A contributed perspectives piece by Glenn Logan Reitze
The Bottom Line is that it’s a good show. Go see it; you’ll enjoy it. Laugh a little, think a little, appreciate life just a little bit more.
The play is 45 Seconds from Broadway, one of the many Neil Simon’s comedies to play for a while on New York’s Broadway, this one from 2001. It wasn’t one of the big smash hits that just about everybody’s seen, either as a stage play or as a movie, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s Simon, and it’s funny. Comfortable, witty, and finally, surprising.
The name derives from its location, a café on Manhattan’s 46th Street, just a short walk from Broadway: a quirky little place where theater people, mainly wannabees, like to hang out. The play is about the old couple who run the café and a few of its customers. Think, Harrisonburg’s Little Grill, but on Manhattan, yet hidden from most tourists.
The play is performed by the Waynesboro Players, a Shenandoah theater group active since 1962. Bob McGrath, local grandpa, is superb in the central role, that of Mickey Fox, an old professional comedian who is successful but still struggling to understand both comedy and life. “Life is funny,” he says, “jokes are not.”
Amanda Rogus is delightful as aspiring actress Megan, and Lori Greene is hilarious as Rayleen Browning, a weirdly excentric woman of demanding tastes in food, and a very strange taste in clothing. Ron Shelton is brilliantly funny as her almost silent husband, Charles. (The last such a funny silent comic character we saw locally was Claire Wayman playing a dividing wall in The Fantasticks at the Court Theater a few years ago.)
All twelve stage roles were well played. Emily Girard is the Director, and another dozen local volunteers provided the sets, costumes, props, sound, and lighting.
45 Seconds to Broadway was performed on April 3, 4 and 5, and will be performed again in the Blue Ridge Community College’s Black Box Theatre in its Fine Arts Center ( Building V) on Friday, April 10 at 7 p.m.; on Saturday, April 11 at 7 p.m., and on Sunday, April 12, at 3p.m. Tickets are available on the website of the Waynesboro Players.
There is also a good map on this website showing the location of the BRCC Fine Arts Center, at the “More Information” tag.
Glenn Logan Reitze is an elderly retired journalist, attorney, and editor best known locally as the author/illustrator of the popular children’s book, Ernie the Easter Hippopotamus. He lives in Penn Laird writing more books for kids, plus plays and short stories for both adults and kids.
