Theater Review—

Love, Affection, And The Familial Ties That Bind:

Stray Kats Season Finalé Continued Company’s Burgeoning Reputation

By Julie Stern

There was only one thing wrong with last week’s Stray Kats version of Frank Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, The Subject Was Roses.

It wasn’t that in order to afford Equity actors, the company stages dramatic readings from hand held scripts — because these performers are so professional, and the direction so solid, that the audience is oblivious to the fact that the characters are periodically glancing at a piece of paper.

Nor is it that the venue consists of rows of folding chairs on the level floor of the Alexandria Room, because again, the show is so engrossing that you might as well be sitting in the comfort of the orchestra seats at a Broadway theater.

No, the only problem is that Stray Kats productions tend to be one-night stands, which means that by the time this review comes out, you’ve lost your chance to hear about something really terrific until it’s too late.  All you can do is watch and wait for their next endeavor, which happens to be set for the last two weekends in July.

A few years ago, Timmy left home a teenaged boy, whose father belittled him as being spoiled and cosseted by his mother. He has returned home a man. He has to keep wearing his uniforms because his old clothes no longer fit him, and he is looking at his parents with new eyes.

He still feels love and affection for them, but he has a clearer sense of the underlying tensions that make the Cleary household as much a combat zone as France or Italy was.

As a boy, Timmy was so traumatized by the angry fights that occurred when his father returned home from drinking in bars, that he formed an alliance with his mother to share her tacit disapproval, joining in her emotional exclusion of the man who could be a  successful bon vivant salesman in public, but was unable to communicate with the people closest to him.

Now as he drinks with his father, Timmy begins to see his mother’s neurotic coldness with new clarity, even as he recognizes her loneliness and hurt. With a show of cynical wisdom, Timmy confides to his father that the smartest thing he ever did in the army was to “never volunteer.” He told the lieutenant that “if you order me to do something, I’ll do it, but I’m not going to volunteer for anything!”

Yet he does volunteer as he takes on the role of mediator, trying to help each parent see the other one’s pain, and forcing them to face the truth of their own motives and behavior.  It is this, rather than drinking his father under the table, that is the real sign that the son has become a man.

The chemistry between husband and wife actors Kate Katcher and Don Striano as Nettie and John Cleary was sensational, and Damian Long was equally believable and likeable as their son.

In the audience talk-back that followed the performance, people couldn’t stop saying how much they were able to recognize their own families in what they saw and heard on stage. Listening to the actors explain how they interpreted their characters was just as meaningful. And Barbara Ellen Stuart, who co-directed with Katcher, was equally fine.

Stray Kats continues to be a fine addition to the Newtown cultural scene, and it is worth your while to mark the dates of their productions so that you don’t miss them.