| . | 05/16/2009
When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder
By: Wickham Boyle
When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder is among a flurry of seventies plays being remounted as we edge towards overarching similarities with that era: an unjust war, a flagging economy, high unemployment and a disaffected youth facing a mountain of debt. But Mark Medoff’s Red Ryder, at the jewel box Spoon Theater produced by Retro Productions, must be one of the best new productions, and it is done on a shoestring. Hell it might be done on a recycled shoestring. However to regard the painterly set ( by Jack and Rebecca Cunningham) with throw-back signs for ten-cent coffee or longing western movie posters, you would never know it was mounted on a budget.
OK, it is obvious that the theater seats maybe 40 if they are slim and inserted with a shoehorn and the cast is not small. There are sight remarkable actors all operating as an ensemble with not one tone, one voice, one stray movement. And this is a tough, rough, gruff often-difficult play.
There is violence, undertones of confused homosexuality, near rapes, bullying from bosses and criminals. A cast list must begin with Christopher Mullen as Teddy, a Vietnam vet and drug dealer, who may become a big bright star and you will want to say you smelled his sweat and recoiled from his heavy pistol not a foot from your face. He is the bad boy who comes into the poky diner and unleashes a can of pent-up whoop-ass. He has a sweet, extra-hippie type girl friend, Cassandra Lollar, who although she barely has ten lines, she presents a character so fully realized that every time she sucks on the meticulously braided hair, or puts herself into the back light to show us her breasts illuminated in a peasant blouses, often referenced, she is lighting up the stage. Then there is the bully diner boss Dave Koenig, and the sweet crippled gas station owner Richard Waddington, whose physical acting and empathy are pitch perfect. Add in the maybe he’s gay, but for sure he wants out of the backwater town night waiter, Ben Scnickel as Red Ryder and you have almost filled the diner.
But then Richard and his uptight violinist wife Clarisse played by David Blais and Matilda Szydagis enter for breakfast. They are the tension that comes in to the west from NYC, and the high end of culture. The rough neck Teddy gives them a terrible time. But the tragic star who attempts to be joyful and helpful, but ends the play weeping while consoling herself with one of the worst looking donuts ever seen, is Angel the chunky waitress, played by Heather Cunningham. We need a sidebar to inform you that Heather Cunningham is the founder and artistic director of Retro Productions, and often this kind of casting can seem like vanity, but not here. Heather’s veneer of joy is outsized ,but the terrible teasing and abuse she absorbs from nearly every character, and hence from the world at large is palpable.
The ensemble is given movement and life by the skillful direction of Ric Sechrest who on the night this reviewer watched also manned the concession stand with aplomb and wit. The company is held together with grit and twine and loads of talent and this play is a perfect recession buster: the tickets are 18 bucks with five dollar student rush at the door and the play and the small company that mounted it stand to remind us that tough times come and it is through looking not hiding that we will move forward.
When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder by Mark Medoff
Retro Productions at the Spoon Theater 38 West 38 Street
May 7-23 212 352 3101
Or http://www.retroproductions.org
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