GILROY
– Whitney Pintello-McClelland is living a daughter’s dream, if
only for a short while. She gets to boss her parents around.
GILROY – Whitney Pintello-McClelland is living a daughter’s dream, if only for a short while. She gets to boss her parents around.
Pintello-McClelland is directing parents Rod and Marion in Pintello Comedy Theater’s latest play, “Social Security,” which runs weekend evenings through Nov. 15.
And while this is her eighth directing experience and has directed her father before, this is the first time she’s ever gotten to direct her mother on stage.
“My mom has directed me in countless love scenes, so it’s funny to direct her in one,” Pintello-McClelland said.
While Rod and Marion are both in the play, they play husband and wife to different actors.
“People asked me if I wanted to put them together as a couple onstage,” said Pintello-McClelland, who was in charge of everything from the set to the personalities of the characters in her interpretation of Andrew Bergman’s play. “It’s funny to think about, but they’re very well suited with other characters.”
“Social Security” is a comedy about two middle-aged sisters who are deciding who will take care of their aging mother. As with all of the Pintello shows, all the action takes place in a single room, that being the home of two Manhattan art dealers.
The high-class art dealer couple, David and Barbara Kahn, is surprised to see her sister, Trudy Heyman, and husband appear at their apartment with the girls’ mother. Knowing that she’ll raise all kinds of havoc for their organized life, the Kahn’s arrange for mom to meet an interesting artist to take her off their hands.
While the show is a laugh-out-loud comedy, it is not quite like anything that has been shown at the Pintello theater before.
“A lot of it is outrageously funny,” Pintello-McClelland said. “It’s not a farce, like a lot of the shows here are. This is a bit more intricate. Some parts are a little more subtle. It’s a lot more wit. There’s a lot of humor between the class differences.”
Marion said her daughter has done an amazing job directing the show.
“She’s brilliant,” she said. “Every character that you see, she decided on. She’s the one who put this all together. She has an understanding of what Pintello Comedy theatergoers are expecting.”
Pintello-Mcclelland said much of the show’s success comes from the experienced cast.
“They say that 90 percent of directing is casting,” she said. “The cast is very, very experienced.”
Along with Rod, who goes from his Southern accent from the Pintello’s last show, “Right Bed, Wrong Husband,” to a New York accent, the show features the talents of Tom Hepner as David Kahn, husband of Barbara Kahn (played by Marion); Pat Cianci as Trudy Heyman (wife of Martin Heyman, played by Rod); Ruth E. Mullins as mother Sophie Greengrass; and Steve Spencer as artist Maurice Koenig.
“Between us, we’ve been in or directed 200 shows,” Pintello-McClelland said.
“Oh, easy,” Mullins said. “I have 70 shows alone.”
Even with all the stage experience she was working with, Pintello-McClelland said that didn’t change the way she went about directing the show.
“I felt prepared for this,”she said. “One misconception is that working with experienced actors is that they’ll come in and want to play the part a certain way. They all came in with a blank slate; they’re very gracious.”
Cianci is the only cast member without a large amount of experience, with only six shows under her belt, but other cast members said that’s hard to believe by watching her onstage.
“She brought a lot of comedy to the show,” Pintello -McClelland said. “I really got to know her better doing the show.”
The show also features a few extra Pintello family members.
“One interesting thing about this show is that we have this fancy artwork from the Whitney Museum,” Rod joked about the artwork on the wall which was painted by Pintello-McClelland and her two children. “When it’s a family thing, we get the grandkids out here painting world-famous pieces of art.”
Pintello-McClelland’s children, Shelby, 4, and Mary, 6, got to paint one of the pieces of artwork for the set. The artwork, an abstract ocean view made from blending blue paints, is used comedically in the show as the couples argue of the validity of the piece as true art.
“Their argument was a lot like the play,” Pintello-McClelland said of her girls’ reaction to painting the ocean. ” ‘There’s no picture. It can’t be art if there’s no picture!’ ”
“Social Security runs Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 15 at 8531 Church St. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased by calling 776-8004.
