Ginger Dayle watches as Raff (Russ Widdall, left) and his father, Agostino (Louis Lippa), square off in the kitchen during William Mastrosimone's "A Stone Carver."
A father's fight to hold on to home
New City Stage Company's "A Stone Carver" is a portrait of a man with rock-hard determination.
After devoting its 2007-2008 season to the work of Trenton native (and Bucks County resident) William Mastrosimone, New City Stage Company revisits the playwright for its last production of this season, A Stone Carver, at the Walnut's Studio 5. The play, more than any other of his tense, darkly comic explorations of violence and connection, is closest to Mastrosimone's own story.
Mastrosimone revisited his first-ever script, The Understanding - written for a class when he was at Rutgers University in the '70s - in 2006, rewriting, renaming, and remounting it at the request of Trenton's Mill Hill Playhouse. In A Stone Carver, Agostino (Louis Lippa), a Sicilian stonemason, is about to be forced from the house he built with his own hands; the government is seizing it through eminent domain. Mastrosimone's own immigrant father was similarly evicted from his home; 30 years later, a weedy lot still remained in its place, the undeveloped land an ironic rebuke that outlasted the both the mason and his occupational hubris.
Director William Roudebush has Lippa wield Agostino's complexities like a shield. He's vicious enough to goad his son Raff (Russ Widdall) - who has come with fiancee in tow to urge his dad to leave quietly - into a kitchen boxing match in front of said fiancee (Ginger Dayle), yet loving enough to carve his late wife's face on each angel he creates. He's an old-country patriarch who establishes dominance by denigrating everyone around him, and for whom helplessness is a humiliation beyond any other.
When Agostino chides Raff with, "You're not the man you once was," Raff asks: "Who is?" Despite his crumbling, rat-filled, boarded-up surroundings (courtesy of set designer Dirk Durossette), Lippa answers proudly, jutting out his chest and chin: "Me! Me, more than before."
Lippa gets at the root of Agostino, his manipulative charm and brute force tethered by an undercurrent of vulnerability. Widdall's Raff has less dimension and a performance that's less nuanced, but in his stomping around and storming off, he creates a believable portrait of a son more like his father than he'd ever care to admit.
And then there's Dayle. As artistic director of New City Stage, she has consistent, savvy taste in drama - there are worse additions to the theatrical landscape than a season-plus study of this playwright. She's also perfectly entitled to cast herself in her own productions.
She should, however, be aware that her propensity for the latter takes a serious toll on the former. This may mark the first time I've seen an actress silently mouth her fellow actors' lines onstage, as they're being spoken. So here's some advice: It's time to step back and let the work speak for your performers and vision, instead of you.
A Stone Carver
Produced by New City Stage at Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St., through next Sunday. Tickets: $20-$25. Information: 215-563-7500
