The playwright turns actor in Act II's 'Any Given Monday'

For Howard Shapiro's full review of the play Any Given Monday, at its first incarnation at Theatre Exile in Center City in February, click here.

The new play Any Given Monday is filled with twists - that's part of its rough charm, and also the key to Bruce Graham's funny, arresting script. But in addition to the play, there's a twist in the world-premiere production.

Any Given Monday, which gleefully overturns commonly held values in order to celebrate the very notion of values, opened last month in Center City, where Theatre Exile presented it in a coproduction with Ambler's Act II Playhouse.

It moved to Act II last week - the set, the props, the costumes - and opened Friday. But not every piece of it traveled. Unlike most joint productions, in which two theater companies share expenses to each put up a work in the same way, Any Given Monday has replaced the actor for one of its four characters.

Theatre Exile's producing artistic director, Joe Canuso, first played the role of Lenny, a man whose life is falling apart. At Ambler, the role is performed by playwright Graham, Canuso's good friend.

The play's director, Act II's Harriet Power, juggles all this with aplomb, as does the rest of the cast. While Power rehearsed Any Given Monday for the Center City run, Graham was present as playwright, to make routine script changes. But during that run, when Power began rehearsals for the Ambler switch-off, Graham had to shift; he was there as an actor.

The result is clear: Any Given Monday, while the same play, is a different animal. Canuso's effective rendition of Lenny gave us a man both shocked that his life was changing and too addled to want to deal with those changes. Graham's Lenny, also effective, seems more actively involved in his own predicament; you can sense wheels turning in his mind, even if they're spinning in place. The two Any Given Mondays are examples of the way character-building can change a script - and even a director's singular vision of storytelling.

Except for Graham, the cast has had many weeks with the play, and as an ensemble, they've found themselves. They're also acting in a much more intimate setting (130 seats) than at Theatre Exile, which staged the play at Plays and Players Theatre in Center City (324 seats).

In only one instance is this not a plus. The engaging Catherine K. Slusar, as Lenny's wife, has to focus her eyes on dinner partners we can only imagine, and in the close quarters of Act II, she looks at them as though they're standing over her, possibly on a short ladder.

But this is a small thing; Slusar, Pete Pryor (as the outrageous family pal), and Geneviève Perrier (as the self-absorbed, philosophy-major daughter) work as well with Graham as they did with Canuso. And the play - well, it just works, period.

A joint production of Act II Playhouse and Theatre Exile, playing at Act II, 56 E. Butler Ave., Ambler, through March 28. Tickets: $20-$30. Information: 215-654-0200 or www.act2.org. EndText