Staged Reading of Arje Shaw's MULAH Opens Today, 5/7

Today, May 7, 2012, at 2:00pm at The Triad Theater (158 West 72nd Street) Joe Pantoliano and Mario Cantone will co-star in the staged reading of Arje Shaw's new play MOOLAH for Jones Street Productions LLC. Charles Messina directs.

MOOLAH tells the story of two con men who fall out of favor with the Mob. Ant'ny is a dandy, sharp-talking shyster and small-time bookie. His younger cousin Sonny, a gay hit man, runs a hair salon by day and moonlights as a contract killer by night.

Sonny’s salon slogan: cut by day, clip by night.

This darkest of comedies reveals the fortunes and misfortunes of the two in a “Waiting for Godot” meets "The Sopranos" thriller which penetrates the core issues of love, money and sexuality. These men are desperate. Each one with a bounty on his head. Each one conning the other only to discover they have only conned themselves.

Mario Cantone appeared in Terrence McNally's Tony Award winning play Love! Valour! Compassion! in 1995, Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins in 2004 and his own critically acclaimed one man show Laugh Whore in 2005, which received a Tony Nomination. TV audiences know him as a regular on ABC's The View, and as Anthony Marantino in the HBO series Sex in the City.

Joe Pantoliano has appeared the Hollywood films Risky Business, The Goonies, The Fugitive, Memento, Midnight Run, and The Matrix. On the small screen, Joe won the Emmy Award in 2003 for his depiction of the hot-headed mobster Ralph Cifaretto on the hit HBO series The Sopranos. Joe starred on Broadway opposite Rosie Perez in Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. He is also the author of two books, 2002's best-selling "Who's Sorry Now?" and the just released "Asylum".

Arje Shaw is a Broadway produced playwright, whose critically acclaimed play The Gathering, starring Hal Linden, ran at the Cort Theatre in 2001. He is also the author of the 2004 off-Broadway hit Magic Hands Freddy at The Soho Playhouse, which starred Michael Rispoli and Ralph Macchio, published by Samuel French. His play A Catered Affair was produced off-Broadway in 1995. Arje's novel, The Fix , based on his life, was published in 2011 by New Library Tales. Currently, he is producing Hip Hop artist Devon Glover in The Sonnet Man, setting Shakespeare's Sonnets to Hip Hop.

Director Charles Messina is best known for his work on the off-Broadway hits Mercury: The Afterlife and Times of a Rock God, Cirque Jacqueline and The Accidental Pervert. Currently he is writing and directing the upcoming musical The Wanderer about the life of legendary rock & roller Dion.

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