BWW Reviews: CHINESE COFFEE at The Nyack Village Theater

"Chinese Coffee" by Ira Levin is a very idiosyncratic play that has been an actor's favorite since its debut 25 years ago. Al Pacino has championed the piece both on Broadway and in a film which he produced, directed and starred in. The current presentation at The Nyack Village is a real gem and shows vividly why actors are so drawn to the piece.

The two person play takes place over the course of ninety pressure-packed minutes - in real time - in Greenwich Village in the early 1980s. Harry and Jake, are two longtime friends and confidants who share a bond of failure. Both are unsuccessful writers, stuck in other jobs that are killing them emotionally and artistically. The two men spend a stressed out evening (if you can all it that - it takes place between 1:30 and 3AM) arguing about money, art, their friendship, and the root of the evening's dilemma: Harry's new manuscript.

Harry, played with vigor and pathos by Harry Leavey, is both manic and overwhelming, while remaining tortured and touchingly sympathetic. As the play begins, Harry has just lost his miserable job as a doorman. On the verge of a nervous breakdown and desperate for money, he pays a visit to his friend Jake, a night club photographer, to collect an old debt. When Jake tells Harry that he doesn't have the money, the two engage in an all-out verbal onslaught about each other's respective problems, their pathetic love-lives and the dead end direction in which their lives seem to be heading.

The play's strength lies in its depth of character. Mr. Lewis has done a wonderful job of giving both men the inherent humanity, impatience and neuroses of real New Yorkers. And of course, both men are broke. Harry, is 44, and Jake 50, but the difference in age feels greater. The two men feel a bit more like father and son than friends and contemporaries as Jake continually admonishes Harry about virtually every aspect of his life. We soon learn there is an ulterior motive for his hostility.

Mr. Leavey does a splendid job as Harry, finding in him all the requisite nervous tics and habits without becoming clichéd or making him caricature-like. His slow evolution over the course of the evening is deftly handled by Mr. Leavey, showing that there's more to the character than simply the loveable loser he appears to be at the beginning.

John Mirabella delivers a pitch-perfect Jake, slowly allowing his character to take shape as we learn the reasons for his frustration and eventual anger with Harry. He also undergoes a kind of evolution over the course of the play from oppressed to oppressor, and from noble friend with the best of intentions to a bitter, disappointed, and ultimately jealous artist.

Director Richard Quinn has done a fine job of keeping the actors in regular motion in a script that can easily become extremely static. But that is not to suggest that he was merely handling the physical navigation. His direction is appropriately character-focused and he allows the space - Jake's tiny apartment to become to become a metaphor for their tiny lives and the boundaries they have created or acquired in life.

"Chinese Coffee" runs at the Nyack Village Theater thru the end of January. Tickets are available here:

www.nyackvillagetheatre.com

Nyack Village Theater

94 Main Street, Nyack, NY 10960

(845) 826-2639

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