‘Middletown’ explores longtime friendships
After the long pandemic shutdown, theaters in South Florida and all over the country are getting back to business as usual. Actors’ Playhouse is reemerging strategically.
The company began cautiously welcoming back audiences in August-September with “¡FUÁCATA! or A Latina’s Guide to Surviving the Universe,” a solo show cowritten by actor Elena María García and director Stuart Meltzer. It will get back to large-scale production with the Gloria and Emilio Estefan bio musical “On Your Feet!” from Jan. 26 to March 6, 2022.
In between, onstage now and running through Dec. 12, is Dan Clancy’s four-character play “Middletown,” presented by Actors’ Playhouse and GFour Productions. (This is not, it should be noted, Will Eno’s 2010 play also titled, “Middletown.”)
As some theater-savvy folks in the region may recall, “Middletown” launched in Boca Raton’s Lynn University as part of the late Jan McArt’s New Play Reading Series in 2016, then had a production at Boca’s Levis Jewish Community Center, earning it a Carbonell Award nomination as best new work. Clancy, who splits his time between Fort Lauderdale and New York, is also the author of “The Timekeepers,” which received multiple Carbonell drama and design awards.
For “Middletown,” Clancy has embraced a style similar to the one used by A.R. Gurney in his 1988 play, “Love Letters,” a Pulitzer
Prize finalist.
Instead of having the actors learn their lines and perform the play on a traditional set, Clancy and director Seth Greenleaf place their stars on a stage sporting nothing more than four chairs, a pair of tables holding tissues and water, and four music stands holding scripts. The actors — Didi Conn, Adrian Zmed, Loretta Swit and Donny Most —