Gods favorite @ Desiderio’s

The Cavalcaders at the Irish Classical Theatre.

It’s been many years since I’ve been to a dinner theater. Back in the heyday of dinner theater, I went to many, from Burt Reynolds’ in Jupiter, to Jan McArt’s in Boca Raton, to StageWest in Mississauga and, of course, to Desiderio’s Dinner Theatre here in Western New York. Dinner theater of the 1970s and 1980s was a major incubator for the thriving theater scene we enjoy in this region today. Many actors, directors, and even writers got started there. Playwright Tom Dudzick, author of Over the Tavern, speaks happily and nostalgically about his days churning out scripts in Western New York for dinner theater audiences.

Director-restaurateur Jay Desiderio has been a major player in the local dinner theater scene for years, and he’s still at it. I recently took a trip up to his place at 5827 Broadway in Lancaster and it was like old times: a Neil Simon play, performed by some of the stalwarts of the genre. Specifically, Desiderio had directed an appealing production of Simon’s comedy, God’s Favorite, with a cast featuring John Buscaglia and Dolores Mendolia. It was a wonderfully good time.

In God’s Favorite, John Kreuzer plays Joe Benjamin, a modern version of the biblical Job, who is selected by God to suffer every sort of misfortune in order to test his faith. Before it’s over, this wealthy and successful man has lost everything—his business and house have burned down, his body itches unbearably, and his family has fled. All the while, Joe B. is tormented by Sidney Lipton, one of God’s hourly employees, played with dry understatement by Buscaglia. Mendolia plays the loyal and practical housekeeper. The members of the Benjamin family are played by Frank Campofelice, Jennifer Toomey Starr, Debra Spragge, and Andy Starr.

The jokes fly fast in a play and production geared for pure delight and distraction. The dinner, incidentally, was excellent and generous, and for afterward, Desiderio’s boasts a spacious and comfortable bar with a friendly and attentive staff—including familiar faces from the previous Desiderio’s restaurant. For reservations and information call 683-7767.

AREA @ TORN SPACE

On the completely opposite side of the theatrical spectrum, Dan Shanahan’s new work for his avant-garde Torn Space theater is called Area. It makes use of non-linear narrative and video as we visit the sight of and repeat the moments leading up to an ambiguously related crime. Kara Gabrielle McKenney plays Girl 1 and Rebecca Globus plays Girl 2. These game and able performers play against each other and against a backdrop of themselves recorded on video—design and production artfully accomplished by Tim Stegner and Brian Milbrand. Girl 2 runs into trouble when she tries to make a deal to sell a car. Girl 1 tries to warn her by phone, all to no avail. The need and needlessness of the moment is repeated and explored as Shanahan and the camera zoom in on the critical moments of choice and revelation. As always with Shanahan’s work, the piece is far from a model of clarity but is hypnotizing in its intensity, nonetheless.

THE CAVALCADERS @ THE IRISH

The Irish Classical Theatre Company is having difficulty hitting its stride this season. The current production of Billy Roche’s The Cavalcaders and the company’s previous offering, Star Quality, each has a great deal to recommend it, but fails to hit the heights that we associate with the company.

The Cavalcaders is a wonderfully sentimental and affecting script, set, inevitably, in small-town Ireland, where a group of friends work in a shoe repair shop by day and sing in an award-winning barbershop quartet by night. The tragedies and petty foibles of their melodramatic lives have a way of repeating from generation to generation, as Terry, played by Tom Zindle watches in despair when he realizes that Rory, who is taking over the shop, is being cuckolded as he himself was years before—and by his best mate too. Hard to follow? Fret not. To be fair, Act II is a tangled web of heavy plot and intrigue, with narrative threads too numerous to elaborate upon here—including terminal disease, pregnancy out of wedlock, and suicide.

In addition to Zindle, the handsome and able cast includes Chris Kelly as Rory, Andy Moss as the Ted, and Guy Balotine as Josie. The women are especially good: Cassie Gorniewicz as Nuala, and Beth Donohue as Breda. Donahue provides a particularly well-grounded performance as the hairdresser from across the street who is imbued with wisdom and common sense, as well as a vivid memory of the glory days of The Cavalcaders when life in the town of Wexford would stop, just so that people could hear them sing.

Regarding the singing…alas these boys hardly sound like a barbershop group at all, and matters are not helped by having recordings of world-class barbershop quartets in tight harmony playing during the preshow. No music director is listed in the program, making one wonder if they did without.

Singing aside, the actors are exceedingly likable in the roles, and we do feel touched by their trials, no matter how slowly they unfold.

Ron Scwartz provides an outstanding set design, allowing director Derek Campbell to make handsome and fluid use of the Andrews Theatre space.