NJ Repertory Company in Long Branch has begun it’s 28th season as it so often has – with a sparkling new world premiere production! This time it is John Biguenet’s gem “Make Believe”. If you’re of a certain generation, you may start humming the tune to Ravenal and Magnolia’s yearning paean from Showboat. Yet this is a different kind of make believe – set in 1935 in a hotel room where the stakes are so much higher than just a broken heart.
Picture a more sepia toned version of Hopper’s “Nighthawks” but set in a hotel. A seedy hotel in LA where the rooms are typically hourly rentals. Movie idol Bailey Hunter is feeling hunted. He enters the room and searches everywhere for…what? Even Bailey doesn’t know. The story teases us a bit further in this noir-ish space when Eleanor enters. We know from her wise-cracking demeanor that she’s a woman who knows more than most women know of capital “L” Life in the pre-WWII heyday of Hollywood and we soon discover what’s going on. Bailey likes boys and is in danger of having his matinee-idol status come crashing down like Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara. And Eleanor is here to bolster his faltering reputation, perhaps at the further expense of her own. Not a spoiler, you find this out in the first few minutes. Yet, what comes next is a confection of great delicacy and freshness, despite the fly specks of the hoi polloi. Yet it is the daily down and dirty that Ellie and Bailey work to rise above that makes the stunning performances so much more.
SuzAnne Barabas directs and Jessica Parks and Patricia E. Doherty have sent us back in time 90 years. Jill Nagel’s lighting and Nick Simone’s sound along with Jordan Ryder’s choreography are seamless. We are in that room! Merek Royce Press adds original music that completes the package.
Playwright John Biguenet is an award-winning writer (O. Henry, anyone?) and this work is a nuanced look at a time one hopes will never return. The delicacy of the interaction from this prolific author is a tightrope for actors and there are none better to limn the lines and spaces of this thought-provoking work.
NJ Rep regulars may recognize Quentin Chisholm from last Summer’s production “The Bookstore”. Here he plays Bailey as someone who knows his skill set and wants to hone it, but his taste in lovers could be his bête noire. Éilis Cahill’s Eleanor is at once the Maiden, the Matron and the Crone, who could be one of the star-lets that hear the siren-song of Hollywood only to wind up on the wrong side of the casting couch. Together, as they create the backstory that will make their moment of performance real, we return to Magnolia and Ravenal and truly enter the world of “Make Believe”.
Get your tickets here: https://njrep.org/show/make-believe/ . This show runs through March 9, only. Experience “Make Believe”.