Wooing a wary waitress
?Frankie & Johnny? staged by Company of Fools
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer
Jennifer Jacoby Rush and Richard Rush on stage at the Liberty Theatre. Photo by David N. Seelig
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?It?s wonderful to be doing a romance,? Denise Simone said, during rehearsals of the Company of Fools new play, ?Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.? Simone, artistic director and co-founder of the Hailey-based theater company, is directing Jennifer Jacoby Rush and Richard Rush in this sweet, very funny tale of two broken and nearly lost souls looking for love.
?Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune? opens Wednesday, Oct. 20, through Sunday, Nov. 7, at 8 p.m., and each Sunday at 3 p.m. at The Liberty Theatre in Hailey. No one under 18 will be admitted due to nudity and adult situations. This production is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Danielle Kennedy Productions.
McNally is a prolific and notable playwright. Among his plays are ?And Things That Go Bump in the Night,? the Tony Award winning plays ?Master Class? and ?Love! Valour! Compassion!?, ?Lips Together, Teeth Apart,? ?Lisbon Traviata? and the controversial ?Corpus Christi? and ?A Perfect Ganesh,? as well as winning the Tony Award for Best Book for a musical ?The Full Monty,? and ?Kiss of the Spider Woman.?
His scripts for television include ?Andre?s Mother? for American Playhouse for which he won the 1990 Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Miniseries or Special. McNally also received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, and a Lucille Lortel Award, a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hull-Warriner Award for ?Bad Habits? in 1974, for ?Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune? in 1987, and for ?The Lisbon Traviata? in 1989.
Of these plays the most unapologetically romantic is ?Frankie and Johnny.?
Frankie is a sad sack of a waitress, muddling through life after an abusive marriage, working at a diner and living in a cramped studio apartment in New York. Johnny has a past, too. He?s been in jail, barely survived a failed marriage and is now a short order cook at the same diner. But he?s quirky and she?s listening, and over the course of the night they consider whether a great romp in bed (which is how the play opens) after just one date can lead to love.
For Johnny, ?this is it,? Richard Rush said. ?He sees himself in someone else.? And Johnny gets to the heart of that sense by coercing, charming and frightening poor vulnerable Frankie right away. He may be wounded but he?s also an optimist, and fights with verve for her attention and her willingness.
The Rushs met in New York, too, though Jennifer is a Ketchum girl by birth and family. Richard hails from Chicago. They toured with the National Theater for Performing Arts and appeared in off-off and off Broadway productions. They moved to the valley a few years ago. Since then Jennifer appeared in the Company of Fool?s productions of ?Buried Child? and in ?The Laramie Project.? Richard appeared in the Company?s productions of ?Buried Child,? ?A Christmas Carol,? ?Waiting for Godot,? ?The Tempest,? ?The Laramie Project,? and a staged reading of ?Dog Logic.?
The current production?s setting is a natural for them. ?We met in New York, fell in love there,? Richard said. ?I moved into her apartment. We use that past.?
In fact, as Simone said, ?the hardest thing for them is to find something new as a couple. It?s a double edged sword.?
Married for 10 years, their relationship, on the other hand, helps their comfort level. The play has a way of stripping away all the superficial gambits people get away with in life. While revealing a stark intimacy in bed and out, Frankie and Johnny take audiences (and, in this case, the married couple who?re playing them) back to the beginning of a relationship. Is this it? How can we be sure? Can lust turn into love? Is it worth the risk?
?It?s vulnerable,? Jennifer said. ?It?s our private stuff we?re showing.?
?It?s a strange phenomenon,? Richard agreed.
?And then we get notes on it,? Jennifer said.
Simone laughed. Indeed, giving a married couple notes on how to kiss properly on stage seems absurd, she said. But wacky wittiness is where this play grabs you off the brink of discomfort, which is McNally?s forte.
The other character in the play is the radio announcer and the music he plays at Frankie?s request in order to woo his wary waitress.
?It feels like an old time romance, Simone said. ?McNally didn?t hold back from falling in love. And it?s good to be swoony. We get to reflect on love. Connecting with someone else should be something we make time for, that isn?t pushed away in our everyday lives.?
Curtis Ransom?s set design is incredibly reminiscent of a small shabby apartment in New York, complete with miserable bathroom, air conditioner in the window and the radiator. The lighting design is by John Glenn.
The show runs Wednesday through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $24 for reserved seating. Seniors, 62 and over, pay $18 for every performance. Wednesday, Oct. 20 is a Pay What You Can Preview. Tickets for that show are available that night at the box office only. Also, at every performance 10 seats are available for just $10, on a first come first served basis.
