Perfect partners
Local playwright, RLTP company team to stage ‘Grenadine’
Published: September 04, 2009, 12:30 am
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Edward Albee is mediocrity’s worst enemy.
The revered playwright, known best for his groundbreaking play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, has been known to rail against the writers and practitioners of modern theater for refusing to challenge audiences with work that rises above the trivial and contrived. His standards are, in a word, lofty.
So it speaks volumes that Albee, in his role as judge for the highly competitive 2008 Yale Drama Award, chose a play by little-known Buffalo resident Neil Wechsler. The local playwright’s Beckettesque comedy, “Grenadine,” will receive its world premiere at Road Less Traveled Productions next Friday.
The piece has had a long and storied history. It began more than eight years ago as a novel, which Wechsler abandoned after conferring with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis, who lives in Buffalo. With Dennis’ guiding hand, Wechsler refined “Grenadine” into a short play, which eventually received a reading at the Irish Classical Theatre Company in 2007. Last year, Wechsler submitted it to the Yale competition on the advice of his wife Anne, and, much to his surprise, won. Yale awarded Wechsler $10,000 for the play, which was also published this week by Yale University Press.
After a few more changes suggested by Albee, Wechsler’s labor of love is finally ready for its close-up.
In a quasi-absurdist comic set-up, “Grenadine” focuses on a motley quartet of travelers on a murkily defined and possibly futile quest to meet the titular character. It’s infused with a sort of antagonistic humor, which propels its characters from one strange exploit to the next on their seemingly endless journey. Road Less Traveled Artistic Director Scott Behrend will direct the show, which stars Gerry Maher, David Oliver, Jay Pichardo and Luke Wager.
Both Wechsler and Road Less Traveled, which champions local playwrights with the hope of promoting their work to audiences in other markets, see “Grenadine” as their most promising opportunity for national exposure yet. A successful production here, said Behrend, could result in future productions of the play at regional theater companies or in New York City.
“We don’t want to be a one-stop shop. The idea needs to be that we’re a laboratory and a place for development and production with the idea then that you can take our work to a larger market or to simply a different market,” Behrend said. “This is sort of a major milestone moment. If this is the piece that happens to be the first one we get out into the universe, it would be really fantastic.”
For Wechsler, finding Road Less Traveled was the latest in a series of godsends for his piece. Working with Behrend and the Road Less Traveled production team, he said, has been a fabulous experience. “I liked them from the start,” Wechsler said. “The quality of the work they do there, and the emphasis on really trying to bring out the play. Right away, I knew it was a perfect fit.”
To say the stakes are high for this production would be an understatement, especially given the fact that Albee is planning to attend the show during its monthlong run.
“Somebody like Edward Albee out there talking about our production and the quality of the work in Buffalo and at Road Less Traveled Productions would be pretty great,” Behrend said.
But then there are those sky-high standards.
“I look forward to seeing this play in production — a good production worthy of its creator’s imagination,” Albee wrote in his introduction to the Yale University Press edition of “Grenadine.”
“After all,” he continued, “only mediocrity deserves mediocrity.”•
PREVIEW
WHAT: “Grenadine”
WHEN: Next Friday through Oct. 11
WHERE: Road Less Traveled Theatre, 639 Main St.
TICKETS: $15 to $30
INFO: 745-3000 or www.roadlesstraveledproductions.org
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
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