Comedy by Roger,
page 4
|
ERNIE
AND ARNIE
By Roger Rochowiak |
| |
| A comedy about a mentally
challenged couple? New York loved it and so did the
Midwest. |
| This award-winning play
serves up great amounts of laughter with a heavy dose
of warmth as we watch Ernie and Arnie coping with everyday
life while the "normal" folks in their lives
try to help them as their own lives start to unravel. |
| This play
remains in your mind long after you've seen it. |
| |
| One interior, 3 m / 3
f |
| |
Broadway
Bill of Fare
By Robert Grosch |
| One of the best love stories
to come along in years is Roger Rochowiak's Ernie
and Arnie. It's a delightfully intelligent treat
from David Charles Keeton's New York Summertime Theatre
Collection. The award-winning play is making its New
York debut under the able and restrained direction of
Arnold Willens. |
| Ernie and Arnie are a young mentally
handicapped couple who have been married for only one
week and must face perhaps the biggest obstacle they
will have to cope with in their lives together. The
play is a sensitive treatment of their love, problems,
and unshakable commitment to each other. Although Arnie's
family supports the marriage, Ernie's mother and many
others do not. |
| Sally Ruth Philbin as Arnie and Rick
Tolliver as Ernie turn in astoundingly intelligent,
detailed performances. Both are totally credible as
mentally handicapped adults, but they never sacrifice
the dignity of the characters. In an interview with
Broadway Bill of Fare,
the actors emphasized that they were extremely careful
not to fall into clichés. Each recognized the
understanding of director Willens and the cooperation
of Intentional Acts, a group of artists with developmental
disabilities who worked with Philbin and Tolliver to
give them more insight into the characters. |
| The rest of the cast is equally as
strong. Carol Siskind and bill Corsair as Arnie's relatives
are excellent. |
| Irma Larrison's performance as Ernie's
mother Helen Daniels is superb. Larrison does not play
Helen as a cold-hearted villain. She is a woman who
honestly believes that her negative view of Ernie and
Arnie's marriage is the wisest. |
| Ernie
and Arnie approaches a very difficult topic and
masters it. If you're a romantic (or an enlightened
realist) who believes that love can exist despite many
kinds of handicaps, catch Rochowiak's Ernie
and Arnie. |
