuts on Church Hill stage as Laurie, the young artist trying to turn from the Cowboy’s influence to the world of art. Rounding out the cast is Josh Jordan in the role of Gilley.

It is a refreshing comedy that is sometimes hilarious and sometimes poignant, but always enjoyable. Make reservations to see the show which runs from Friday, February 26 through Sunday, March 14. Performances begin at 8 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, 2pm on Sundays. Call the CHT office at 410.758.1331 or make reservations online at http://www.churchhilltheatre.org.