Nostalgia & Redemption - Neil Simon's 'Proposals' opens tonight

Neil Simon's 1997 play "Proposals" is populated by variously estranged men and women who once meant something different to each other and have unanswered questions about how that happened. Anyone who goes to this memory play expecting an evening of laughter from Simon will be disappointed because he leavens the sweet with the bitterness of regret.

"Proposals" is melodramatic at times and some of Simon's one-liners can be seen coming from the River City Yacht Club kitchen, but the play offers nostalgia for a time and place and hope for redemption that can be irresistible.

It opens tonight.

The play is set in the summer of 1953 at the cottage Burt Hines and his daughter, Josie (Carly Pind), share near a resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Burt is a workaholic made philosophical by a divorce and heart attack. Josie is a firebrand who has just broken off her engagement to earnest law student Kenny (Champ Friend).

She hopes they still can be friends. "I have no interest in the smile or scent of my friends," he answers. Friend had a number of unusual roles in productions at Central High School. Here he nicely plays a normal, heartbroken guy.

Pind, a Central High School student who last appeared in the River City Players' production of "Bus Stop," is quite wonderful as Josie. She infuses her with the coruscating energy of a young woman at once deeply sorry about hurting Kenny while determined not to change her mind and deeply angry at the remarried mother she blames for destroying the family.

Debbie Barnhouse plays Annie Robbins, who has the country club hairdo and has seen her daughter seldom since the divorce. She has come in from Paris, and it's obvious Burt and Annie still have it for each other.

The Barnhouses are a husband and wife who became involved in community theater just a few years ago and already are able to provide this play with an assured center.

"Proposals" is narrated by the Hines' maid, Clemma, who as written is black. But the Southeast Missouri State University student who was cast in the role was snagged by the University Theatre for an upcoming production, so they sent River City Players director Suzanne Scherer another Clemma.

Kate Kruse, who is white, does an admirable job of portraying Clemma's ambivalence when her own husband, Lewis (Jeff Statler) shows up seven years after walking out, hoping to be taken back. The RCP veteran Statler gives Clemma some reason to forgive.

But the play cannot explore relationships between the races as Simon intended.

Jeff Crain sent paroxysms of laughter through audiences last fall as an inept and inebriated hit man in "Blood Ties." This time he gets to play Vinnie Bavasi, a brash junior Mafioso with his eye on Josie. Crain has fun with Vinnie's unusual use of the English language and may be the first good ol' boy wiseguy in the history of the stage.

Joe Class, a RCP newcomer, ably plays golf pro/writer Ray Dolenz, Kenny's best friend. As Ray's girlfriend, a model named Sammii, 15-year-old Natasha Storey-Ford looks like the real thing but gives Sammii more intelligence than Simon did.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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