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THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY REVIVES "BENNY'S BARBERSHOP"
Vaudeville musical that pits a small-time barber and bookmaker against the mob was a surprise hit last year. Thrills, chills, pastiche songs and vaudeville mayhem.

Jack Tynan (L) and Frank Biancomano (R) shake down Mark Marcante (C) in "Benny's Barbershop."

March 16 to April 2
Theater for the New City (Johnson Theater), 155 First Avenue
Presented by Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Artistic Director
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:30 pm, Sundays at 3:00 pm
$10/tdf; box office/audience info (212) 254-1109

"Benny's Barbershop," with book and lyrics by T. Scott Lilly and Mark Marcante, composed by Joel Diamond and T. Scott Lilly and directed by Mark Marcante, was an unexpected hit of the 1998-99 season for Theater for the New City. The production, with most of its original cast intact, is being revived by TNC March 16 to April 2 to be shared with a larger audience.

The piece is a vaudeville-style musical comedy about that American hero, the corner barber and bookmaker. Before being squeezed out of urban renewal zones by marauding CVS pharmacies, these gentlemen operated warm, welcoming establishments that were a stanchion of American urban male culture. More than just a place to get a haircut or put a finsky on the Saturday stakes race, their barbershops served a variety of noble social purposes: fostering the Brooklyn dialect in places where it is endangered, offered first jobs to young men (running the betting slips around), providing a nurturing retreat for neighborhood loafers and, perhaps most importantly, allowing ordinary citizens access to real gangsters so they don't have to learn everything about life from the movies.

Crime pays off at Benny's Barbershop. L-R: Monica Simms, Todd Tagliaferro, Alexander Bartenieff

"Benny's Barbershop" is set on Flatbush Avenue (where bookie-barbershops still exist for the fortunate). The title character is a one-time baseball player who stepped into the business to fill his father's shoes. One fateful night, he is forced to intervene on the side of his manicurist as she is getting slapped around by a reckless young gangster (her reward for trying to jilt him). For revenge, the thug sets up Benny for revenge by a bitter old mobster, to whom Benny's father owed $200,000 and who would eagerly kill to collect the old debt. Benny doesn't have that kind of dough--he's a small-time bookie and his barbershop staff is a bunch of Adelades and would-be actors. They would seem no match for the wise guys, but fate delivers an unexpected ally in an FBI man posing as their beat cop who falls in love with the manicurist at a Bingo game. He plants Benny's girlfriend, Betty, with a wire and arms her with a truth serum to entrap the mobster. The wily old predator turns the tables and holds her for ransom. There's lots of running into doors, a ballet in which Benny is beaten up by mob, and a Burlesque-style hospital scene in which he's brought back to life. After ample thrills, chills and vaudeville-style mayhem, the little guys finally come out on top, executing a triple-switch in which they free Betty, entrap the bullies and manage to keep the money from the FBI sting operation.

The production was a surprise hit at Theater for the New City last season, which presented it without fanfare in March, 1999. The play started out as a cabaret skit T. Scott Lilly wrote for "Blue Collar Cabaret," a Monday night series started by Mark Marcante at TNC on Monday nights. The skit went right to Marcante's heart, since his uncle had been a barber in Bethlehem, PA and little Mark, as a kid, was marinated in the affectionate fellowship of the Italian loungers, loudmouths and wise guys who frequented Uncle Carmine's establishment. Lilly wanted to enlarge the piece by expanding it with pastiche songs from the barbershop era and new tunes from the Meredith Wilson/Frank Loesser genre. Marcante and Lilly had acted together in Crystal Field's vaudeville musical, "One Director Against His Cast" (1989, TNC and Italy) which combined classic vaudeville and burlesque routines with rare, ageless songs from the '20s and '30s. So Marcante and Lilly were natural collaborators for this project.

Frank Biancomano discovers that Crystal Field is wearing a "wire" in "Benny's Barbershop" Photo by Jonathan Slaff

They booked the show first, then set out to write it ("We needed the pressure," says Lilly.). The first act was completed before rehearsals began; the second act was written during them. Composer Joel Diamond had been a musician in TNC's summer street theater orchestra and was recruited by Marcante to write the score. TNC artistic director Crystal Field and actor/choreographer Craig Meade split up the choreography. In the haste, there was not even time to write down the songs, which were learned by rote and recorded later. The show that emerged, though, proved to be a sellout and thorough crowd-pleaser for all ages, even though probably only older audience members remembered the world of the play.

The upcoming production features Marcante as Benny and most of the 24-member cast of the 1999 production, including Frank Biancomano as the old gangster, Crystal Field as Betty, Jack Tynan and Primy Rivera as younger hoods, Juan Villegas as the G-man, Daniel Wilkes Kelly and Alexander Bartenieff as neighborhood loafers and Craig Meade as the actor/barber. Set design is by Mark Marcante; lighting design is by Jon D. Andreadakis.

Mark Marcante (Benny, co-writer & director, set design) was a recent subject of WNET's "City Arts." He is an accomplished commedia dell' arte practitioner, having been trained at the TAG Theater in Venice, Italy. He has appeared at TNC in numerous productions including, most recently, "Life Knocks," "Monograms" and "Dropping in on the Earth." He has also appeared in "Movers & Shakers" (Helen Hayes), "Mystic Forces" (Guggenheim), "The Hairy Ape" (Alchemical Theater), and regionally in "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Lou Gehrig Did Not Die of Cancer," "Shenandoah" and "A Servant of Two Masters." T. Scott Lilly (co-author and co-composer) has been a contributing writer in numerous TNC productions including "One Director Against His Cast." He has also acted in that production, in various TNC street theater and mainstage productions, and at Ubu Rep. He is one-third of the comic variety act Wise Guise with Craig Meade, Juan Villagas and Daniel Wilkes Kelly. Joel Diamond (music composer/arranger/director) has just completed his third ballet for the Cuban National Ballet Co., scores for three Felix the Cat cartoons, and is presently working on a film score for Other Pictures. He produced Livingston Taylor's last album. He has produced soundtracks for David Mamet on "Oleanna" (MGM) and "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (Sony Pictures), which received the Sundance Film award for Best Picture (1997). Craig Meade (actor, co-choreographer) is a member of the comic variety act Wise Guise and a veteran of TNC's Street Theater and Halloween shows as well as numerous productions there including "Angelina's Pizzeria" (which he also choreographed), "Kamikaze Messenger Service," "Rubber Heat" and "One Director Against His Cast." He has made several appearances on USA Network's "Up All Nite" and most recently, on HBO's "Talking Sex." [NYTW]

Related article: About Theater for the New City.

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