"Sons of the Prophet" at New Conservatory Theatre Center

NCTC photo by Lois Tema

Stephen Karam is one of the hot names in American theater these days. He's been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama...twice, won the Tony Award for Best Play, and has a host of other awards an honors. I discovered his work quite by accident back in 2007, when I serendipitously stumbled across his play, "Speech and Debate" playing in New York City when my family was there. Given that my wife and my mother-in-law and I had all both competed in and coached high school speech and debate, it was clear we had to go see that.

What I like about his work is that it manages to be fun and playful with language while poking unsparingly at difficult subjects. His plays are far less about defining who is a good or bad character, and much more about portraying difficult and interesting situations that real people can find themselves in.

That brings me to...

The Play

I knew virtually nothing about this play before I saw it, other than it was one of Karam's, and it had won some awards. That's more than enough to make me want to see it. The main characters of the play are two brothers in Nazareth, PA, who lose their father as a result of a high school football hazing prank gone awry. Joseph, the elder brother, works for a rather bizarre book publisher to earn health benefits. His younger brother Charles helps to care for their aging uncle. We get views into the tough economics of eastern Pennsylvania--the very definition of the Rust Belt. Plus we get glimpses of family life, inter-generational struggles within immigrant families, celebrity privilege on a local level, and practical balancing of privacy and the need for funds.

There is a lot going on, but it never seems particularly forced: more like, "of course this would also have to go wrong right now." And there are some noticeably quirky characters, but none seems like a caricature. It's just a slice of life.

Oh, and the title refers to the fact that the Douaihy family is probably distantly related to Kahlil Gibran (known for writing "The Prophet"), and there are numerous plays on Gibran and his writing, as well as projected titles for the scenes, drawn from "The Prophet."

Overall, I like the play a lot. I think it's well-written, with pretty tight language that makes the characters believable. Good stuff.

The Theater

Just a quick side note here that this was my first play at the New Conservatory Theatre Company (NCTC), which is a little surprising, since their theater at 55 Van Ness Avenue is essentially around the corner from the office where I have worked for about a decade. Of course, they are in the basement of a rather large building, and I don't actually go by the building that often, so although I became aware of their existence a  while back, I had never ventured in or seen a production.

The facility is pretty nice. I gather they have recently renovated the lobby area, which has a small box office and a bar tucked away in a corner. There appear to be two different theater spaces down there, but we were in the smaller one. It's quite small, but it worked well for this production. I'll be interested to see what the larger space is like sometime.

My overall impression of the company was that they are small and friendly, and perhaps have a somewhat insular community. I'm not aware of them doing much advertising or outreach, but I am now curious to see what else they get up to.

The Production

I was impressed with the acting. The set itself is quite basic, but that works here. There isn't room for anything elaborate, and the simplicity makes it easy to transition scenes just by moving a chair or a table, maybe adding a phone or a microphone. The costumes as such are pretty much contemporary clothes, with a couple of nice, quirky exceptions.

I thought all the actors were solid, at least. Cheryl Smith as Gloria comes across from the start as something of a head case, but in the fullness of time we come to understand why. But she does make life challenging for her employee, Joseph (played really well by Eric Kerr). Joseph is the core character around which everything else pretty much flows, and Kerr handled that with aplomb, even in a hospital gown. The other real stand-out for me was Loralee Windsor as a series of secondary characters, each of which had a distinctive, fun personality, and in the closing scene, her Mrs. McAndrew was very touching.

On the whole, the cast manages to take a pretty tight, closely-timed script and execute it well, maintaining the humanity and vulnerability of all the characters.

Unfortunately, the run was virtually sold out by the time I went to get tickets. I was only able to buy in their "extension," which was a couple of added matinees on the last two weekends. So the show has already closed, but it obviously found an audience and filled the small house.

I was impressed by the company, and will definitely be watching to see what else they get up to, especially now that I know they are just around the corner!