GILROY
– Rehearsals for the Pintello Comedy Theater’s new play,
”
Rumors,
”
look more like a high-class affair
– heck, even a prom – than a small community theater
practice.
GILROY – Rehearsals for the Pintello Comedy Theater’s new play, “Rumors,” look more like a high-class affair – heck, even a prom – than a small community theater practice.
So don’t be surprised if you see men in tuxedos and women in dresses upon entering the show’s theater at 8531 Church St when it opens at 8 p.m. today.
“You should have been here earlier when we were all taking our prom pictures,” joked Kirsten Carr, executive director of the Gilroy Visitors Bureau and second-time Pintello Theater actress.
The play, written by Broadway playwright Neil Simon, is set with a group of upper-class New Yorkers – including a lawyer, deputy mayor and a man running for state senate – who attend a 10th anniversary party for their friends, Charlie and Myra, so the attire is quite extravagant.
“All the men owned their own tuxes,” Director Marion Pintello laughed. “And the girls had a great time going to pick out dresses to wear.”
As the play opens, the audience quickly finds a couple racing around the apartment. The two, the first guests at the party, are shocked to find Charlie with a bullet wound in his ear and his wife missing. With Charlie in shock, they – and the other guests who begin to arrive at the party – are left trying to figure out what happened.
The show is one of Marion Pintello’s favorites; she also directed the show for South Valley Civic Theater nearly a decade ago when plays were showing at the playhouse at Tennant Station in Morgan Hill. The cast from that SVCT show 10 years ago was invited to see the Pintello’s final rehearsal on Thursday night.
“This show is so funny, and it happens that I love Neil Simon,” said Marion, who has directed five or six shows of Simon’s more than 30. “This is his only or his first farce. I think Neil Simon is smart, he’s witty.”
While space was no issue at the Tennant Station playhouse 10 years ago, it was five or six times larger than the Pintello’s stage, making it tricky to have 10 actors on and off stage.
“This is the largest cast we’ve had, with 10 people,” Producer Rod Pintello said. “And, we have six returning members.”
Those six members of the ensemble cast are what help tie it all together, Rod said.
“They know how to play on the round stage,” he said. “Marion teaches them to keep moving around. These guys pick up on it very well.”
Carr, who shared the stage with Jayson Stebbins, Steve Beck and Whitney Pintello-McClelland in “I Take This Man,” said having more people on stage was challenging.
“It’s different to be on stage with 10 people,” she said. “Marion did a good job moving us around. We didn’t need any traffic signals – at least not yet. It helps that so many of us have worked here before.”
Beck, who plays one the guests to the party, agreed.
“The first show I did was four people,” he said. “You get used to working with one another.”
He said one of the difficulties with a large cast is ad-libbing when someone misses their line.
“Something new is happening every night, and you don’t know who is going to pick up on a mistake,” said Beck, who said they were forced to memorize their lines earlier than the last show he was in. “I think Marion got us off the book early, and I think that really helped out a lot. We really learned to ad lib.”
As a director, Marion said the most difficult part of her job wasn’t getting the actors to work together onstage so much as it was answering the group’s questions.
“It’s not so much the small stage as it is the amount of interaction,” she said. “If everyone has two questions, it takes a long time to get through it. Last time, we only had four actors, so if everyone had two questions, it’d be done like that.”
Marion said the biggest difference she worked on for her second attempt directing “Rumors” was making sure the characters have individual personalities, not an easy task with so many people on stage.
“They have to have differences between them,” she said. “They have to have their own personalities and not be the same character. That’s something I think we’ve done a lot better, the relationship in each couple.”
Beck, who had never acted alongside his partner in the show, Joanna Evans, said he thought the two were really starting to mold together.
“I think we are really starting to connect as a couple,” he said.
Marion said it is important with so many characters to follow that everyone got along, and it helped to have so many returning cast members.
“Each of these 10 people has to get along with the other 9, and they were all very anxious to work together,”she said. “We could meet here and have a party three nights a week.”
“I can’t tell if I have more fun on the stage or off of it, but that’s what this is all about,” he said. “Even after notes (written by Marion for the actors after practice), we’re still here talking.”
New for the Pintello’s seventh show is a Web site, www.pintellocomedy.com, designed by a local company, Parrot Works, the same company that designed the Gilroy Visitors Bureau Web site. The Web site not only allows visitors to read about the theater and cast but also to reserve seats for shows.
“It just opened up a couple of days ago,” Rod said.
Along with the new Web site, the Pintellos also have planned three remaining show for the rest of 2004 as the theater continues to show interest from the community.
“Having the theater in town is awesome, and it’s great to be a part of it on this end,” Carr said.
“Rumors” is playing the at the Pintello Comedy Theater, 8351 Church St., at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through May 1. Tickets are $15 and seats can be reserved by calling 776-8004, visiting www.pintellocomedy.com or by e-mailing pi******@****ic.com.
