{"id":2128,"date":"2015-08-24T21:31:22","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T21:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hamptontheatre.org\/?page_id=2128"},"modified":"2015-08-28T17:08:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T17:08:41","slug":"painting-churches","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hamptontheatre.org\/?page_id=2128","title":{"rendered":"Painting Churches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

GENERAL INFO<\/a><\/p>\n

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\r\n\"hampton<\/a>\r\n
by Tina Howe\r\ndirected by Sarah Hunnewell<\/h6>\r\n
June 9 – 26, 2005<\/h6>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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\r\nCAST:<\/strong>\r\nFanny Church – JANE LOWE\r\nGardner Church – LARRY NICKS\r\nMargaret Church – LESLIE JONES\r\n\r\n<\/div>
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WHO'S WHO<\/a><\/p>\n

\n \t\r\nLESLIE JONES<\/strong> (Margaret Church) is thrilled to be working with the Hampton Theatre Company this summer on such a wonderful show. She studied theater at Vanderbilt University and at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Previous roles include Ariel in THE TEMPEST, Corinna in HO– USE OF BLUE LEAVES, Popova in THE BEAR and Irene in CRAZY FOR YOU.\r\n\r\nJANE LOWE<\/strong> (Fanny Church) began her career as a dancer, performing in major theaters and opera houses throughout the world, including the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers, with the Louis Falco and James Cunningham dance companies. She was in the Broadway production of OH, CALCUTTA! and appeared as a Kit-Kat girl in the premiere of CABARET in Berlin, Germany. Jane has also appeared in many Off and Off-Off Broadway productions. Some favorite roles are Rosalind in AS YOU LIKE IT, Amanda in PRIVATE LIVES, Gorgeous in THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG, Blanche in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, Katherine in A PERFECT GANESH and Claire in RUMORS. Jane was also a principal in more than 25 national commercials and several independent films. Most recently she performed in FROM THE HORSE\u2019S MOUTH at the Doris Duke Theater on 42nd Street and at Jacob\u2019s Pillow. Jane is a graduate of The Julliard School.\r\n\r\nLARRY NICKS<\/strong> (Gardner Church) is happy to be working with the Hampton Theatre Company once again. He played Robert in last fall\u2019s production of PROOF and Dr. John Buchanan, Sr. in SUMMER AND SMOKE at Guild Hall. On Broadway he worked with Sean Penn and J.C. Quinn in Art Wolf\u2019s production of HEARTLAND. Off Broadway he enjoyed working with Richard Karn and director Andy Cadiff in LOSING IT. Off Broadway he also appeared in the two character comedy CARIBBEAN COUPLES. Larry has appeared as a principal in many commercials, but none lately.\r\n\r\nTINA HOWE<\/strong> (Playwright) has been writing for the stage for more than thirty years. Her best known works include PAINTING CHURCHES (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), COASTAL DISTURBANCES (nominated for a Tony Award in 1987 and produced by the HTC in 1991), THE ART OF DINING, APPROACHING ZANZIBAR and PRIDE\u2019S CROSSING (nominated for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 1998 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play). Howe has also won an Obie Award for Distinguished Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Rockefeller grant, two NEA fellowships and a Guggenheim fellowship. Other works include ONE SHOE OFF, THE NEST, BIRTH AND AFTER BIRTH, M– USEUM and, most recently, WOMEN IN FLAMES.\r\n\r\nSARAH HUNNEWELL<\/strong> (Director, Producer) is the Executive Director of the Hampton Theatre Company and has, at various times, produced, directed and acted for the company for the last fifteen years. Favorite directorial forays include last fall\u2019s production of PROOF, SUMMER AND SMOKE, THE RAINMAKER, A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, ORPHANS, THE LAST YANKEE and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Many thanks to her wonderful cast and crew and, as always, to Jimmy for his help and support.\r\n\r\nPETER MARBURY<\/strong> (Set Designer) is the resident set designer for the Hampton Theatre Company. He has managed, on a small budget, to recreate myriad environments including Victorian parlors and Cape Cod beaches. When not creating sets, Peter can be found in his studio, where he busies himself making sculpture. For relaxation, he grows vegetables in his garden.\r\n\r\nSEBASTIAN PACZYNSKI<\/strong> (Lighting Designer) designed SUMMER AND SMOKE, PROOF and NIGHT WATCH for the Hampton Theatre Company as well as the new theater\u2019s lighting system. He has designed lighting for theater, dance and special events in a number of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway and regional venues. He has also worked in film and television as the director of photography. Local design credits include RED HERRING, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, DRACULA, JULIUS CAESAR, MACBETH and HAMLET at the John Drew Theater and THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, A WINTER\u2019S TALE and TWELFTH NIGHT for the Hamptons Shakespeare Festival. Upcoming productions include MOBY DICK at the John Drew Theater.\r\n\r\nCHAS ROEDER<\/strong> (Costume Designer) has designed costumes for over thirty HTC productions as well as community, dinner and children\u2019s theater, reviews, summer stock, Off Broadway and national tours. He has been costume designer for CTC Theater Live, Quogue Junior Theater Troupe and Spindletop Productions. Since its conception, Chas has been an active committee member of the WHBPAC where he has designed both sets and costumes.\r\n\r\nSANDRA LEE CLARK<\/strong> (Stage Manager) is primarily an actress whose history in theatre includes roles in SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE MIRACLE WORKER, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, DEATHTRAP, THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT, WAITING FOR LEFTY and, most recently, LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS at the Clare Rose Playhouse. She has studied theater at S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, Dowling College and H.B. Studios. Although Sandra usually performs in front of the curtain, she has previously stage managed throughout Long Island and welcomes this opportunity to work with such a fine company.\r\n\r\nKRISTIN SINKEL<\/strong> (Assistant Stage Manager) is thrilled to be working with the Hampton Theatre Company on yet another production. She has appeared both on stage and backstage with HTC and many other local theater groups. Most recently, Kristin was John Zaleski\u2019s assistant on HTC\u2019s production of NIGHT WATCH. In \u201creal life,\u201d Kristin works at the Veterinary Clinic of East Hampton and is \u201cMommy\u201d to two dogs and four cats. She would like everyone to send good wishes to Joe Marchese at the John Drew as he battles a brain tumor. We love you Joe!\r\n\r\nJENNIFER COHEN<\/strong> (Assistant Stage Manager) has previously stage managed COMPANY, FOLLIES, NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES and A CHORUS LINE with the Southampton Players and would like to thank her you-know-who for always being there and loving her.\r\n\r\nJACQUIE BACHMAN<\/strong> (Lighting & Sound Technician) is a student at Stony Brook University and has been working at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center for several seasons. Jacquie is pleased to be working with the Hampton Theatre Company again for another amazing production.\r\n\n <\/div>\n

PRODUCTION STAFF<\/a><\/p>\n

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\r\nDirector – SARAH HUNNEWELL\r\nProducers – SARAH HUNNEWELL & DIANA MARBURY\r\nSet Designer – PETER MARBURY\r\nLighting Designer – SEBASTIAN PACZYNSKI\r\nCostumer Designer – CHAS ROEDER\r\nStage Manager – SANDRA LEE CLARK\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n
\r\nAssistant Stage Managers – JENNIFER COHEN, KRISTIN SINKEL\r\nSet Construction – RUSSELL BABIS, JAMES EWING, TED KISS, PETER MARBURY, SEAN MARBURY\r\nSet Decor – DIANA MARBURY\r\nSound & Lighting Tech – JACQUIE BACHMAN\r\nProduction Graphics – JOE PALLISTER<\/a>\r\nAdvertising Sales – ELIZABETH GOODALE\r\nHouse Manager – SY ROBIN\r\nProgram, Publicity, Props & Box Office – SARAH HUNNEWELL\r\n\r\n<\/div>
<\/div>\r\n\n <\/div>\n

REVIEWS<\/a><\/p>\n

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SUBSTANTIAL, THOUGHTFUL PRODUCTION<\/h3>\r\nby Lee Davis <\/strong>\r\n\r\nOh, the angst of WASPdom! To be rich and troubled … and rich. But wait a minute. Those on the top couple of rungs of the social ladder, like Shylock, feel pain, too, and are human, too, and therefore deserve our attention and care as much as anyone else.\r\n\r\nIt may be that their largest problem is that it takes either closeness or talent to make most of us care. And that A.J. Gurney and Tina Howe have, in gracious abundance. Both have made it their business to chronicle the lives and lost fulfillments of a panoply of people of the privileged class. And, by God, they succeed in making us care.\r\n\r\nSo, it\u2019s good to report that \u201cPainting Churches,\u201d Tina Howe\u2019s 1983 Off-Broadway look in on a Boston WASP family that\u2019s in the last throes of disassembly, is being given an absorbing production in Quogue by the Hampton Theatre Company, with fluid direction by Sarah Hunnewell and a cast of uniformly interesting and rewarding actors.\r\n\r\nMs. Hunnewell treats the story of the family of Gardner Church, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who\u2019s descending into the steadily darkening tunnel of Alzheimer\u2019s, as a contemporary fable. Peter Marbury\u2019s sumptuous set, Charles Roeder\u2019s faultless costumes, and particularly Sebastian Paczynski\u2019s primary color lighting design have an unreal, dreamlike quality about them, as do the lives of the three characters\u2014Gardner, his unforgiving and vociferously practical wife, Fanny, and their daughter, Margaret, an artist on the brink of fame who desperately needs the acceptance of her parents.\r\n\r\nMost of their moments are made of memories and dreams, which constantly overlap, and the rhythms, the waves of movement of the play and the tensions that fire within these waves are composed of the collision of these memories and dreams with a more unforgiving reality.\r\n\r\nThe Churches are closing their Boston mansion and moving into their summer cottage full time so that Fanny can take care of Gardner as he steadily loses touch with the larger than life persona that has made him world famous. Margaret, on the verge of a major gallery show of her works, comes back from New York to paint her parents\u2019 portraits, one last capturing of what once was and one last try at gaining her mother\u2019s approval.\r\n\r\nHer father loves her without question and without borders. Her mother, self-absorbed in her Boston Brahmin persona and milieu, has spent Margaret\u2019s childhood trying to shoehorn her into a preconceived image, and has neither understood nor countenanced her artistic talents. And so, the play focuses upon the final collision of these forces.\r\n\r\nJane Lowe plays Fanny at a fever pitch with a purpose, which results in a good 15 early minutes of stridency. Admittedly, this is partly the fault of Ms. Howe\u2019s expositional writing, and, as Ms. Lowe settles into her character, her delivery modifies in tandem with the writing as it too settles down and the adorable qualities of the characters emerge.\r\n\r\nHere, the reasons for her maximum nervousness make themselves felt, as she reaches her level and balances a not altogether sympathetic character with a plaintive reality. (\u201cBoy,\u201d her daughter Margaret observes, as the patterns of a childhood repeat themselves in her adult visit, \u201cyou\u2019re in a class by yourself when it comes to humiliation.\u201d)\r\n\r\nThe strain of change and the toll taken by her efforts to balance a deep love of her fragmenting husband with the responsibilities of keeping him in touch with a steadily fading substantiality are all brought gradually to the surface of Ms. Lowe\u2019s portrayal. Once she\u2019s allowed by the playwright, she brings the complexities within her character into sometimes moving focus.\r\n\r\nLarry Nicks is an extraordinarily sympathetic Gardner Church, veering adorably in and out of the present, acquiring a rock solid command of all he surveys when quoting poetry, and above all, lavishing love with unabated generosity on both mother and daughter, no matter the situation or the consequences. His is the saddest of three sad souls, and Mr. Nicks balances this in his character with gentle control.\r\n\r\nThe delight of the threesome is Leslie Jones\u2019s delineation of Margaret, the artist daughter, back to paint a portrait and to once again face the humiliation of her mother and be wrapped in the arms of her fawning father. Ms. Jones infuses the story with a welcome solidity that contains volumes of pent-up emotion.\r\n\r\nHer performance is never less than captivating, and is frequently transfixing. The tragedy of the play remains locked into fantasy until her arrival, and her efforts, over and over, to win the opprobrium of both, rather than one, of her parents is ultimately heartbreaking.\r\n\r\nAnd so WASPs do suffer, and though \u201cPainting Churches\u201d never gets too dark, it does have the truth of the frailty of life and family relationships about it. And it\u2019s being given a satisfyingly substantial, thoughtful production by the Hampton Theatre Company in its comfortably renewed home in Quogue.\r\n

A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY PORTRAIT<\/h3>\r\nby Steve Parks\r\nNewsday – June 17, 2005<\/strong>\r\n\r\nMags paints for a living. But she’s never painted a church. Or a Church for that matter. You may have guessed as much if you’re familiar with Tina Howe’s fondness for word-play titles. Her “Coastal Disturbances” has as little to do with weather as “Painting Churches” does with houses of worship.\r\n\r\nExcept that there’s a devotion to creativity in the Church household. As the lights go up on this aptly eccentric Hampton Theatre Company incarnation, we notice that the triptych of arched windows of the living room forms a nave from which Fanny can bestow her matriarchal blessings and blandishments.\r\n\r\nBut right now her only vestments are an old bathrobe and an outlandish red hat she’s rescued from the thrift shop for 85 cents. She solicits the approval of her husband, Gardner, who’s preoccupied with his nonsensical writing like an addled chimp who might accidentally pound out “Hamlet.”\r\n\r\nGardner Church, we learn after daughter Margaret arrives for her annual visit, is a Pulitzer-winning poet. Fanny has devoted her life to taking care of the family laureate. And it shows. She hardly recalls any of her daughter’s childhood. But maybe it’s just the temporary amnesia that goes with packing up your life and moving it to the summer cottage on the Cape, where winter arrives early. The floor of their Boston home is strewn with packing boxes, wadded paper and tarnished silver pieces Fanny hopes will fetch a few months’ living expenses.\r\n\r\nOstensibly, Mags has come to help her parents pack. But her real agenda is to paint their portrait. That’s what she does when she’s not teaching at Pratt – paint portraits. “I’m so out I’m in,” she says of her first solo show in Manhattan.\r\n\r\nBut like most children, even long after growing up, Mags has never really regarded her parents as people. Her determination to capture them on canvas morphs into an accident of self-discovery.\r\n\r\nJane Lowe as Fanny and Larry Nicks as Gardner scuffle along in their packing like a mismatched pair of bedroom slippers – one his, one hers. Desperately clinging to her vanity, Lowe’s Fanny twinkles with the secrets of her semi-glamorous past, long forgotten by her husband, along with most everything that doesn’t involve rhyme or meter. Nicks dodders adorably as the writer who forgets the beginning of his sentence before he achieves its period. His absent donning of old clothes Fanny wants to give away recalls the mute antics of Bill Irwin.\r\n\r\nLeslie Jones as Mags recoils in defensive regression at every disparaging remark by her mother, while glowing with each glimmer of the past she cajoles from Dad.\r\n\r\nDirector Sarah Hunnewell understands artsy people like the Churches – snobby to outsiders, cool to intimates. (They can’t help showing off taste and intellect even among themselves.) And while their remote orbits may resemble dysfunction, it feels like family, just as Peter Marbury’s living room set feels like home.\r\n\r\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\r\n\r\nGallery images by Tom Kochie\r\n\r\n\n\t\t