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Stage Review: 'Orange' juicy with emotion
Saturday, January 27, 2001 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
In his previous works, "The Day Leo Durocher Died" and "Cornish Game Hen," Squirrel Hill playwright James McManus proved he is a master of character development. His latest, "The Night They Drugged the Orange," follows his pattern of articulating portraits of dysfunction and watching them collide.
Pittsburgh
"Orange," a finalist in last year's National Playwright's Conference, is a disturbing family drama that will seem all too familiar to many Pittsburghers. It's set in Pittsburgh in 1976, when a steel worker's family is locked in a generational cycle of interpersonal destruction. Larry Kozlowski delivers a powerful performance as a gruff shop steward who blew his one chance to make it out of the mills. To bolster his self-esteem, he belittles and bullies the people around him, particularly his youngest son. It's a breakthrough performance for Kozlowski that should lead to meatier roles.
Connie Culbertson, a theater teacher at La Roche, counters Kozlowski's dramatic blast furnace with an acerbic portrayal of a bitter steel worker's wife who has spent a lifetime strapped to an emotional whipping post.
As a less-than-fortunate son forced into the mills, Pittsburgh newcomer Aaron Keith Haggin awkwardly holds it in until he explodes in confrontations with Koz-lowski. Paul Stockhausen plays a sidekick in a supporting role, and Ray Schafer provides much-needed wisdom and comic relief as the family patriarch, who's old enough to see the negative cycle he imposed on his family replayed in subsequent generations.
Dennis Palko directs like a referee, keeping his fighters nose to nose until the final TKO. With such well-drawn characters in place, McManus seems poised to provide the kind of twist that made Tammy Ryan's "Pig" such a bizarre marvel of blue-collar dysfunction. Instead, the family cycle simply continues, and the lights drop after a dramatic final line, robbing the audience of one passionate moment for it all to sink in.
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WHERE: Gemini Theater, The Factory, Point Breeze.
TICKETS: $8. 412-243-6464.