By Eugene Paul

 

Playwright Dan McCormick is having a valuable production of his play, The Violin, under splendidly sympathetic direction by Joseph Discher in an uncommonly atmospheric setting by Harry Feiner. Giovanni’s Tailor Shop. You can’t take your eyes off Gio’s musty, cluttered old tailor shop.  Illuminating designer Harry Feiner has made it the heart of the show, crammed it with everything a tailor used to need.  It’s obviously been around for decades and decades, a warm spot on the cold winter streets of the East Village still doing its job, gentrification be damned.

 

Kevin Isola, Robert LuPone                                                       Photos by Carol Rosegg                                        

 

  Gio (very fine Robert LuPone) is deftly sewing a button on a garment at his sewing table well behind his business counter but he can see anybody who comes down the steps to his store. There are always some folks around who would rather use his skills than do it themselves. The shop may be an antique mess but Gio is still dapper, still adept. Not that troubled Bobby (outstanding Peter Bradbury) is one of those rare customers. He’s a tough, middle aged kid who’s known Gio all his life and takes a perverse comfort in Gio’s fatherly advice: get a job, stop being a petty thief, you’re gonna get caught again  and then what will your brother do?  Why elderly Gio is this source of comfort and family to the hapless brothers is a mystery.

 

 Terry, (marvelous Kevin Isola) half frozen, arrives, twitching back the draft curtain in front of the door.  Terry is carrying Gio’s takeout dinner, puts it on the counter, beaming, enumerating all he has remembered to get.  Even more, he remembers to pull the draft curtain back in place, delighted with himself. We begin to understand. So that when Terry mentions the violin he found in his cab, we mentally raise eyebrows, not solely at the possibility that finding a violin in his cab is rather odd but that the idea of Terry having a cab is every bit as odd. Because Terry is a special kid, he’s been told he’s special ever since he was little years and years ago and has reveled in his specialness, still does. The likelihood of him being a licensed driver in a licensed cab would be a burden on the play if playwright Dan McCormick had not already involved us in what’s–going-to-happen-next, if director Joseph Discher had not swept us up, if these three wonderful actors had not hooked us. We are in for the ride.

 

Kevin Isola, Peter Bradbury, Robert LuPone

 

 We know more than these characters; we know that that’s a valuable violin.  We’ve  heard about forgotten violins in taxis before. When Bobby, who has left in a temper, returns abruptly, it’s not too much of a surprise that he’s found out this violin might be a missing Stradivarius worth $4,000,000. And that Bobby has already ascertained who the owner is and what his phone number is and that there is a reward. Aaah……

 

Now, what is playwright McCormick’s devising.?  Yes, we’re invested in these characters, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting some juicy story to go with them.  What are they going to do?  And we begin to realize that they are all of them in this soup of hope and greed and adventure beyond anything they could have expected to experience but certainly within the realms of their dreams. Even ours. And even Gio.  Especially Gio, who long ago should have  stopped dreaming, but something kept him polishing his shoes, something kept him putting on a necktie, something made him shave every day. Was it this, this great, unexpected, hoped for  adventure, Terry, special Terry, beside himself with delight, Bobby, a star in his own movie?

 

And what about us? And why do we care so much? So that when the three plotters work up a plan to get a huge reward for the return of the violin – without any muss and fuss about how it came into their possession, without any questions, and especially without cops – Bobby has seen lots of movies – we are left hoping against hope that these none too gifted conspirators will come out unscathed, even as we know better.  Or do we?

 

I cannot say enough about the direction and the performances.  They’re grabbers. Praise as well for costume designer Michael McDonald, for lighting designer Matthew Adelson, and especially for properties designer Andrew Diaz and his atmospheric litterati.

                                                         

The Violin at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59^th Street near Park Avenue.  Tickets:  $70. 212-279-4200. 2 hrs.  Thru Oct 14.