77. ALMOST HOME
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Walter
Anderson, an author perhaps best known for his long service as editor of Parade Magazine, makes his playwriting
debut with this respectable, if not especially original, drama, set in 1965,
about Johnny (Jonni Orsini), a young Marine who returns home in 1965 after
serving in Vietnam.
Anderson, himself a former Marine who fought in Vietnam, places most of the action in the Bronx apartment of the Barnetts, a working-class family whose breadwinner, Harry (Joe Lisi, himself an ex-Marine), has recently lost his job as telephone lineman. Had the off-white apartment (designed by Harry Feiner) been a bit shabbier (it’s supposedly just been painted), it would be a dead ringer for Jackie Gleason’s tenement flat in “The Honeymooners.” As it is, much of the play, presented by the Directors Company at the Acorn Theatre, resembles the kind of serious TV family drama popular when “The Honeymooners” was first created.
Anderson, himself a former Marine who fought in Vietnam, places most of the action in the Bronx apartment of the Barnetts, a working-class family whose breadwinner, Harry (Joe Lisi, himself an ex-Marine), has recently lost his job as telephone lineman. Had the off-white apartment (designed by Harry Feiner) been a bit shabbier (it’s supposedly just been painted), it would be a dead ringer for Jackie Gleason’s tenement flat in “The Honeymooners.” As it is, much of the play, presented by the Directors Company at the Acorn Theatre, resembles the kind of serious TV family drama popular when “The Honeymooners” was first created.
| From left: Karen Ziemba, Brenda Pressley, Joe Lisi, Jonny Orsini. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Plays and movies about the troubles of returning American veterans
are not uncommon, of course; a classic example inspired by Vietnam, David
Rabe’s STICKS AND BONES (1971), will be revived in New York later this month. If
it retains its original sting, it should provide useful comparisons with ALMOST
HOME, a tamer and far less unique examination of American values at that tragic
historical moment. Rabe’s conceit is to filter his action through an American
family resembling that seen on the TV sitcom “The Adventures of Ozzie and
Harriet.” Interestingly, whether intentionally or not, Mr. Barnett references
that show when he has Johnny Barnett interrupt a scene between his constantly
bickering parents by calling them Ozzie and Harriet.
When Johnny comes marching home, wearing his green Marine uniform with
its medals and sergeant stripes, he’s happily greeted by his rough-edged dad, a
Word War II vet with a drinking problem, and his mom, Grace (Karen Ziemba), who,
in her perfectly tailored blue dress, seems to have stepped out of a McCall’s magazine
ad. It doesn’t take long, though, before the family is at each other’s throats.
Harry’s in debt, in more ways than one, to Nick Pappas (James McCaffrey), a corrupt
local police captain who’s gotten him out of trouble on several occasions, actions
for which he expects total loyalty. He also
doesn’t let Johnny forget the favors he did for him when, despite being a good
student, Jonny was a troublemaker and talented boxer who once put another kid in
a coma during a street fight the cop may actually have set up. With John
Lindsay moving into City Hall as mayor and a new police commissioner coming in
with a house cleaning agenda, Pappas fears for his future and wants Johnny to
join the force, where, through the influence of his “downtown” cronies,
Pappas will make sure he gets through the police academy with flying colors and
becomes a member of the Internal Affairs division. This, Pappas expects, will protect him
from investigations into his activities.
While Pappas is pressuring Johnny, the young man, who’s haunted by his wartime experiences, is pulled in different directions by the Marines’ interest in making him a drill instructor and by his strong interest in going to a community college in Fullerton, California. His father sees the Marines as his best opportunity, but a neighbor in their building, Luisa Jones (Brenda Pressley), an African American woman who was Johnny’s third-grade teacher, and who’s both a close family friend and a continuing influence in Jonny’s life, insists he go to college. Johnny’s three-way career dilemma and the emotional attitudes he and others express toward each potential choice form the play’s dramatic core.
As the one-act play trots briskly along under Michael Parva’s direction during its 80 minutes, there’s a considerable amount of domestic sturm and drang. The dialogue is mostly tangy bursts of colloquial speech. We get a touch of contemporary attitudes toward the war, but not enough to make the political issues resonate too blatantly. A butterfly knife given to Harry as a gift and constantly manipulated to flick open and close its lethal blade offers a bit of menace. Much is made of the painful war experiences both Jonny and his father endured, and each overcomes his reluctance to share these stories; painful as they are for the characters, however, we’ve heard so many of such wartime horror stories over the years, they don’t seem particularly earthshaking.
I also wonder about the credibility of an African American teacher being a close family friend and longtime resident of the same Bronx building as Johnny and his family in 1965. It’s possible, of course, but it certainly would have been rather unusual. In 1965, black New Yorkers were moving into such buildings throughout the city while whites were moving out, but few blacks, middle class or not, had been living in such integrated harmony in that borough before this time.
Quentin Chiappetta’s sound design nicely embodies the sounds of old-time New York radio news and music. When the audience takes its seats, the period mood is set by Dean Martin, the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, and others, and there’s even a bit of the Rolling Stones’s “Satisfaction” once the play begins. Graham Kindred’s lighting subtly accentuates the emotional transitions, and Michael McDonald’s costumes look suitably mid-1960s.
The ensemble is solid and generally believable, but none of the performances are exceptional. Mr. Orsini, who was well liked in THE NANCE, is generally truthful, but, for my taste, he too often expresses his inner turmoil by shouting. Mr. Lisi, in a role James Gandolfini would have devoured, sounds every bit the native New Yorker, while Karen Ziemba, best known for her musical comedy skills, brings honesty to the long-suffering Grace, although her flat “a’s” would sound far more natural in the Midwest than in New Yawk Yankee territory. Mr. McCaffrey’s crooked cop is properly wily and threatening, and Ms. Pressley’s schoolteacher could walk into any New York classroom and seem at home.
ALMOST HOME shows potential, but, for the time being almost isn’t quite enough.
While Pappas is pressuring Johnny, the young man, who’s haunted by his wartime experiences, is pulled in different directions by the Marines’ interest in making him a drill instructor and by his strong interest in going to a community college in Fullerton, California. His father sees the Marines as his best opportunity, but a neighbor in their building, Luisa Jones (Brenda Pressley), an African American woman who was Johnny’s third-grade teacher, and who’s both a close family friend and a continuing influence in Jonny’s life, insists he go to college. Johnny’s three-way career dilemma and the emotional attitudes he and others express toward each potential choice form the play’s dramatic core.
As the one-act play trots briskly along under Michael Parva’s direction during its 80 minutes, there’s a considerable amount of domestic sturm and drang. The dialogue is mostly tangy bursts of colloquial speech. We get a touch of contemporary attitudes toward the war, but not enough to make the political issues resonate too blatantly. A butterfly knife given to Harry as a gift and constantly manipulated to flick open and close its lethal blade offers a bit of menace. Much is made of the painful war experiences both Jonny and his father endured, and each overcomes his reluctance to share these stories; painful as they are for the characters, however, we’ve heard so many of such wartime horror stories over the years, they don’t seem particularly earthshaking.
I also wonder about the credibility of an African American teacher being a close family friend and longtime resident of the same Bronx building as Johnny and his family in 1965. It’s possible, of course, but it certainly would have been rather unusual. In 1965, black New Yorkers were moving into such buildings throughout the city while whites were moving out, but few blacks, middle class or not, had been living in such integrated harmony in that borough before this time.
Quentin Chiappetta’s sound design nicely embodies the sounds of old-time New York radio news and music. When the audience takes its seats, the period mood is set by Dean Martin, the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, and others, and there’s even a bit of the Rolling Stones’s “Satisfaction” once the play begins. Graham Kindred’s lighting subtly accentuates the emotional transitions, and Michael McDonald’s costumes look suitably mid-1960s.
The ensemble is solid and generally believable, but none of the performances are exceptional. Mr. Orsini, who was well liked in THE NANCE, is generally truthful, but, for my taste, he too often expresses his inner turmoil by shouting. Mr. Lisi, in a role James Gandolfini would have devoured, sounds every bit the native New Yorker, while Karen Ziemba, best known for her musical comedy skills, brings honesty to the long-suffering Grace, although her flat “a’s” would sound far more natural in the Midwest than in New Yawk Yankee territory. Mr. McCaffrey’s crooked cop is properly wily and threatening, and Ms. Pressley’s schoolteacher could walk into any New York classroom and seem at home.
ALMOST HOME shows potential, but, for the time being almost isn’t quite enough.