BJ Jones, artistic director of Northlight Theatre, takes partial credit for inspiring John Patrick Shanley’s new play, “Brooklyn Laundry,” which has a rolling world premiere April 11-May 12 at Northlight.
Performances are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday (April 16 only), 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2:30 p.m. (except April 13) and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. (April 14 only) Sundays.
“I actually provoked it,” Jones declared. “We had done a very successful production of ‘Outside Mullingar,’ which is his play, and I went to Brooklyn to meet him at his apartment. So we struck up a relationship,” Jones related.
He later sent Jones an email saying that Northlight was constructing a new building and he wondered if Shanley would be interesting in writing a new play for it.
Shanley’s response was that he had told his agent that he wanted to do a new play for regional theaters, Jones reported.
“Within a month, he sent me ‘Brooklyn Laundry,’” Jones said.
It’s the story of an unlikely couple forming a connection and the hurdles they have to overcome. Fran, is single and struggling financially, and has other burdens. Owen owns a laundry where Fran becomes a customer. Initially, Fran finds Owen obnoxious and Owen thinks Fran is gloomy. Naturally, that leads to romance.
Northlight decided not to wait until the new building was erected so they could stage a Shanley world premiere. As it turned out it became a rolling world premiere because the Manhattan Theatre Club is staging a New York production through April 14. Jones is directing the Northlight production.
Jones noted that in this play Stanley “Put these large obstacles in the way of middle aged people who are struggling with challenges in their life. I think the play is exhorting all of us to carry on and to trust that the human spirit is indomitable.”
“Fran is a woman in her late 30s in a moment of huge transition, most of which she’s totally unprepared for,” said Cassidy Slaughter-Mason, who plays Fran. All that pressure is the reason that she seems gloomy. But change is in her future, partly because of Owen, Slaughter-Mason indicated.
That comes as a surprise because initially Fran has “a feisty shut-down attitude towards him that he does kind of wear away,” the actor laughingly added.
The couple has to deal with tragedies but fans of the playwright’s work—think of the movie “Moonstruck”—won’t be surprised that Stanley “has somehow made that into a romantic comedy that I find very charming and very real,” the actor said.
Slaughter-Mason is enjoy this role because “It’s so fun to get to be in love onstage,” she said. “Also Fran is very funny.”
Mark Montgomery plays Fran’s eventual romantic partner. “Owen is a guy who was living a life he wasn’t enjoying,” Montgomery said. “Then he had a big event that could have been considered tragic but he decided to change his life so he invested in himself and he’s created the life that he wanted for himself.”
He wasn’t looking for romance, the actor said, but Fran “sparks something in him that leads him to ask her out. Something very intense happens between them but, as always, life intervenes.”
Both Slaughter-Mason and Montgomery said they enjoy working on a world premiere because there’s no preconceived notion of what it should or will be for the actors and the audiences.
“We get to create and explore things in a new way for ourselves,” Montgomery said.
In terms of this new work, Montgomery thinks that audiences “will really see themselves in it. It’s about the challenges we all face and how we choose to deal with them or not and what the consequences of that are.”
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
‘Brooklyn Laundry’
When: April 11-May 12
Where: Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Tickets: $39-$89; $15 students
Information: 847-673-6300; northlight.org
