RCP Presents Proposals #

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 11, 2003 Contact: Sue Pinkman, 703-467-7539
spinkman@2strategic.com

Not So Simple Simon
Reston Community Players production of Proposals explores the comic highs, lows, and complications of relationships!

(Reston, VA) The Reston Community Players concludes its 2002-2003 season with Neil Simon’s comic and tender, Proposals, a memory play about beginnings and endings.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Proposals takes place at a family's summer home in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains during the 1950s. Over the course of this summer weekend in the country, we watch characters sort out their tangled lives by reviewing past mistakes, dealing with the meaning of love and commitment, forgiving each other for past misdeeds, and making proposals. Narrating the course of the play’s events is the ghost of the family’s African-American housekeeper, Clemma.

In this, his 31st play, Simon, America’s most commercially successful—if not always critically acclaimed playwright--reaches back to his youth. It was at a resort in the Poconos in the 1950s that Simon wrote some of his earliest comedy sketches with his brother Danny, and it was also in the Poconos where he met the love of his life, his first wife, the dancer Joan Baim, who is the inspiration for the character Josie in the play. Proposals is also the first Simon play to feature an African-American character in a major role and the first of his works to have an exterior setting.

“Proposals is a fascinating play,” says the production’s director, Eleanore Tapscott, “because we have the classic Neil Simon style—funny quips, sharp and quick repartee, fast-paced dialogue—but we also have characters who are dimensional and poignant. Simon has said he was getting his Shakespeare and Chekov into this play, and I believe he has definitely succeeded.” Proposals builds on the serious dramatic undertones ringed with humor Simon has taken in his later plays such as the Pulitzer-prize winning Lost in Yonkers and the trilogy of plays in the Brighton Beach series, says Tapscott. “Although Simon says A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the inspiration for this play, I feel there is synergy with Shakespeare in another way: self-assessment of a playwright’s work late in his career. I feel Proposals could be regarded as Simon’s version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in that we have an older playwright who is experimenting with his style and focusing more on the depth of character and relationships instead of the need for funny gags. Although The Tempest was Shakespeare’s last play, the prolific Simon’s continues to write. His most recent play, Rose &Walsh, completed a run in Los Angeles this past March, and that play utilizes some of the structural devices introduced in Proposals.”

The cast features Robin Lynn Reaves (Clemma), Diane Mislevy (Josie), Joshua Redford (Ray), Rob Batarla (Kenny), Susan dumas Garvey (Annie), Mike Summersgill (Burt), Larry Palevsky (Vinnie), Stephanie Pencek (Sammii) and Michael Ratliffe (Lewis). Restonian Garvey, joins RCP again this year, having appeared in last season’s production of The Women. Redford, who lives in Reston, is a first-year teacher, 5th grade, at Kings Glen Elementary school in Springfield, where he has designed an after-school theatre program.

Opening May 2 with a complimentary post-performance reception, performances continue May 3, 9, 10, 11 (matinee), 16 and 17. Friday and Saturday shows begin at 8:00 pm; the Sunday matinee at 2:30 pm. The May 11 performance will be sign-interpreted for the deaf and hearing-impaired. All performances are at the Reston Community Center, 2310 Colts Neck Road, Reston, VA. Box Office: 703-476-1111.

Proposals is a funny love story, or rather, a series of funny love stories. Through the use of recognizable real-life situations and complex characters, it may very well be that the ‘course of true love ne’er ran smooth,’ but this funny and tender play shows that humor, grace, and harmony offer the ballasts we need to steer through the twists and turns of relationships and life.

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The Reston Community Players is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization committed to excellence in community theatre in Reston, VA and metropolitan Washington, DC. For more information, please visit www.restonplayers.org.