Actor Returning to RCP Stage 60 Years After First Performance

February, 1955: "Is there a doctor in the house?" This, the oldest theatrical cliche, was uttered by Harriet 'Hattie' Warren, after the curtain was rung down during the first act of the opening performance of "The Flying Geraldos", our 1955 Rotary show (an annual benefit for Rotary's Sunshine Camp). The line got a big laugh, but for once it was said in earnest. Seems one of the trapeze performers in this play about the circus flopped on his face, knocking his unconscious, hence Hattie's request for medical assistance. The story stuck with Mrs. Warren for the rest of her 20 years as RCP Artistic Director.

What brings this to mind is the young man in the show who played the role of William Wentworth. The play was a Romeo-and-Juliet-in-the-circus story, where a young performer with the 'brawny' Geraldo troup, played by Ruth Shaw, falls for a 'brainy' college student, William Wentworth, played by Richard Mancini.

Sixty years later, Richard Mancini is once again on the RCP stage, as the Gardener, and two other roles, in our current production of "Richard II"

The Brighton-Pittsford Post certainly liked young Mancini: "The part of William Wentworth couldn't have proved better with any one else, than Richard Mancini gave it in appearance and acting. His great desire to imitate the trapeze artists, and falling short of it, gave opportunity for much humor to which the audience reacted spontaneously and generously. It was a very pleasing William."

This was his first RCP production, but not his first stage experience. He first appeared on a community stage a few years earlier, at age 18, with Blackfriars, then known as Catholic Theater. Before that, he was active in theater at Aquinas High School. And even earlier, he was organizing the other kids in his Elmira Street backyard (now the site of the Coca Cola bottling plant) into impromptu theatrics, using blankets as curtains. If other kids were not around, he would stage finger puppet productions in the front window of his house, entertaining anyone who was walking by.

Movies were also his passion as boy; he would spend entire weekends at the old Lyric Theater on North Clinton Avenue, around the corner from his home. His favorite stars were Carmen Miranda, Deanna Durbin and Alan Ladd. He wold spend all day watching and rewatching movies like "How Green Was My Valley".

In the fall of 1955, he performed in our production of "Kind Lady", staring Margaret Kende. Kende, from South Africa, had performed in several shows on Broadway. "Kind Lady" was also the very first appearance in Rochester of a young German immigrant, Gisela Fritzsching.

Mancini then served a two year hitch with the U.S. Army, where, naturally, he staged theatrical productions at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu. He returned to Rochester in 1958, and played Shakespeare himself in a George Bernard Shaw one-act, "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets", part of a trio of Irish one-act plays RCP called "Three for the Play". Margaret Kinde played opposite him, as Queen Elizabeth.

Mancini went on to work with Blackfriars for years, both as a play director and as President of the Board of Directors. Among many other shows, he directed "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at Blackfriars in 1977. His day time job was as head of the Display Department at B. Forman Company.

In 1979, he moved to Washington DC, working at the Smithsonian Institute. For the next thirty years, he performed constantly, usually five productions a year. He was one of the founders of the Washington Shakespeare Company (now known as WSC Avant Bard), which started in 1990 and is now celebrating its 25th season. He also worked with Studio Theatre, SCENA theater, the Shakespeare Theatre Company (when they were at the Folger Library and after they moved to Lansburgh Theater), and with Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

In 2010, Mancini returned to Rochester. After well more than two hundred productions as a performer, and countless others as scenic designer and director, Mancini brings to our current production unprecedented experience, though it is hard to imagine that sixty years have passed since he heard Hattie Warren ask, "Is there a doctor in the house?"

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