Date: Fri 15-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-10

Quick Words:

Theatre-Before-You-Go-Seven

Full Text:

(rev of "Before You Go" at Seven Angels Theatre, 3/15/96)

Theatre Review-

Playwright's First Offering Is Worth Seeing Before It Goes Away

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

WATERBURY - Premise: After some twenty years of scraping by as a freelance

writer in Chicago, Billy has finally stuck it rich in La La Land, producing a

thoroughly trashy television show called "Unexplained Mysteries," which has

enabled him to foot the bills for his three kids' college tuitions, meet the

mortgage payments for a California dream house, provide a home for his widowed

mother-in-law Celia, and even allows his long-suffering wife, Penny, to

fulfill her own dream of a college education.

Crisis strikes when Billy's elderly father, Mac, comes for a ten-day visit and

immediately suffers a massive coronary just as Jerry, Billy's boss, is

demanding 16-hour work days in order to get now episodes ready for the October

sweeps. If Billy is to have any time with Mac before the man dies, it will

cost him his job and all that hard-won financial security.

The weakness in Before You Go , which continues a run at Waterbury's Seven

Angels Theatre until March 24, lies chiefly in abrupt transitions: Billy

follows a speech in which he explains to Penny that he cannot possibly afford

the time by informing Jerry he has decided to shelve the job in favor of

getting to know his father, something that in 47 years he has never done.

That said, Billy spends the next two months on an "oral history" project,

getting Mac's memories down on tape and discovering sides of the remote

traveling salesman neither he nor his beloved dead mother had ever been aware

of.

In the course of these interviews with Mac, slumped in a chair and tied to an

oxygen tank, Billy gains new insights into himself, his work, and even his

resolutely obnoxious mother-in-law, as he gathers material for what will be

his first play - a study of his own family relationships - and the beginning

of a new direction to his career.

The great strength of this world premiere production lies in the masterful

performances of Priscilla Pointer and Robert Symonds as the two parents.

Difficult people, regretful of long lost opportunities, angry over their

present dependency and fearful of the future, Celia and Mac are compellingly

real.

A classic "Mother-In-Law From Hell," Celia, whose total self-centeredness will

not brook watching all that attention being paid someone else, does not become

much more likable by the end of the play, but she does become less of a

monster as she has a chance to unburden her own anxieties.

As Mac, concealing his considerable intelligence and depth behind a facade of

grumpy cantankerousness, Symonds is a mix of pride, loneliness and tough

dignity that is devastatingly on target.

Together they give a message that for all I know may not even have been

consciously intended by the playwright: However much we recognize our parents'

faults and resent them for these faults, we are all too likely to turn out to

repeat the same patterns. Only through the honest confrontation that comes

when they devote the time to genuine communication do Billy and Penny stand

any chance of becoming less dysfunctional than their parents.

Seven Angels is an Equity Theatre, and all five members of this talented cast

- including R. Bruce Connelly as Billy, Denise Taylor as Penny and Joe Pacheco

as the sleazy Jerry - are clearly professionals. But the show is a labor of

love as well.

Playwright Jim McGinn is an award-winning television producer who was

motivated by his own father's heart attack to write this, his first play. His

friend, and fellow Californian Bill Castellino, who directs the Seven Angels

production, is also a winner of many prizes and awards.

Before it goes, Before You Go is definitely worth a trip to Waterbury for a

gripping and thought-provoking play.

Jim McGinn's Before You Go has an 8 pm curtain Thursday through Saturday, with

2 pm matinees Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Seven Angels Theatre is at

Hamilton Park Pavilion, Plank Road in Waterbury; telephone 757-4676 for

tickets, directions.