Word: mendler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...play has a slew of minor characters worth noting. Julie Zickefoose gets several laughs as the marriage and exercise-crazed German opera singer, Mme. Ernestine von Liebedich. She teams up with Skip Mendler, the delightful society lecher, for the nostalgic "Do You Ever Dream of Vienna...
...Garry, Amy Aquino, and the three clownish waiters provide a fine atmosphere as the surly character actors in this sleazy Italian cafe; Skip Mendler is a nicely crotchety old man. Three in this cast, however, seem bent on annoying the audience--Jonathan Prince with his woeful mugging, Caryl Yanow with her too-stiff innocence, and Lisa Popick with a laugh of practiced exaggeration that ceases to be funny the second (let alone the twenty-second) time it is done. George Hamlin leads this production, rescuing an inexperienced cast with rigourously detailed direction. One gets the impression that he has told...
...Skip Mendler's portrayal of Allan Felix in the Winthrop House Dramatics Society production of Play It Again, Sam lacks the essential element of restraint. Mendler is not lacking in energy. But his performance forces us to believe that Allan is constantly operating at a feverish pitch of anxiety through the several weeks of action that elapse in the play. As portrayed by Mendler, Allan has very little interest for us; watching him quickly becomes monotonous...
...unfortunate that director Leah Rosovsky didn't modify the tone of Mendler's performance, because the cast of supporting characters is perfectly competent. Tony Gittelson, as Allan's friend Dick Christie, captures the essence of the New York corporate man attached to his telephone as if it were an umbilical cord. His wife Linda (Lisa Wolfson) is presented with just the right blend of hard ambition and self-doubt. But the core is missing; without a sufficiently interesting Allan to play off of, these peripheral characters remain self-contained and unable to compensate for the show's central failure...
Woody Allen wrote a very funny play, and the problems that plague the Wintrop House production are not irresoluble. Hopefully, when Mendler plays it again this weekend, he will play it a little more softly...