Bonita Springs Florida Weekly

Peter Amster directs Neil Simon play at Gulfshore Playhouse




Elisabeth Yancey as Corie and Jordan Sobel as Paul in Gulfshore Playhouse’s production of “Barefoot in the Park.” MATTHEW SCHIPPER / COURTESY PHOTO

Elisabeth Yancey as Corie and Jordan Sobel as Paul in Gulfshore Playhouse’s production of “Barefoot in the Park.” MATTHEW SCHIPPER / COURTESY PHOTO

“Human beings are strange. That’s the wonder and that‘s the humor,” says Peter Amster.

Mr. Amser knows humor. He’s a master of comedy.

And he knows how to create that on stage, eliciting belly laughs and giddiness in audiences.

He directed “The 39 Steps” at Gulfshore Playhouse last season as well as its 2019 production of “It’s A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play,” creating hilarious havoc onstage. He recently directed Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of “The Three Musketeers,” which closed at Sarasota’s Asolo Repertory Theatre in late March. (He also directed Ludwig’s adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express” there three years ago, which he describes as being much sillier than the novel.)

Mr. Amster knows how to squeeze the most humor out of a play.

So when Gulfshore’s Producing Artistic Director Kristen Coury said to him, “I have a Neil Simon play” and asked if he wanted to direct, he said, “Yes, yes, yes!” he recalls.

AMSTER

AMSTER

“And then she said, ‘It’s “Barefoot in the Park,”’ and I said, ‘Oh no.’”

It was Neil Simon’s second play, his longest-running one on Broadway, on the boards from 1963 to 1967, but “It was dated in terms of how it presented women,” he explains. “There were a number of things about it. It’s creaky. I didn’t think the movie was very successful.”

The play revolves around newlyweds Corie and Paul, living in their first apartment, a five-flight walk-up in New York. He’s a stick-in-the-mud conservative lawyer, she’s a free spirit. Their brand-new marriage hits some bumps when each expects the other to be more like themselves.

Mr. Amster had long wanted to direct a Neil Simon play.

“He has been eluding me for half a century,” he says.

He feels a kinship with the late playwright.

“We’re both New York Jews,” he says. “We grew up in poverty, with difficult family situations. He grew up in Manhattan, I grew up in Long Island, in Levittown.”

Howard Kaye as Victor Velasco, Peggy Roeder as Mrs. Ethel Banks, Elisabeth Yancey as Corie, and Jordan Sobel as Paul in Gulfshore Playhouse’s production of “Barefoot in the Park.” MATTHEW SCHIPPER / COURTESY PHOTOS

Howard Kaye as Victor Velasco, Peggy Roeder as Mrs. Ethel Banks, Elisabeth Yancey as Corie, and Jordan Sobel as Paul in Gulfshore Playhouse’s production of “Barefoot in the Park.” MATTHEW SCHIPPER / COURTESY PHOTOS

He laughed when he read “Barefoot in the Park.”

Then he questioned, “Is it because I’m a New Yorker? Because I’m older? Or is it still funny?”

When he got into the rehearsal room with the actors, he discovered that “It is still very funny and very current. It’s a charming piece, this one.”

It helps, he says, that he has “some really, really wonderful actors who were born to play the roles they’re in. These are some hand-picked friends of mine. I’ve directed the Mom, Peggy Roeder, at the Asolo (in five plays) and in Chicago and other places. And Jordan Sobel, playing Paul, got his MFA at the Asolo where I directed him in a show. This is not a community theater production. (These are) people who understand comedy. It’s just a question of finessing what they’re doing; all their instincts are right on track. I’ve got a crew of clowns to play with. I’m so fortunate to have them.

Jordan Sobel as Paul and Elisabeth Yancey as Corie in “Barefoot in the Park.”

Jordan Sobel as Paul and Elisabeth Yancey as Corie in “Barefoot in the Park.”

“They know when to throw away a joke rather than land it too hard. It’s OK to lose every fifth joke, as long as the heart keeps beating and you keep moving forward. If you try too hard, the audience feels they’re being pressed or milked for a laugh and it stops. They start feeling resentful.”

The characters have to be true in the moment, he explains.

Or, as he puts it, “you have to get the balance between schtick and stakes. The stakes are the important things for these characters to accomplish. The journey has real and perilous (points). There have to be obstacles they overcome. That has to be in place for the comedy to be funny. If there’s not a beating heart and no stakes, issues that the character has to overcome, then it just becomes standup. Then it’s just this thing that becomes very tiresome.”

Simon told stories. Mr. Amster could relate.

“‘Lost in Yonkers’ could’ve been carved out my own family,” he says. “His stories are similar to mine; that made them endear them to me. It’s hurt and humor both, mixed together.

“He’s a wonderful playwright. He’s America’s Chekhov. People think Chekhov’s got to be serious, with very depressed people, He was writing comedies. And those comedies should be funny … Chekhov was finding humor in the most pain: loss boredom, confusion and neglect. It turns on a dime. There is heartbreak involved, but they are comedies.

“Neil Simon to me is like America: he is brimming with humor. He said when he was studying with Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks and Imogene Coca (early in his career), he was getting a master class in comic writing.”

And watching a Peter Amster-directed play is like getting a master class in comedic directing.

Over the past 52 years, he’s also directed and/or choreographed shows that are tender or poignant or tragic, he says, at venues such as the Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theatre, Steppenwolf, the Goodman Theater, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Utah Shakespeare Festival and Northlight, to name a few.

“I’ve done plenty of tragic operas and musicals and serious plays,” he says. “But I gravitate towards comedy because they can be more fun to work on.”

But, he agrees with the adage that “dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

“I still haven’t figured it out,” he says modestly. “I’ve been a student of comedic theory. What makes something funny? What are the mechanics of it?”

There is, for example, the disconnect between form and context.

“A perfect example is Oscar Wilde, who would say, ‘The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.’ You’re expecting the character to say, ‘I hope it’s over with soon,’ but she loves it!”

Another type of humor is the line or scene that contains an element of surprise, he says. “The bang of a balloon being popped. Or physical humor, the imposition of the mechanical. Henri Bergson, a French dramatic theorist from the 19th century, talked about the human body and form. We’re supple characters, we’re alive, but we behave to something that happens to us that’s much more like a machine.”

For example, he says, in “Barefoot in the Park,” the uptight Paul presses his ties in a thick dictionary to keep them wrinkle free.

“The process of him yanking those ties out, one by one, almost turns him into a sewing machine. In the process of doing all of it he becomes a machine rather than a supple human … There are so many different styles of comedy.”

The humor in “Barefoot in the Park” is perennial, he says.

“The humor and the story that’s being told belong to any era. With the young couple moving in together, the person is idealized, but they realize they’ve got work to do just like anybody else. These are two people who discover that there are annoying things about each other. Once it gets ramped up, that’s the breaking point.

“Frank and I were married for 52 years,” he says, referring to Frank Galati, who passed away in January. (Mr. Galati, also a director, won Tony Awards for directing and adapting “The Grapes of Wrath” and was nominated for a Tony for directing “Ragtime.”)

“At first, some habits I had and he had, we just wanted to correct in each other, to make the other more perfect. But it was an act of futility. The person I fell in love with, I had to love them, warts and all. That story still holds.”

Comedy helps, not only in a relationship but in the theater.

“The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh,” he says, explaining that it’s a quote from comedic film director Frank Capra, whose movies still continue to make viewers laugh.

He then shares the full quote: “The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don’t get people to laugh unless they surrender – surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they’re with you. And they listen to you if you’ve got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they’re your friends.”

“The pandemic made us want to come to the theater, not to be taken to dark places, but to laughter again,” Mr. Amster says. “They want funny stories. They want to be dazzled. You want to take people out of themselves and entertain and amuse them.

“Comedy is good,” he declares. ¦

In the KNOW

“Barefoot in the Park”

When: through April 16

Where: Gulfshore Playhouse at The Norris Center, 755 8th Ave,South, Naples

Cost: ,40 to ,95

Information: 239,261,7529 or www,gulfshoreplayhouse,org

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