Provenance

Lew and NJ are partners. Problem for NJ is that Lou is dead. Seems that when you've spent decades with your partner, he tends to stay around giving snarky commentary as you try to go about your business as a photographer and artist - taking an interview, talking about Lew's landscape paintings, working with Lew's daughter and an NYU student interested in cataloging Lew's work. Oh, and then there is the Gothic fiction mystery of who painted the central artwork that dominates NJ's Brooklyn brownstone.

I loved Chris Weikel's new play. He's the goofy guy who brought your the campy send-up of Dickensian novels in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway show Penny Penniworth and the fairytale A Pig's Tale. This play has the smarts and moments of humor but is more firmly planted in a romantic tale of love, acceptance, and living. The universal desire to couple and find someone who loves you and you love them, rounding up for all there faults, is front and center in this play. While there may be the thread of the painting's auteur in the script, the way love is expressed, shared, and evolves between all the characters in the play keeps this story nudging step by step into your heart. I even found myself tearing up near the ending and I'm one cynical viewer.

The reading was handled well by the four key players. Older Lew and NJ were played by James Nugent and Blake Walton respectively. Both gave animated and very enjoyable performances. At first I liked Nugent's performance better as it was more lively and flipant performance but then I realized his character got the funnier lines. Walton seemed a little stiff at first but then warmed up and read the piece very naturally. Desmond Dutcher and Timothy Babcock played younger Lew and NJ respectively. They were dressed in pants and shirts similar to their older characters and seated symmetrically from the center so the audience could connect the characters in the reading; I found this a good directorial clue for us. While the reading was fine, I sort of wanted more spark and chemistry to come through but this restraint is more likely due to the seated nature of a reading and less due to the actors' performances; perhaps I would have enjoyed their roles better with some movement. Still, I loved the main performances and it worked for me.

The end payoff isn't the unveiling of the painter, solving the mystery, but the culmination, and release, of a love that lasts a lifetime. Isn't that what we are all searching for, even if it is a romantic fairytale? Some fairytales do come true, don't they?