Previews: PAINTING CHURCHES at The Pinebrook Theater

There’s more to do in the summer besides watching the grass grow or paint dry or wishing it would rain hundreds of dollars from Heaven so you can see professional theater. You can see the Falcone Repertory Theatre’s script-in-handing reading of Tina Howe’s Painting Churches at the Pine Brook Theater in Trumbull (the old Group Theater's summer home).

Painting Churches was produced Off-Broadway in 1983 and was a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. John Fatteros narrates the story of artist Mags Church (played by Alexandra Imbrosci-Viera*) and her parents, Fanny and Gardner Church (Eileen Lawless* and Raymond Gerard Michaud*), who are packing up to move from their Beacon Hill home to Barnstable, Cape Cod. Although Fanny is in her 60s and Gardner in his 70s, this is a significant and difficult time for them. Gardner is frail and becoming forgetful. For Mags, it’s not just seeing her parents ageing, but trying to get them to see that being an artist is a profession, something most of us have experienced.

Frank Rich, one of the most difficult to please critics ever, wrote that the play “is in the dreamiest impressionistic spirit. It remakes reality with delicate, well-chosen brush strokes, finding beauty and truth in the abstract dance of light on a familiar landscape... It's a high compliment to Miss Howe... that the old bones of her material rarely peek through her writing's high, lacy gloss."

Painting Churches is directed by Frank Petrilli. The two-act play is not often produced, and the three actors are performing courtesy of Actors Equity. Performances are on Saturday July 12 at 8:00 and Sunday, July 13 at 4:00.

The Pinebrook Theater is located at 33 East Lake Road in Trumbull. Michaud and Petrilli went into the theater space and found a treasure on the wall of a dressing room: autographs of theater luminaries for whom the Pine Brook Country Club and the old Group Theater were a summer home. They wanted to remove it, but didn’t, of course. One week later, the entire wall was taken down and a piece of theater history was gone. Clifford Odets, Luise Rainer, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Judy Holliday, Lena Horne, Elia Kazan, Jerome Robbins, Morris Carnovsky, and so many others. All destroyed by a demolition crew that had no idea what it meant to people who love the arts. But you can see a wonderful show at a venue with an amazing history. For tickets, visit www.pinewoodlakeassociation.ticketsprice.com/painting-churches.

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