By Anita Raymon
The Village Players present the hilarious five-part comedy, “Lovers & Other Strangers” by the husband and wife team of Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. They have placed marriage under a microscope to show us the variations of young love through mid-life crises. The experienced cast portrays these characters with wit and understanding. Actors in some cases play two different roles in a fun-filled evening.
The set represents various apartments in New York in the early 1970s and is divided into a living room, bedroom and a bathroom. Each couple has their own taste in the lamps, accessories ranging from Erte pictures to a large cross over the bed.
First we see a mismatched couple who’ve just met 30 minutes ago at Maxwell’s Plum in Manhattan. Brenda, who talks psycho-babble and is very timid, has met and had coffee with Jerry who has lust on his mind. They both have different ideas of where the relationship will lead. She says: “No fooling around on the first date.” He tells her: “We’ve known each other for half an hour; it doesn’t matter if we know nothing about each other. This is the first date.”
Peter Vrankovic is Jerry and Susan Stewart is Brenda. Jerry is very persuasive and in the end, Brenda succumbs.
Cathy and Hal in the next story have a very different situation. Hal (Walter Higgins) is married with children. Cathy (Jane Lauren) has been trying to get him to leave his wife and marry her, but he’s been stringing her along. She is crying in the bathroom when he joins her to discuss their problems. Jane Lauren makes her debut with the Village Players and is convincing as the “other woman” who can’t make any headway in the five year relationship. Lauren has performed at the Comedy Club in Manhattan and Higgins in an independent film, “Somewhere in India.”
Mike (Carey Sewerd) and Susan (Susan Stewart) are a young couple who four days before the wedding discover they are incompatible. He complains about her thin arms; she about his forgetting her birthday and other faults. They both make impassioned speeches about their situation and then decide to resolve their impasse.
Peter Vrankovic and Jane Lauren are another couple, Johnny and Wilma, who are having bedroom problems after a good marriage and two children.
Jane Lauren is plausible as Wilma, though Vrankovic showed his darker side as Johnny.
The last comedy focuses on a young couple, Richie (Carey Seward) and Joan (Susan Stewart) and Richie’s parents Bea (Karen Schlachter) and Frank (Walt Higgins). Schlachter is brilliant as the religious, long-suffering mother and wife. She gives advice to the young bride Joan as she and Richie are contemplating getting a divorce. Frank has a mantra which he repeats over and over: “What’s the story, Richie?” The couple’s problems spill over into the parents’ lives and everyone becomes enmeshed in a family feud.
Cie Peterson makes her directing debut with Village Players. She has been very active in the drama group and recently completed a year’s study of the Meisner approach to acting. She captures the essence of marriage and its obligations in the comedy.
The producers are the well-known Susan and Joan Emro, both very active in Queens community theater.
“Lovers & Other Strangers” continues Friday and Saturday evenings, Aug. 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. at Hollis Woods Community Church, 215-16 82nd. Ave. Queens Village. For reservations, call 516 937 9294.
Reach Qguide writer Anita Raymon by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 139.
