EVERYTHING IS SUPER GREAT by Stephen Brown Debuts at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Xavier Rooney, Lisa Jill Anderson, Will Sarratt, and Marcia Debonis in EVERYTHING IS SUPER GREAT.  Photo by Hunter Canning.

Dysfunctional families, abandonment, disappearances, dementia, failures to communicate, inter-generational conflict – these are among the most basic themes traditionally addressed on stage.  Seldom, however, are they explored as deftly and in such light-hearted fashion as they are by Stephen Brown in Everything Is Super Great, his first full length play to be staged in New York.  And it is why this play, produced by New Light Theater Company and Stable Cable Lab Co. and directed by Sarah Norris at 59E59 Theaters in midtown Manhattan, engenders so many more laughs than tears from the audience.

Tommy (Will Sarratt) is an awkward 19-year old whose father abandoned his family years ago and whose older brother has been missing for months.  He is highly accomplished when it comes to computers but much less so when it comes to relating to others in real life – and he has serious anger management problems.  Having been fired from his job at Applebee’s for setting fire to the restaurant after getting into a row with a customer, he is currently.employed in an entry-level job as a barista at Starbucks and is living at home with his very well-meaning but smothering mother, Anne (Marcia Debonis).

Moreover, losing his job at Applebee’s was the least of Tommy’s problems: as a result of his setting the fire, he was charged with arson, a felony.  His mother did succeed in getting the charge reduced to a misdemeanor, but only on the condition that Tommy undergo therapy to learn how to deal with his anger management problems.  (Which really is a bit ironic since Anne apparently has anger management problems herself, subsequently getting into a fight with a customer at Walmart which gets her fired from her job there too.)

Anyway, Tommy is more than willing to undergo therapy - if he can do it through a course over the internet – but his mother has other ideas.  She insists that he enter into therapy with Dave (Xavier Rooney), a one-time co-worker of hers at Walmart who is now a wannabe therapist who believes that his MFA degree will enable him to treat Tommy effectively through art therapy.  But Dave, as it turns out, has abandonment and anger management problems of his own.  His girlfriend, Rachel, has walked out on him, taking all her stuff (and some of his), leaving no forwarding address and no explanation.

And just to add to the play’s overarching themes of dysfunctionality, disappearances, and abandonment, it turns out that Tommy’s immediate supervisor at Starbucks is Alice (Lisa Jill Anderson), an attractive 21-year old pot-smoking former schoolmate of Tommy’s (although she doesn’t remember him at all) who lives with her grandmother and is her sole care-giver.  And, wouldn’t you know it, grandma suffers from dementia, wanders off one day, and disappears as well.

So there you have it: Anne’s husband and Tommy’s father is gone, Anne’s oldest son and Tommy’s brother is gone, Dave’s girlfriend is gone, Alice’s grandmother is gone, and all that remains is for this dysfunctional group to sort it all out as best they can in the most cheerful, comedic manner one might imagine.

And they prove to be fully up to the task.  Will Sarrratt (who reminded me a lot of Thomas Middledith, the star of TV’s Silicon Valley) is terrific as the quirky, socially awkward and generally dysfunctional Tommy who is nonetheless quite intelligent and compassionate.  Lisa Jill Anderson succeeds in conveying a full  range of emotions as Alice, a young woman unfairly burdened with the responsibility of caring for her high maintenance grandmother.  Xavier Rooney is truly delightful as Dave, a lost soul who really isn’t sure who or what he wants out of life but is certainly going to give it his best shot.  And last, but certainly not least, is Marcia Debonis, whose exuberance, effervescence and just plain well-meaning (if often misplaced) goodness as Anne suffuse the entire production.

EINSTEIN'S DREAMS Premieres at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Zal Owen and Brennan Caldwell in EINSTEIN'S DREAMS.  Photo by Richard Termine.

Richard Feynman, the renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist, once remarked “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”  Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity may not be as incomprehensible as quantum physics but it certainly is difficult to fathom.  How, for instance, can one really get his mind around the fact that the passage of time itself is dependent upon the perspective of the observer?  Or that time slows down as one travels faster so that an interstellar space traveler moving at, say, one-tenth the speed of light could return to Earth younger than his own children?

As a consequence, writers attempting to expound upon these themes are faced with a difficult choice: they can write dry, scholarly, textbooks which may prove of value to students of physics, cosmology and mathematics but that may do little to enlighten or entertain the general reader.  Or they can sacrifice rigorous textbook explanations and adopt, instead, more metaphorical approaches to these subjects - approaches that may not be totally factually correct in an objective sense but that still will capture the essence of the issues involved.

As an example, they may note that time spent with a lover passes quickly whereas five minutes in a dentist’s chair may seem like an eternity.  Or, as Albert Einstein, himself, once expressed it:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.  Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute.  That’s relativity.”

This sentiment, of course, is a soft psychological truth, not a hard scientific one, but it does capture the essence of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the effect that the passage of time can only be measured relative to an observer’s own point of view.

Alan Lightman is something of a Renaissance Man.  Having graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Princeton and with a PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology, he went on to teach at Harvard and MIT.  But he is not only a physicist and teacher: he is also a published poet, essayist and novelist.  And so it should come as no surprise that he also is the first professor at MIT to have received a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities - nor that he has lectured at more than 100 universities regarding the differences between the ways that scientists and artists view the world.

Lightman’s best known work, Einstein’s Dreams, originally published in 1992 and subsequently translated into 30 languages, was an international bestseller.  In the novel, set in 1905, Albert Einstein appears as a young patent clerk, struggling to make sense of the world, to distinguish his dreams from reality, and to construct his magnum opus, the Theory of Relativity.  The book consists of thirty chapters, each envisioning a different world in which time functions differently:  In one, it is “sticky,” with people “stuck” in a single moment in their lives.  In another it is circular.  In a third, it is finite and about to end.  In a fourth, it flows backwards.  In a fifth, cause and effect are not necessarily chronological .  And in yet another, it branches off into alternative universes.  

And so the question arises: If such “other” worlds did exist, how would their alternative conceptions of time affect human behavior?  And finally: Are those one encounters in one’s dreams any less real than those one encounters when awake?

(One is reminded ot the words of Lao Tzu, the Chinese Taoist philosopher who once, upon awakening from a nap during which he dreamt he was a butterfly, said: “I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”)

The book Einstein’s Dreams was adapted for the musical stage as Einstein’s Dreams by Joanne Sydney Lessner (book and lyrics) and Joshua Rosenblum (music and lyrics) more than a decade ago and debuted in London in 2005.  Now, fourteen years later it is finally enjoying its New York off-Broadway premiere at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan in a production by the Prospect Theater Company and directed by Cara Reichel.  (I’d like to think that New York theater lovers in some alternative universe didn’t have to wait quite so long.)

In this production of Einstein’s Dreams, the struggling, dreaming Albert Einstein is played by Zal Owen; Josette, the mysterious woman of his dreams and a stand-in for time itself, is played by Alexandra Silber; Michele Besso, Einstein’s close friend, is played by Brennan Caldwell; and Peter Klausen, Einstein’s officious boss at the patent office, is played by Michael McCoy.  They are all excellent in their respective roles, as are Tess Primack in her dual roles as Mileva, Einstein’s first wife in real life and as Marta, the patent office’s typist; Stacia Fernandez as Hilda, Klausen’s world-weary secretary; Lisa Helmi Johanson as Besso’s wife, Anna; and Vishal Vaidya as Johannes Schmetterling, the patent office’s eager new emploiyee.  But I must say I was most taken with Talia Cosentino in her role as Josie, the exuberantly intelligent little girl who lit up the stage whenever she appeared.    

IMAGINING MADOFF by Deb Margolin at Lion Theatre on Theatre Row

L-R: Gerry Bamman and Jeremiah Kissel in IMAGINING MADOFF.  Photo by Jody Christopherson.

The most important word in the title of Deb Margolin’s thought-provoking play, Imagining Madoff, is not “Madoff” but “Imagining.”  That is because this is no simple re-telling of the tale of the greatest Ponzi scheme in history (Bernie Madoff’s theft of nearly $65 billion from trusting investors, a crime for which he is currently serving a prison term of 150 years).  Rather, it is a highly speculative philosophical, theological, and psychological investigation of why Madoff acted as he did and the moral and ethical issues underlying his actions (and those around him).

Imagining Madoff had its critically acclaimed sold-out New York premiere earlier this year at 59E59 Theaters.  It is now enjoying an encore engagement at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row on West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan.

The play is beautifully written and artfully executed with Jeremiah Kissel cast as the tortured, enigmatic, and thoroughly amoral Bernie Madoff; Jenny Allen as his loyal but confused and guilt-ridden secretary; and Gerry Bamman as Solomon Galkin, Madoff’s friend and a Holocaust survivor and poet who is the treasurer of his synagogue (the synagogue itself turning out to be one of the victims of Madoff’s fraud).

(In Margolin’s original version of the play, the friend/Holocaust survivor/poet/synagogue treasurer was not the fictitious Solomon Galkin but the real life Elie Wiesel but when Wielsel objected and threatened to sue, claiming that the play was defamatory and obscene, Margolin converted Wiesel into Galkin.)

Obedience – to parents, teachers, priests and other legal, military and religious authorities - is generally considered a virtue.  But not always.  I doubt if anyone today would claim that the obedience of German citizens to Nazi authorities was a virtue (nor, for that matter, that the obedience of Americans to those enacting Jim Crow laws was either).  But then what are we to say about Abraham’s obedience to God as evidence by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac if that, indeed, was what God commanded?  Would Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac have been a virtue – or a sin?

Or does it all come down to a question of trust – Abraham’s trust in God, the average citizen’s trust in his government, or Galkin’s trust in Madoff – to always do the right thing?  And when they don’t?  Is that what is so dismaying Madoff’s secretary: her misplaced trust in her so-highly regarded employer?

Jeremiah Kissel, Jenny Allen, and Gerry Bamman are absolutely superb in their respective roles as Madoff, his secretary, and Galkin.  And while Deb Margolin provides no perfect solutions to any of these deep philosophical problems, she does ask all the right questions.  And that, at least, is a big step in the right direction.

LUDWIG AND BERTIE by Douglas Lackey at Theater for the New City

L-R: Stan Buturia and Connor Bond in LUDWIG AND BERTIE.  Photo by Anthony Paul-Cavanetta.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Connor Bond) and Bertrand Russell (Stan Buturia) had little in common in nature, background, or philosophical outlook.  Russell was an Englishman, a generation older than Wittgenstein, a heterosexual sensualist, a hedonist, a pacifist imprisoned for refusing to serve in the First World War, and a self-proclaimed agnostic.  By contrast, Wittgenstein was an Austrian, a bi-sexual, a decorated combat soldier in the First World War, and a puritanical religious Catholic coming to grips with his Jewish roots.  Yet the two men had an enormous effect on one another and were also arguably the two most dominant philosophers of the twentieth century.

Ludwig and Bertie by Douglas Lackey, currently premiering at Theater for the New City on First Avenue in New York’s East Village, tells their story.  It is a comprehensive bio-pic of the lives of the two philosophers, the influence they had on one another’s philosophies, and the extraordinary relationship that existed between them.  The play is a remarkable achievement on two levels: on one level, it provides an exhaustive explication of their respective philosophies (which even those most familiar with the concepts underlying analytic philosophy should find informative and educational).  And on another level, it also provides an entertaining theatrical experience for those less committed to the nuances of philosophical thought in its explorations of these men’s personae.

In penning Ludwig and Bertie, Lackey has taken some liberty with historical facts (as often occurs in bio-pics).  For example, he portrays an argumentative episode involving the aggressive wielding of a poker as having occurred between Wittgenstein and Russell when it actually transpired between Wittgenstein and Karl Popper (as describef by David Edmonds and John Edinow in Wittgensteins’s Poker).  And while it is true that Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler were schoolmates, there is no real evidence that they ever actually met – then or as adults – although Lackey credits Wittgenstein with having successfully appealed directly to Hitler to achieve freedom from the Nazis for his siblings despite their Jewish ancestry.  But these are minor matters and Lackey does provide a true picture of the lives of Wittgenstein and Russell in the broadest sense.

Both Connor Bond and Stan Butuna are outstanding in their respective roles as Wittgenstein and Russell and they are ably supported by the rest of the cast: Hayden Berry as the young Wittgenstein; Pat Dwyer as the philosopher, G. E. Moore; Alyssa Simon as Russell’s paramour, Lady Ottoline Morrell, and as Wittgensteins sister, Gretl Stonborough; and Daniel Yaiullo as Wittgenstein’s gay lover.

ROUND TABLE by Liba Vaynberg Premieres at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Liba Vaynberg and Craig Wesley Divino in ROUND TABLE.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

We really can’t know for sure who other people truly are.  Indeed, we really can’t even know who we ourselves truly are.  Or at least that’s the main message I took away from Round Table by Liba Vaynberg, the intricately structured thought-provoking play currently premiering at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan.

Not that the play didn’t broadcast other messages as well.  It did.  For one: There’s a big difference between love and romance.  In fact, as Laura (Liba Vaynberg) sees it, love is the very opposite of romance.  In her words:

“Love’s about like shitting in the same toilet and romance is for people who have potpourri bowls in their bathrooms.”

For another: It may be difficult to be a feminist and fall in love…but it’s not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle.

And for a third: The granting of informed consent is not just a moral imperative in sexual relations; it is a necessary perquisite in all aspects of human relations including the very acceptance of another’s love and even the manner, timing, and scripting of one’s own demise.

*   *   *

Several years ago, Pamela Wolfstein (or someone writing pseudonymously under that name) wrote a successful romance novel and the floodgates opened.  A whole slew of writers were retained to ghost-write formulaic imitations of that singular success story and so they did.  Laura, despite being an avowed feminist herself, was one of them, penning books with covers of heaving bosoms under the pseudonym Pamela Wolfstein, that were sold at airports to middle-aged soccer moms.  And now, as it turns out, Laura is the last of them, the originator of the series having died three years ago.  So is Laura now really Pamela Wolfstein herself?

Zach (Craig Wesley Divino) has a PhD from Harvard in Medieval Literature and currently earns his living as a teacher, writer and consultant on the subject to video and computer game companies and to Round Table, the hit television series based on the Arthurian legends (think Game of Thrones).  Indeed, he actually wrote a couple of the episodes for Round Table himself, working out the plot twists for those episodes by participating in LARP (live action role playing) as King Arthur, as the Knight Tristan, as the Scholar Giles, and as the Wizard Merlin.  In doing so, he was joined by Lena (Sharina Martin), a bartender in real life who may be a little in love with Zach herself and who well may be using LARP to replace her own childhood dreams in the fantasy role of the Sorceress Morgan. And by Jeff (Matthew Bovee), a tax attorney in real life who role plays Arthur’s foe, Mordred, perhaps in part to help him to repress or at least displace his own latent childhood homosexual tendencies.   But who then are Lena and Jeff today - really?

Zach and Laura meet through online dating, which does seem particularly appropriate for the two of them since online dating might be viewed as a bridge between virtual reality and, well, real reality.  They hit it off but it’s not clear whether their relationship will blossom into love or simply peter out after several nights of ice cream, sex, and romance, given the sharp distinction Laura draws between love and romance and her own feminist leanings.

 

At Zach’s urging, however, Laura eventually takes a stab at LARP herself – role playing as the Druid Laurel and as Queen Guinevere – but the game doesn’t come as easily to her as it does to Zack, Lena and Jeff (perhaps because she’s simply somewhat more realistic than any of them are.  So where do Zach and Laura go from there? 

Well, if they really are falling in love (and it seems they are), and if they’re both comfortable with the need for informed consent in all its aspects (and it seems they are), and if neither Laura’s feminism nor Zach’s LARP represent insurmountable obstacles (and it seems they don’t), and If Lena’s feelings for Zach aren’t a real impediment (and it seems they’re not), then everything should be copacetic, right?

Well, maybe not.  Because we left just one thing out.  Zach is very ill – probably dying – from some mysterious mental or brain condition and he has neglected to tell Laura anything about it.

Kay (Karl Gregory), Zach’s gay brother, is a competent and compassionate EMT, and the most sensible and well-grounded of the bunch.  He is fully aware of Zach’s condition and does everything in this power to be of aid to him, ensuring that he keep his medical appointments and insistently attempting to convince him (albeit to no avail) that he abandon his foolish devotion to LARP, which Kay perceives as physically life-threatening in light of Zach’s condition.  But if there is little that Kay can accomplish in that realm, given Zach’s obstinacy, there is absolutely nothing at all he can do in regard to Zach’s star-crossed relationship to Laura.

*   *   *

Round Table is an intriguing theatrical production – when if sticks to its primary plot lines involving the distinction between reality and fantasy, the nature of the “self,” and the relationship between Zach and Laura.  But it goes off the rails occasionally with extraneous matters.  I don’t think, for instance, that there was any point in introducing the issue of Kay’s mild frustration with his partner’s persona.  And, to mix a colorful metaphor, Lena’s suggestion at one point that Zach might be undergoing an adult circumcision as part of a conversion to Orthodox Judaism was just a ridiculous red herring.

*   *   *

The cast of five is absolutely terrific in both their real life 21st Century parts and in their legendary Arthurian roles.  Matthew Bovee as Jeff is a sensitive and tentative tax attorney – but he also makes for a ruthless Mordred.  Sharina Martin as Lena and the Sorceress Morgan reminded me a bit of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another female bartender of color in real life, although Lena’s fantasies, unlike AOC’s, tended more toward sorcery than socialism.

Karl Gregory as Kay provided the play with the solid grounding it required as a counterweight to the fantastical doings of the other four.  And Craig Wesley Divino as Zach, Arthur, Tristan, Merlin and Giles, was simply mesmerizing across-the-board.

But my greatest praise is reserved for Liba Vaynberg who not only wrote the play but starred in it brilliantly as Laura, the Druid Laurel, and Queen Guinevere.  By writing the play and then starring in it herself she provided the perfect meta-example of what LARP, self-identification,  and the fine line between fantasy and reality are all about.

Jill Eikenberry Stars in FERN HILL by Michael Tucker

L-R: John Glover, Mark Linn-Baker, Ellen Parker, Jodi Long, Jill Eikenberry, and Mark Blum in FERN HILL.  Photo by Carol Rosegg. 

Fern Hill by Michael Tucker, currently enjoying its New York City premiere at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan, is a beautifully written and brilliantly performed play about three “artsy” couples in their golden years and the relationships that exist between the partners in each of the three marriages:

Vincent (John Glover) is an established painter who will be entering the hospital for hip replacement surgery in a matter of days and who will be turning eighty in two months.  His much younger wife, Darla (Ellen Parker), is an acclaimed photographer who is about to be honored with her first one-woman exhibition in Vienna.

Jer (Mark Blum), is a respected writer and college professor who is celebrating his seventieth birthday today.  His wife, Sunny (Jill Eikenberry) is another talented painter, albeit one not nearly as well established as Vincent.  Together they own and reside in Fern Hill, a farmhouse retreat outside the city.

Billy (Mark Linn-Baker) is a stoner, a foodie and a rock-and-roll musician who will turn 60 next week.  His Asian wife, Michiko (Jodi Long), first met Billy when he was on tour years ago and she was one of his groupies; she currently works in a college’s Fine Arts Department.

The three couples have been close friends for years and now are all together at Fern Hill where they are about to celebrate the milestone birthdays for all three men: Billy’s sixtieth, Jer’s seventieth, and Vincent’s eightieth.  And to consider Sunny’s proposal that they form something of a commune and all move in together at Fern Hill to live out their final years together.

Sunny’s idea really does make a lot of sense.  Far better that they all age together and care for one another in their twilight years than that they go off to separate retirement or nursing homes to live out their final days among strangers or, worse yet, become burdens on their children.  Naturally, Vincent is all for it: he is, after all, the oldest and the frailest of the group with the shortest remaining life expectancy.  And while he loves his New York loft, the area in which it is located is rapidly becoming gentrified with “undesirable” hedge fund types and celebrities and even one of the Kennedy kids, and he doesn’t like that at all so he really won’t mind giving it up.  And that’s reason enough for Darla, his primary caregiver, to favor the idea as well.

 

And, despite their being the youngest of the three couples, it makes particular sense for Billy and Michiko for an additional financial reason: Billy’s band, Olly Golly, is no longer as popular as it once was and Billy’s and Michiko’s combined income has declined substantially (although they’re still spending as much as ever); if they move to Fern Hill, they can sell their New York apartment and live comfortably from the proceeds of the sale.  And of course Sunny loves the idea: it was her idea to begin with after all, she loves her friends – and maybe Jer is no longer quite enough for her.

Jer, however, is the lone holdout.  Yes, he loves his friends but he doubts that he would love them as much if they were around all the time.  More than any of the others, he values his privacy – as well he should.  For as it turns out, Jer has been carrying on with a young, promiscuous student – which might not fit in so well with his living a communal life with his more elderly friends at Fern Hill.

When Jer’s adulterous affair is disclosed, Sunny is understandably upset.  She considers throwing him out and perhaps she will.  But the issue of whether or not she throws him out is not really what drives the play.  Nor is the issue of whether or not the six friends actually will form a commune and live together in their final years at Fern Hill.

No, what really animates the play are the discussions among the six friends regarding their own sex lives; the distinctions they draw between sex and intimacy; their marriages; their own past indiscretions, shortcomings, and prior adulterous experiences; their perceptions of how they or their partners may have changed over the years; and their own assignments of credit or blame for whatever failures may have occurred in their relationships.

It is all very enlightening but, as Billy put it, it is also a kind of Rashomon experience in which the participants each see things in a different way.  So, for example, Jer sincerely blames Sunny for his own infidelity since she stopped “adoring” him and stopped “enjoying” their active sex lives whereas Sunny honestly believes that their sex lives had been artificial “performances” for years and that she only stopped “adoring” Jer when he stopped being “adorable.”

Tucker has a wonderful ear for language.  Billy’s rendition of his recipe for spaghetti and clam sauce, for example, might not be in a class with Hamlet’s soliloquy but it is, without doubt, the most delightful exposition of a recipe for the classic dish that I have ever heard. And Darla’s explanation of why Jer was so easily seduced by one of his students was as sharp and succinct as it could be:

“You were the man.  Men are easy, Jer.  They come with a handle.”

The entire cast of Fern Hill is absolutely terrific but two members of the cast really stood out.  Jill Eikenberry’s performance as Sunny, the betrayed and disillusioned wife, still in love with her husband but wishing that things could just go back to the way they were, was impeccably nuanced.  And Mark Linn-Baker was simply superb as Billy, the 60-year-old drug and alcohol addicted Peter Pan who never really grew up and continued to live in the past – though, all things considered, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all. 

ONLY YESTERDAY - A Night in the Lives of John Lennon and Paul McCartney

L-R: Tommy Crawford and Christopher Sears in ONLY YESTERDAY.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

It was more than fifty years ago, back in 1964, that “Beatlemania” was all the rage, but to us (and many others, we are sure) it seems like it was “only yesterday.”  That year, with six number one singles under their belt and having received a rousing reception in their debut performance on The Ed Sullivan Show (an estimated 73 million people tuned in to watch them on their black and white TV sets), the “Fab Four” embarked on a months-long nationwide concert tour before adoring crowds across America.

When their tour was temporarily stalled by a hurricane in Florida, however, they were forced to put everything on hold for a day or two, making an unscheduled stop in Key West before continuing on to Jacksonville.  And so it was that John Lennon and Paul McCartney, both in their early 20’s, found themselves holed up together for the night in a cheap hotel room in Key West with little to do but drink and talk.  Which is just what they did.  Until they also cried.

Or at least that’s pretty much what Paul said happened when he was interviewed more than four decades later.  It was on a radio broadcast in 2011 that he recalled that night in 1964 when he and John drank, talked and cried together for reasons he could no longer be certain of but which he thought probably related to the deaths of both of their mothers when they were in their early teens - and the emotional toll it took on them.

This was really all that the playwright Bob Stevens had to go on when he wrote Only Yesterday, a slight but charming one act play, currently enjoying its New York premiere at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan.  In Only Yesterday, we are treated to Stevens’ imagining of what might have transpired on that night in 1964 as John Lennon (Christopher Sears) and Paul McCartney (Tommy Crawford) not only drank and talked – and, yes, cried – but also engaged in good humored horseplay from Monopoly to pillow-fighting, jammed on their guitars, half-heartedly attempted to write some songs, and even delivered a blow for integration by refusing to perform before a segregated audience in Jacksonville.

Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, the show is light on the Beatles’ own music but it does include tunes by Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry - and remarkably entertaining impersonations of Bob Dylan (by Crawford) and of Elvis Presley (by Sears).  Indeed, the Presley impersonation was a real show-stopper and, if nothing else, it alone is sure to leave you smiling for days to come.