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| Players
a favorite at Cohoes Music Hall |
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April 27, 2000 |
| By: Phil Drew, The Record |
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| “It’s time to let go of the words ‘Clifton Park’,” says Kathy O’Neill. “Gently.” |
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has, after all, been three years since the Clifton Park Players, the
theater troupe of which O’Neill is artistic director, bade farewell to
Saratoga County and took up residence at the Cohoes Music Hall. Now, as they prepare to wrap up their 1999-2000 season with a production of Neil Simon’s comedy “God’s Favorite,” and even as the wheels are already turning on their summer production of “Grease,” which was cast just last week, O’Neill and company prepare finaly to detach themselves from the community where the company were born. “We have been easing out of the words ‘Clifton Park,’ and more and more we’ve taken to calling ourselves simply The Players,” she says. “Although after all the paperwork we had to go through for our tax-exempt status, I think on paper we’ll remain the Clifton Park Players forever.” But there are those, O’Neill concedes, who remain puzzled by that geographic anomaly. “For a long time, even though we were producing shows year round, the way people identified us was by our summer show (at Clifton Commons), because it was a musical and our biggest production,” she says. “There are some people who still ask, when will be onstage there? They’ve still been looking for us.” Call off the search party: “Grease” will be the third straight summer production brought indoors from the open-air Commons stage to the old Victorian music hall on Remsen Street in Cohoes. The Players have also seen a gradual change in the company’s makeup as they’ve sunk their new roots. “We’ve lost a few people who were core people for our first few years in business,” O’Neill says, “but now we’re pulling more people coming to us from south of Albany than we used to.” To dispell any remaining doubts about where the Players call home, they recently received assurances from Cohoes mayor John McDonald that he wants them to remain the resident theater company of the Music Hall for the foreeseeable future. They’ll be sharing the hall with new tenants — the management of the Eighth Step Coffeehouse has tentatively shaken hands with city officials on a deal to use the facility — but The Players are here to stay. After three years of patiently building a regional identity for the company, it’s ironic that their season-ender is Simon’s satirical update of the biblical tale of Job, a name synonymous with patient exertion and the faith that everything will work out for the best. “God’s Favorite” is a lesser-known work in the Simon canon. “That was the primary reason for selecting it,” says O’Neill, who directs it. “That, and the love of Neil Simon. We’ve enjoyed doing his plays, and they work well for our company — but this isn’t overproduced in this area, so it’s pretty fresh.” The show is not without technical challenges — not least of which is the need to destroy most of the set for the final scenes of the play. “The only things left standing are the doors,” O’Neill says. “We remove the furniture, put trash all around, a few charred timbers. Of course, in the Cohoes Music Hall, you say ‘fire’ and it makes people a little nervous.” Rest assured: it’s only special effects. The show was a good fit, O’Neill observes, with the company’s regulars. “We felt we had the people in our pool of talent that would be ideal for it,” she says. Those include veterans of the Players’ last Simon foray, last year’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” David Marcil, who starred in that production, here portrays Sidney Lipton, a trench-coated cherub who is, O’Neill says, “not the angelic type you’re used to seeing on TV. He looks more like Columbo than an angel.” Also returning is Laural Hayes, portraying Rose, the wife of the title character. Also featured in the cast are Dan Messersmith and Diane Murray-Fleck as a pair of dimwitted twins and Aaron Holbritter as a proverbial prodigal son. In the suburban Long Island setting, Job becomes Joe Benjamin, a nouveau-riche businessman whose family is his trial. Joe is played by David Campbell, a veteran of several recent Players productions and, says O’Neill, not your average joe. “He’s got a look about him,” she says. “Something about the way the whole package comes across that’s very interesting. He’s done a lot of work in the past two years, popping up here and there. He got the bug a couple of years ago, and his growth in the last year or so has been terrific. I think you’re going to see a lot more from him.” What’s more, Campbell’s a Cohoes resident. But the Players won’t be changing their moniker to The Cohoes Players anytime soon. “We find we’re having a broader base that we’re drawing from in terms of both audience and actors,” O’Neill says. She’s encouraged by the recent audition turnout for “Grease,” which is slated for performances in mid-June to steer clear of midsummer heat. Moving their summer production forward by a month has also made room in the schedule for a long-awaited summer youth theater workshop in July and August this year — another building block. “What’s impacted us most is that we’re producing shows consistently,” O’Neill says. “Some people weren’t sure when we moved that we would be staying around. But we are, and we will be.” “God’s Favorite” will be performed April 28-30 and May 5-7 at the Cohoes Music Hall, with performances Sundays at 2 p.m. and all other performances at 8 p.m. For information, call 590-0273. |
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©The Record 2000 |
For More Information Contact:
Cohoes Caretakers, Inc.
P.O. Box 200 Cohoes, NY 12047
Tel: 518-235-4311
FAX: 518-235-3086
Internet: b4cohoes@nycap.rr.com
