Wednesday, June 19, 2013

By Tony Omer
Published: July 23, 2009

Over the last 14 years, The Vineyard Playhouse's producer/artistic director MJ Bruder Munafo has collaborated in a variety of ways with playwright Jon Lipsky of West Tisbury, who is also a drama professor at Boston University. Mr. Lipsky has written and directed plays performed at the Playhouse, and served as associate artistic director for a number of years. "Walking the Volcano, a Short Play Progression," in its premier at The Playhouse, is the first time Ms. Munafo has directed a full-length Jon Lipsky play.

Robert Walsh, playing an unredeemed hippy, has a reunion with his daughter, Heather Girardi, in an emotional scene in John Lipsky's new play progression, "Walking the Volcano." Photos by Jaxon White

It is a collection of eight short plays written by Mr. Lipsky over the course of eight years. "I never set out to make a progression of plays," he states in the program notes. "But after the second play I noticed that I seemed to be plowing the same ground with pieces that were about a certain kind of passionate, volatile relationship I recognize as endemic to those of us who came of age in the 60s."

Whether volatility is a trademark of all 60s relationships can certainly be questioned, Mr. Lipsky uses the device

effectively. The transition between pieces is made against a background of a Jefferson Airplane concert-like light show, and music from each of the periods is used as a defining characteristic of the respective times.

Appearing at the Vineyard Playhouse, Robert Walsh and Marya Lowry portray an Island couple with issues.

This show is simply staged: eight plays, four actors, an arsenal of wigs, and a wide range of characters. The Playhouse's consistently spectacular array of talent is evident in the cast of "Walking."

Playing multiple roles, the four actors really get to flex their skills. Actors Christian Pedersen and Heather Giradi attack the first four short plays with vigor. They are not afraid to take their characters over the top as the scenes move from a frivolous young couple in the lavatory of an airliner flying from Asia to the United States in 1964, to a news photographer and girlfriend surrounded by the hardcore reality of Vietnam circa 1968, to a 1973 music studio (yes, they can sing and play guitar), to a bar in the shadow of the Saratoga race track in 1979, where not even the drinks can smooth out their long ago maybe-we-should-have past.

After intermission, the plays seem more cerebral, and provide actor Robert Walsh the space to display his particularly outstanding acting chops. He creates a very believable, less than successful, Eastern European movie director who attempts to win over an old lover to star in his new film. His prey is played expertly and passionately by Marya Lowry.

The next play is set on Vineyard Haven Harbor. As the music of Kate Taylor rings in the New Year, Mr. Walsh portrays an Island wooden boat builder, Ms. Lowry his former lover and the mother of their child. The piece plays on dreams yet to be fulfilled, and the tension of lives lived in different directions.

We are then transported to the run-down cottage of an aged, tequila-sipping, rag-headed hippy (Mr. Walsh) confronted by his unfamiliar daughter (Heather Girardi), a previous life result. It is a sad but funny scene.

The night ends with a lachrymose hospital scene, the most touching of the eight, and the reconciliation of two aging lefties, their ideals still shadowing their lives.

We live on an Island inhabited by some incredibly talented people, and playwright Jon Lipsky and director MJ Munafo are two of them. Whether you have walked through or just tiptoed around your own volcano, this play is good theater. See this play.

"Walking the Volcano," 8 pm, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, July 23-July 25, Vineyard Playhouse, Vineyard Haven. Adult themes, language. Continues through Aug. 8; times, prices vary. 508-696-6300; vineyardplayhouse.org.