Crimes of the Heart | Last Train to Nibroc | Nobody Don't Like Yogi | Guys on Ice: The Ice Fishing Musical | For Better

Crimes of the Heart (2 Reviews)

‘Crimes’ captures the heart at Actors’ Summit
Fran Heller, Contributing Writer

The Magrath sisters of Hazlehurst, Miss., are having a bad day.

Lenny, the eldest, is celebrating her 30th birthday alone; middle sister Meg's promising singing career has stalled; and Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after shooting her husband in the stomach because she 'didn't like his looks.'

In a lesser playwright's hands, this would be the stuff of kitchen sink melodrama.

But in Beth Henley's touching and big-hearted comedy Crimes of the Heart, the play keeps the humanity and hilarity in perfect balance. The fine production at Actors' Summit is beautifully directed by MaryJo Alexander, the theater's co-artistic director. It runs through May 16.

Crimes of the Heart was Henley's first professionally produced play and her best. It won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award. Drawing on the tradition of Southern Gothic writers, Henley mines the charming eccentricity of her loveable characters, finding humor in the macabre. Like Chekhov's classic The Three Sisters, Crimes' centers on a trio of dysfunctional siblings for whom life is a series of heartbreaks and disappointments.

All the action takes place in the kitchen of the family home, where the sisters have gathered to await news of their granddaddy, who lies terminally ill in the hospital. Alexander's roomy kitchen sets just the right tone as the meeting place where everyone convenes.

As the play begins, Lenny is trying to light a candle on a chocolate chip cookie while singing happy birthday to herself. Spiteful cousin Chick arrives, newspaper in hand, to dwell on the attempted murder charge against Babe. Then comes Doc, who informs Lenny that her horse, which Doc has been boarding on his farm, was struck by lightning the night before and died.

Next to burst upon the scene is Meg, who abandoned ex-boyfriend Doc five years prior for a futile stab at Hollywood and a singing career. Upon returning home, Meg is determined to find the best lawyer in town for Babe, but the best lawyer in town is Babe's husband, whom she shot. Last to appear is Babe, just released on bail.

All the sisters are damaged goods, the result of their father's abandonment and their mother's suicide while growing up. Henley's compassion for her neurotic, wacky characters makes them feel completely real.

Diane Mull is excellent as the dowdy, repressed and permanently unhappy Lenny, resigned to spinsterhood, which she blames on an undeveloped ovary and her inability to bear children. Lenny simmers with envy and resentment as the sole caregiver of their granddaddy, who took them in after their mother killed the family cat and herself.

Constance Thackaberry is perfect as the prodigal Meg, whose outrageous behavior and promiscuity mask her fragile psyche. Eager to escape the stifling confines of her hometown, Meg had convinced Doc to ride out Hurricane Camille for the thrill of it (rather than evacuate), and then she abruptly left him for California.

Jennifer Walker is first-rate as the flaky, childlike Babe Botrelle, who, after shooting her husband, blithely makes a pitcher of lemonade while he lies bleeding on the floor. Lonely, love-starved, and the victim of an abusive spouse, Babe tells Meg about her affair with a 15-year-old black boy. 'I didn't know you were a liberal,' says Meg, to which Babe replies: 'I'm not a liberal; I'm a democratic,' eliciting loud laughter. Such ingenuously drawn funny lines perfectly illuminate these loopy, colorful characters.

The actors playing the sisters are equally terrific in tandem, thanks to director Alexander, who keeps them moving and completely engaged with one another. Hugging and laughing in one instance and at each other's throats in the next, the siblings fully capture their complex three-way relationship: the ties that bind and the conflicts that drive them apart. The acting is so naturalistic, it is as if these characters have truly known each other all their lives.

Subsidiary roles are equally well-defined, beginning with Mary Mahoney as Chick Boyle, the mean-spirited, gossipy cousin who takes particular delight in the girls' misfortunes. Peter Voinovich is the amiable Doc, still smitten with Meg despite the fact that she was responsible for shattering his chances of ever becoming a real doctor when his leg got crushed during the hurricane. Keith E. Stevens is ideal as Barnette Lloyd, the awkward and moonstruck young lawyer defending Babe. Barnette has a personal vendetta against Babe's crooked politician husband and a crush on his client ever since she sold him a cake at a bake sale many years ago.

With a running time of two-and- a-half hours (including two inter- missions), the character-driven Crimes is a talky three-act play that could easily stall under the weight of its own wordiness. That it mostly doesn't is entirely owing to Alexander's airtight direction and an ensemble that doesn't skip a beat. Only in the second act are there moments when the play sags as more of the family's dirty laundry is aired.

The Southern accents are just right without being overdone, adding to the play's punch and authenticity.

Like the best of comedy, playwright Henley brings us to the brink of tears then quickly retreats behind a curtain of laughter. This memorable play and production lingered sweetly and laughingly all the way home from Hudson.

Actors’ Summit’s ‘Crimes of the Heart’ ‘perfect theater fare’
David Ritchey, West Side Leader

Actors' Summit Theater's production of Crimes of the Heart is one of the most interesting plays to stop traffic in American theaters in a long time. It is on stage through May 16.

Playwright Beth Henley received the Pulitzer Prize for the comedy in 1981.

The story takes place in Hazelhurst, Miss., in 1975. In a strong Southern tradition, the action takes place in the family kitchen.

Arthur Miller wrote that any good play is about how the chickens come home to roost. That's what happens in Crimes of the Heart.

Lenny Magrath (Diane Mull) lives in the family home, which is owned by her grandfather. Lenny has the potential to be an old maid. Her sister Meg Magrath (Constance Thackaberry) left Mississippi to move to Hollywood and become a singing star. In truth, Meg's career seems to have peaked in a Hazelhurst saloon.

The third sister, Babe Botrelle (Jennifer Walker), has been arrested for shooting her husband in the stomach. She aimed at his heart and missed. He is a wealthy state senator and they seem to be the social elite of Hazelhurst. Their cousin, Chick Boyle (Mary Mahoney), is the fourth of the granddad's grandchildren.

These four women make gossip their pleasure and their pain. Gossip is pleasure when it's about someone else; pain when it's about oneself. The four of them seem to be trashy, even if they live in a middle-class house.

However, when the three sisters get together, they create a charming, warm (sometimes hot) affection for each other. In the final scene, Lenny blows out her birthday candles and comments her birthday wish wasn't so much a wish as an image of the three sisters always together. They laugh and hug. They have no one else in the world but themselves. Husbands, boyfriends, children and failed careers will not come between the three.

Director MaryJo Alexander has helped each actor develop distinct characters, yet the cast works together as an ensemble. Somehow, Southern characters, especially women, seem to merge into accent and Southern clich's. Alexander doesn't let those problems creep into this production.

The four actresses do an excellent job peeling away the layers of Southern gentility, even when it includes an attempted murder.

The men in their lives help make the mixture all the more spicy. Doc Porter (Peter Voinovich) had a flirtation with Meg when they were in high school. Now, years later, he's married and has children, and the flirtation starts again when Meg returns to Hazelhurst.

Barnette Lloyd (Keith Stevens) is a young, inexperienced attorney who will defend Babe in her trial for attempted murder. The sexual tension between Babe and her attorney sizzles on the small Actors' Summit stage. Stevens usually plays confident men, but as the attorney, he loses some of his macho style and becomes a shy, stuttering lover.

But as far as the Magrath women are concerned, men might come and men might go, but no one will divide the Magrath sisters.

Crimes of the Heart is perfect theater fare for these hot and cold spring nights. Actors' Summit is located in Hudson at this time. By the end of the month, theater officials plan to announce a new location.

Last Train to Nibroc (2 Reviews)

Romantic comedy charms older crowd
Fran Heller, Contributing Writer

Last Train to Nibroc is a small play with a big heart.

Two people meet on a train. She wants to be a missionary; he, a writer. They fall for each other, but it will take three more years (or two more scenes) before they tie the knot.

Sound syrupy?

That’s what I expected until I saw Actors’ Summit’s engaging production of Nibroc. The intimate two-person show runs through Feb. 28.

Yes, it’s an old-fashioned love story as well as predictable. But Keith E. Stevens and Shani Ferry make their characters so believable and likeable that they nestle under your skin where they remain throughout the 90-minute play, presented without intermission. Constance Thackaberry continues to prove her mettle as a director by keeping the romantic comedy skipping and restraining her actors from veering toward sentiment.

The play takes place in three scenes from 1940-1943. It’s wartime.

In the first scene, May and Raleigh meet on a crowded train headed east from Los Angeles. May is returning from a disappointing visit with her fiancé before he is sent overseas to England. Raleigh, wearing a soldier’s uniform, has just been discharged from the Air Force training program for medical reasons. When May and Raleigh discover that they are from neighboring towns in Kentucky, it sparks a relationship that will sputter in the second scene and rekindle in the third. 

Riding on the train with them are two coffins containing the bodies of two of America’s greatest writers, Nathaniel West and F. Scott Fitzgerald, being shipped east for burial. The parochial and deeply religious May has never even heard of either writer. While Raleigh tries to engage May in conversation, she continues to read Magnificent Obsession, a religious novel that was a bestseller of its time.

In the second scene, which takes place 1-1/2 years later, May has traded her missionary ambitions for teaching school. Raleigh, we learn, suffers from epilepsy, a misunderstood illness at the time (he is sent to a mental hospital for treatment), and has difficulty holding down a job. The courtship sours when the judgmental May, coming from a family of landowners, looks down upon Raleigh’s sharecropping and socially inferior kinfolk.
Another year goes by, bringing us to the last scene where May, who has now become the school principal, and Raleigh, who has just sold his first story, meet once again.

In a play that’s more character study than drama, Stevens and Ferry are perfectly matched as the gregarious and good-natured Raleigh and the prickly and straight-laced May. Watching them navigate the terrain of Raleigh and May’s rocky, on-again-off-again relationship is a treat, start to finish. What could easily grow stale and boring remains refreshing and charming in the hands of these two actors who never miss a beat, from just right Kentucky drawls and naturalistic dialogue to how they interact with their eyes and body language.

The play is loosely based on playwright Arlene Hutton’s parents, to whom the comedy/drama is dedicated. “Last Train to Nibroc” was chosen as one of the best plays of 1999 by female playwrights.

The title derives from the Nibroc Festival, taking place in May’s hometown of Corbin (spelled backwards). May has never even attended the annual county fair, which she condemns as “heathen.”

The language of the play is simple, at times moving and poetical. For example, in a touching soliloquy, Raleigh vents the frustration and shame of being unable to serve his country when all about him, others are, including May’s younger brother.

It’s amazing how in this production a single prop expresses so much. The stage contains only a solitary bench, which alternately serves as a train (with the appropriate chugging); a park bench (coupled with A. Neil Thackaberry’s dappled lighting); and May’s front porch. MaryJo Alexander’s period costumes (May’s prim dresses; Raleigh’s uniform and overalls) perfectly illuminate the 1940s timeframe. 

Audiences of a certain age, a.k.a. seniors, will find this play – a throwback to yesteryear – especially enjoyable, as the performance I attended amply proved.

Actors’ Summit stages satisfying production
David Ritchey, West Side Leader

Maybe things were better a century ago. People rode the train, talked and slowly fell in love.

That’s the story of “Last Train to Nibroc,” which is on stage at Actors’ Summit Theater through Feb. 28.

In 1940, a train comes out of the west and it’s filled. A soldier, Raleigh (Keith Stevens), sits down on the train by May (Shani Ferry), a single woman, who is reading “Magnificent Obsession.” They talk and banter, and he teases. She describes herself as a proper woman who won’t read dirty or trashy books. The talk leads them to discover they both are from the Corbin, Ky., area. 

He invites her to the Nibroc Festival. She thinks it is a trashy event with people drinking. And, besides, she doesn’t know what Nibroc means (and she’s from Corbin).

The second section of the story leads them into more familiar terrain. He has been medically discharged from the Army, and she has started teaching at the local school.

He enjoys dinner with her family, discussing politics with her father and teasing her younger brother.
She refuses to go to his house because she insists his father drinks.

World War II makes life tough for those in the States. Raleigh has to take care of his aging parents, take care of the farm and raise vegetables for food.

From the opening moments of the play, the audience knows how the story will end. That’s not the point. The audience has the opportunity to see May and Raleigh as life knocks them around a bit and hones off some of their rough edges.

The script has received several awards. Yet playwright Arlene Hutton has some rough problems in the script. The first scene takes place on a train. May never gets out of her seat and Raleigh sits beside her for most of the scene. Consequently, the static action becomes tough to watch.

But by the second scene, the playwright opens the action of the play and gives the characters opportunities to move about the playing area.

Stevens makes Raleigh charming, macho and winning in the first scene. But by the second scene, he’s out of the military and has “fits.” Later he learns he has epileptic seizures. He’s out of the Army and seems defeated. Yet, slowly he moves back to being a whole man.

Some of the humor of the show comes from May mistakenly hearing Raleigh discuss his illness and thinks he has leprosy, not epilepsy. 

Ferry makes May a prim and proper “church lady.” She never lets go of that sour-vinegar charm. Certainly, within the script as it’s written, director Constance Thackaberry and the actress can find a way to give May a bit more warmth as she grows more attached to Raleigh. 

However, overall, this is a satisfying production. The two performers are in the playing area for most of the 90 minutes of the production. The set and props are simple and don’t get in the way of the action.

Nobody Don't Like Yogi (6 Reviews)

George Roth steps up to the plate in one-man show, 'Nobody Don't Like Yogi'
Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer

It's tough for Clevelanders to like anyone in Yankee pinstripes. The notable exceptions would be the Tribe-tutored C.C. Sabathia . . . and Lawrence Peter “Yogi'' Berra. That's because “Nobody Don't Like Yogi.''

And after a remarkable performance at the Actors' Summit Friday night, ain't nobody don't like George Roth, neither. The Solon-based actor brings the Hall of Fame catcher to life in a one-man show set in the Yankee clubhouse on that day in 1999 when he was honored at Yankee Stadium with Yogi Berra Day.

It was 14 years after his last game as a manager, and probably the toughest at-bat of a 19-year career as a Major League player. Yogi – even after all these years, it's hard to call him by anything else – had finally set aside his well-earned dislike of tyrannical owner George Steinbrenner to take one for the team, and acknowledge his fans. Trust us, Cleveland will rename Euclid Avenue Art Modell Way before anyone writes a play called “Nobody Don't Like George Steinbrenner.''

As a setting for the Yogi tour de force, the intimate Actors' Summit stage is about as perfect as Don Larsen's electric World Series win – caught by Yogi. Neil Thackaberry, the theater's co-artistic boss and director of the show, also created a minimalist set that allows Roth to transport us from the clubhouse, to the field, to his dying mother's hospital room, to the restaurant where he met his beloved wife, Carmen, and most especially to the confrontation with a nasty, name-calling, condescending Steinbrenner that cost him his job as Yankee manager in 1985.

Playwright Tom Lysaght's Yogi Berra sees baseball was a metaphor for life. Teammates aren't just guys sharing a field; they're brothers sharing a passion, which just happens to involve balls and mitts and bats. And when he became a manager, following in the tradition of his own English-mangling first manager, Casey Stengel, the players became his sons, loved and led but never coddled.

Roth delivered the malapropisms for which Berra was known – “Nobody goes there, it's too crowded,'' “I'd like to thank everybody who made this day necessary,'' “It gets late early here,'' “When you get to the fork in the road, take it'' – with ease and aplomb. But it was also in character, not as a caricature.

Roth's performance showed a respect, understanding and maybe even love by allowing Berra's gentle goodness and strong sense of right and wrong to come through. True enough, the words were those of Lysaght and Berra, but the mantle (sorry, Mick) fell strictly on Roth's interpretation.

His Berra told the story of paddling his boy Dale after kid told Mantle “You really stunk today'' following an oh-fer day at the plate, coupled with an error for the outfielder once known as the Commerce Comet. But it wasn't a 'roid-rage player choosing a teammate over his own blood; it was a father bent on teaching his son the way one man should act towards another.

The veteran actor, clad in a brown pinstripe suit – a deft touch by costumer and co-artistic director Maryjo Alexander – did his man proud throughout the 90-minute, no-intermission play. But two scenes in particular stand out: his poignant meeting of the waitress who would become his life and his wife, and that blow-up with Steinbrenner. That meeting came to a head when the arrogant Yankees owner belittled Berra's son Dale, then playing third for father, over the younger Berra's admitted drug problem.

Roth handled the scene as Yogi probably would have set up a hitter, building the tension with each pitch. Inside. Outside. Up. Down. And finally, the high hard one up under the hands for a called strike three.

Yogi Berra won three Most Valuable Player awards in his storied career. Roth's Yogi makes it deja vu all over again.

'Yogi' is a skillfully woven one-man show
Kerry Clawson, Beacon Journal staff writer

In Nobody Don't Like Yogi, legendary ballplayer Yogi Berra comes across as the guy from the old neighborhood you could always trust.

Actor George Roth skillfully weaves an emotional tapestry in this one-man show at Actors' Summit, quietly revealing how humble the legendary Yankees catcher is and how deeply rooted in family he remains. So proud to wear the Yankee pinstripes, Berra talks about how he never witnessed a fight among teammates the whole time he played for the Yankees. All of the team members were married; none was divorced.

My, how things have changed.

The play by Tom Lysaght, set at Yankee Stadium on Yogi Berra Day in 1999, explores Berra's return to the stadium after a 14-year feud with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. He's nervous about the speech he's about to give but has come home out of obligation to the fans.

''I'm not inwardly outgoing,'' Berra explains. This man with the eighth-grade education is famous for his many malapropisms, called Yogi-isms. Some, including ''It ain't over till it's over,'' are so pervasive, it's surprising today to learn the source.

Even the play's title, in its double negative, makes an odd sort of sense — much as Berra does — in actually affirming how beloved the former athlete, now 84, is.

Under the direction of Neil Thackaberry, Cleveland-area actor Roth takes us through a nicely paced, 90-minute performance. Berra's words at times are full of tender simplicity and at others, brimming with emotion.

Wearing a baggy brown suit, Berra talks about his meager upbringing in an Italian neighborhood in St. Louis, where he dropped out of school in eighth grade to help support the family. Photos on overhead screens show Berra's family and fellow ball players, but the word imagery goes much further when he speaks about being at his mother's deathbed, or the day he met his wife.

We can just imagine Berra asking his future wife Carmen, a waitress, what the ''Spanish quickie'' (spinach quiche) is on the menu.

The tension in Nobody Don't Like Yogi mounts as Roth enacts Berra's infamous 1985 confrontation with Steinbrenner, which ended up getting him fired as the Yankees manager. Berra would not accept personal insults against his son Dale, a Yankees player.

Lysaght's script uses baseball as a metaphor for life more than once. Rather than getting into insider baseball tales, the play delves into who Berra was and what his values were in his years with the Yankees.

Berra didn't believe in chastising a player in front of his teammates. He believed that baseball, the only sport to list errors on the scoreboard, could be cruel enough.

This old-school player and manager reveled in the passion of the sport. Berra may never have been worldly, but thanks to this production, we see that he was both honest and wise.

Yogi-isms flow forth at Actors’ Summit
Roy Berko, The Times Newspapers: Lorain County Times, Westlaker Times, Lakewood News Times, Olmsted-Fairview Times

Yogi Berra, the subject of ‘NOBODY DON’T LIKE YOGI,’ now in production at Actors’ Summit, is a baseball legend. But, he may be best know for his “Yogi-isms.” He is responsible for numerous American English malapropisms. Classics include: "This is like deja vu all over again, "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." And, the logically illogical, "It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."

‘NOBODY DON’T LIKE YOGI’ is Tom Lysaght’s tribute to Berra , a Hall of Fame catcher and World Series manager, who was known as a warm and fuzzy guy devoted to his family and baseball. He is also noted as one of the few people who stood up to legendary tyrant, George Steinbrenner, renowned owner of the New York Yankees.

Steinbrenner was born in 1930 in Rocky River. His father, Henry Steinbrenner, owned a Great Lakes shipping company, which George operated for many years. His years of success as owner of the Yankees was balanced by his twice being suspended by baseball for legal and ethical violations. His run-in with Berra, which resulted in Yogi’s firing, centered on Steinbrenner questioning not only Berra’s managerial choices, but making accusations against his son.

The play is set on the afternoon of the Old Timer's Game in 1999, when Yogi returned to Yankee Stadium after staying away for 14 years, since vowing never to return after Steinbrenner fired him. Berra, concerned about his lack of education and public speaking abilities, centering on his belief that “I’m not inwardly outgoing," wanders the manager’s office and locker room telling stories about baseball, the players, and his own life. (His narration is backed up by slides of the people about whom he is speaking.) The play reaches its logical climax as Yogi gives a heartfelt speech to a sold out Yankee Stadium. But, then, Lysaght decides that, as Yogi might say, “The end is not the end if you don’t stop when the end ends at the end.” The writer tacks on another fifteen minutes of repeating himself, drawing a moral to a story that has already moralized. The night I saw the show, the audience became restless during the tacked-on segment. The New York production starred Ben Gazzara. Reviews reveal that Gazzara showed an inner strength of a man who, while deferential, was unyielding.

It is ironic that the guy of misplaced words is being portrayed locally by George Roth, a Yale graduate who was a two-time Jeopardy champ. Though maybe a little too intellectual, Roth’s characterization has a clear focus. It may surprise many who have never heard Berra speak that he did not have a New York accent. Born in St. Louis, his articulation was Midwestern, with a slight Italian intonation. Roth’s task is daunting. He holds sway for almost two hours, alone on stage, speaking line after line. As the woman in front of me asked at the end of the show, “How can any person remember all those lines?” I guess a Yale and Central School of Speech and Drama in London graduate can, and make sense of them.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: Though a little overly long and a bit languidly paced, ‘NOBODY DON’T LIKE YOGI’ is well worth seeing. It’s fun and interesting. The story is an eye opener, the acting excellent, and it’s nice to think about baseball’s opening day being only three-and-a-half months away.

Nobody Don’t Like Yogi
Fred Dolan, WJCU-FM - Arts On The Heights and Visiting The Folks

Currently playing at Actors’ Summit in Hudson is a fine production of the one-man show Nobody Don’t Like Yogi.

Based on the life of Yankees’ catcher and manager Yogi Berra, it’s 1999, Yogi Berra Day at Yankee Stadium. Yogi is alone in his old locker room before being introduced to the sellout crowd that came to cheer him one last time. He hasn’t been back to Yankee Stadium since George Steinbrenner fired him as manager 16 games into the 1985 season. But don’t expect some guy on stage to recreate Yogi Berra’s baseball career – one great game at a time. This show is really not about baseball but the summing up of the life of a man who is proud of his accomplishments in baseball but is also proud of being a husband, a father, a son of immigrant parents and an American. He’s also conscious that he’s not a handsome man and that with only an 8th grade education, he sometimes mangles the English language. He also reveals some regrets, wonders about how he raised his kids, questions his reactions to situations that he would love to relive, and compares baseball to life.

This is Yogi Berra as everyman, and he’s beautifully played by George Roth, one of this area’s finest actors. He brings out the humanity of Yogi Berra; and by play’s end, we feel we’ve come to know a very special human being.

Actors’ Summit’s Yogi is like déjà vu all over again
Bob Abelman, News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier Member, International Association of Theatre Critics

This has been a difficult year to be a Cleveland Indians fan. In addition to finishing the season with an embarrassing 65-97 record, the team and its fans had to witness the dreaded New York Yankees win yet another World Series, the 27th championship in the rival franchise’s irritatingly excessive storied history.

One of the Yankees’ many stories is currently being told on the Actors’ Summit stage in Hudson, and one has to wonder whether anyone in northeast Ohio would find it remotely entertaining with the memory of last season still sensitive to the touch.

The answer is yes, considering that it is about Yogi Berra. As the title of this one-act, one-man play by Tom Lysaght suggests, Nobody Don’t like Yogi. Yogi was as unlikely a hero on the diamond as he is in this docudrama. Standing only 5-foot-8, he gave the impression of “being welded together from hips to knees, running like a fat girl in a tight skirt,” noted a Life magazine reporter early in Yogi’s major-league career. According to Hall of Famer Mel Ott, Yogi “looked as if he was doing everything wrong.” Yet he was catcher for the Yankees from 1946 to 1963, played on 10 World Series champions, won three Most Valuable Player awards, and managed both the Yankees and the Mets into the World Series.

Most telling about the man is that he was invited to 15 All-Star games, events that are as much popularity contests as they are about athletic prowess. Yogi was an approachable and unpretentious ballplayer on a franchise rarely associated with such qualities, which resonated with fans. He was also a much-quoted ballplayer. With an eighth grade education and coming from an immigrant household, he fractured the English language and pieced it back together in unintentionally intriguing ways. This delighted reporters, although Yogi claimed that “I never said most of the things I said.”

Nobody Don't Like Yogi played off-Broadway in 2003 and enjoyed a national tour in 2005. It is set on “Yogi Berra Day” in 1999, a day that marked Yogi’s first visit to Yankee Stadium in 14 years, having vowed to never return after being unceremoniously fired as manager by egomaniacal team owner George Steinbrenner. Nervous about making a speech, Yogi wanders around the locker room and reminisces about his personal and professional life.

Baseball has long been a backdrop for commentary about the human condition, taking on homosexuality (Take Me Out), racism (Fences) and mortality (Damn Yankees). Nobody Don't Like Yogi has no such pretense. Mr. Lysaght's script is as mild-mannered and as inoffensive as Yogi himself and, like the pastoral pastime it describes, is frequently slow, uneventful and meandering.

Coming in for the save is equity actor George Roth. Mr. Roth is marvelous as Yogi. His approach to acting is much like Yogi’s self-described approach to baseball—“90 percent mental and the other half is physical”—and he gives it his all in this production. When Roth-as-Yogi talks about family and baseball, which is all he talks about in this play, it comes deep from within and is immediately engaging.

Director Neil Thackaberry gives Mr. Roth little to work with on stage. The space is void of baseball artifacts to establish the Yankee legacy or scenery and set pieces to establish a sense of time and place, save for a desk and some metalwork made to resemble lockers. Photos of ballplayers and family members are projected throughout the performance, like closed captioning for the fan impaired. This production is all Mr. Roth all the time and, as Yogi himself would say, “you can observe a lot just by watching.” Despite possessing greater stature, grace and diction than Yogi, Mr. Roth captures all that is essential and endearing about the man. It is not difficult to imagine you are spending a private few moments with the real thing. You don’t have to like the Yankees to like Yogi, and you don’t need to appreciate baseball to find pleasure in this production.

Actor’s Summit has solid ‘Yogi’
David Ritchey, West Side Leader

Finally, a one-person show that works. Actors’ Summit Theatre has hit a home run with “Nobody Don’t Like Yogi,” a one-person show that deals with the life and career of Yogi Berra.

Playwright Tom Lysaght and George Roth (Yogi Berra) bring Berra to Actors’ Summit’s stage in a moving story of the baseball great’s life.

Please note that you don’t have to know anything about baseball — either how to play the game or the history of the game — to enjoy this production. Baseball merely provides a background for the story.

Lysaght has produced an intriguing script. Usually, scripts for one-person shows collapse because of the weight of telling the past and present. Lysaght set the action of the play on Yogi Berra Day, July 18, 1999. As Berra works on his speech and reminisces, he remembers scenes from his life, giving the audience insight into what made the man work.

In the final scene, Berra divides his life into three parts: family, the Navy and Yankee Stadium. Lysaght shows the audience that Berra dearly loved his family (parents, wife and children). Berra made a commitment to the Navy that provided good training for all of his life. Finally, Yankee Stadium was more than the setting for Berra’s professional career. Yankee Stadium was a home for Berra.

Lysaght wrote a fluid script that moves in time and space through Berra’s life. In one scene he is a boy living with his parents and then in an office in Yankee Stadium getting ready to deliver the speech on Yogi Berra Day. Lysaght makes these transitions easy, and Roth performs them in a way that makes the scenes easily accessible to the audience.

Roth brings Berra to life on the stage. Roth, you will remember, appeared last year as Henry Kissinger in Actors’ Summit’s production “Nixon’s Nixon.” Roth is a flexible actor who will do well in almost any role. As Berra, he plays a large spectrum of emotions, from comedic scenes to an emotional death scene.

This performance runs about 90 minutes, without an intermission. So, once Roth speaks the first word of the show, he’s on stage until the curtain call. And, as Berra would say, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Don’t worry — we’re in the hands of an accomplished actor. The audience can relax and go where he takes us. Director Neil Thackaberry made wise choices in casting Roth and in guiding him through this difficult, yet insightful, script.

The set includes two large screens where photographs of Berra’s life are projected. When Berra talks about getting married, his wedding photograph is projected. Berra’s wedding photograph shows Berra with Carmen, his bride, and Joe Garagiola, the best man. Berra and Garagiola attended the same school and, as children, lived on the same street. In all, more than 60 photographs illustrate the story. The helpful photographs are not intrusive.

This one-man show is an excellent production marked by a solid script and a powerful performance.

Guys on Ice: The Ice Fishing Musical

Falling for an ice-fishing musical, hook, line and sinker
Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer

Actors Summit Laughs and lyrics outnumber the fish in the Actors Summit production of "Guys on Ice: The Ice Fishing Musical." The play, which runs at the Hudson theater through Dec. 27, features, clockwise from top, Shawn Galligan, Frank Jackman and Dana Hart.

It's not that too much of a leap to see “Guys on Ice: The Ice Fishing Musical'' as the road picture Hope and Crosby never made.

 The jokes in the play that premiered Friday on the intimate Actors Summit stage in Hudson are just as corny, the songs are just as catchy and … most important, really, the chemistry between actors Frank Jackman and Dana Hart is just as best-buds evident as that between Bob and Der Bingle.

Just the idea of a musical based on ice fishing is humorous. But it's the performances of Jackman as Lloyd, a married fisherman, and Hart as Marvin, a bachelor in love with a checkout girl at the local supermarket, that turn this into more than a one-joke production. The two go together like flathead minnows and Eagle Claw hooks.
Jackman's resonant tenor and Hart's strong but sometimes spotty baritone perfectly complement the book and lyrics by Fred Alley, using James Kaplan's music.

MaryJo Alexander, the co-artistic director of the professional theater company, also shows a deft touch in her direction, knowing when to let her two leads go over the top and when to – you'll excuse the expression – reel 'em in.

 Like those Hope and Crosby movies, the story line is pretty simple. Workin'-class pals Lloyd and Marvin, both clad in snowmobile suits festooned with patches declaring fealty to their beloved Green Bay Packers, hit the ice to fish, drink beer, share stories and await fame and fortune by being interviewed by the local cable equivalent of our own D'ArcyD'Arcy Egan.

Those snowmobile suits, by the way, are the subject of a Hope-and-Crosbyesque song-and-dance number that's as well executed as it is choreographed. Who knew Velcro could be so funny? The closest rival might be Hart's Elvis-style tour de force in “De Ice Fishing King.''

As with any road picture, nothing turns out exactly as planned. And really, could anything that happens in a place like Sturgeon Bay, Wis., where the temperature reaches “a balmy 7 degrees of de Fahrenheit,'' turn out as planned?

And yeah, it's “de'' Fahrenheit. Jackman, Hart and a third character, Shawn Galligan's Ernie the Moocher, an oblivious, ukelele-wielding irritant who could drive Mother Teresa to homicide, do the show in that upper Midwest dialect. De degree of de accent, doh, isss a little wavery, and suffers from not having the understated consistency that raised it to iconic levels in the movie “Fargo.''

But such quibbles are like saying Marilyn Monroe's mole made her ugly. The show is an unblemished homage to love and friendship built around sketch-comedy layers of jokes and bad puns.

Anyone who's ever gone fishing knows that there is a reason you never hear anyone on a fishing show say, “And now, let's get back to the action'': There IS no action. What there is, then, is interaction between the fishermen. It comes off as genuine affection for a couple of big-hearted lugs, one of whom is in trouble with “de old ball-and-chain'' because he can't understand – at first – why a wedding anniversary dinner might top tickets to a Packers game, and the other who just knows those same Packers tickets might be his path to that same kind of love. And both of them are the kind of guy you'd like to spend a day on de ice wit'.

 Hope and Crosby, Lloyd and Marvin, whatever. Call it the icy road to laughter.

For Better

Answer the call of 'For Better'
Kerry Clawson, Beacon Journal staff writer

In the comedy For Better, Cleveland Heights playwright Eric Coble has a lot to say about today's digital society, which relies so heavily on communications technology, it can actually serve as a substitute for real, live relationships.

The regional premiere of the play, showing at Actors' Summit in Hudson, has a witty script full of jokes, jabs and insightful commentary about today's wireless world. Coble's characters, who have frantic careers in a highly mobile society, engage in a string of absurdly fractured communications that are interrupted by call waiting, three-way calling and dropped cell-phone calls.

Have you ever heard of breaking up with someone via Post-It note? Think the polar opposite when it comes to the impersonal in this play, where a fiance sends his lady love an engagement ring via UPS.

Whatever happened to good old face time when it comes to developing a romance?

Coble creates overlapping dialogue that's ripe with humor as parallel three-way phone conversations happen multiple times on stage. Director Neil Thackaberry has carefully choreographed these conversations, in which timing is everything.

In this story, the peppy Karen (Connie Thackaberry) plans to marry an out-of-town man she's seen only three times: She keeps up with him by phone, e-mail and text messaging. Sally Groth plays the distressed, killjoy sister, Francine; and Keith Stevens is Michael, Francine's beleaguered husband.

It's all ridiculously fun, especially in an over-the-top scene where Michael and the loopy Lizzie (Jen Walker) engage in a titillating instant messaging scene full of sexual innuendo.

Through all the young people's communications, Wally — Karen and Francine's father — refuses to use e-mail or TiVo. Wally (played with lovable flair by Larry Seman) actually uses a (gasp!) land line on a cord.

For Better is billed as a 21st-century farce, complete with technology-driven mistaken identities and even women who virtually shop for a wedding gown together.

Coble has a knack for capturing our cultural zeitgeist, as seen in his off-Broadway play Bright Ideas, which explores fanatical parents using their preschooler as a steppingstone toward success. In the dark humor of The Dead Guy, which played two years ago at the Bang and the Clatter, a reality show studio audience gets to choose the manner of a down-and-out man's death.

Coble was in attendance at opening night of For Better, a 2008 play that's milder and more fun-loving than the black humor in either of those early plays. But Coble still poses some interesting questions.

In this age of Internet dating and social networking, how well can we get to know anyone? Francine aptly calls Karen's fiance an ''Internet ghost.''

The comedy also skewers cavalier attitudes toward marriage with this gem from Lizzie: ''Well it's just a marriage. It's not like buying a car.''

Director Thackaberry keeps the pace zipping along as characters engage in parallel rants, often scooting about the stage on desks with wheels.

Tony Zanoni brings a sad-sack brand of humor to the hapless character Stuart, who calls from all kinds of outrageous-sounding countries and gives new meaning to the Verizon slogan, ''Can you hear me now?'' His drunken cell-phone scene with buddy Michael, when they make an analogy between themselves and tamed monkeys, is delicious.

This modern comedy, a satisfying blend of the silly and satirical, reaches outrageous heights with a final wedding scene unlike any you've seen before.

Actors' Summit is a professional, not for profit, 501-c-3 professional arts organization. We are seeking volunteers and board members. For more details, email us or call MaryJo or Neil at 330-342-0800.

Actors' Summit is working under a developmental agreement with Actors' Equity Association (the Union of professional Actors and Stage Managers.)