This review by Joan Crespi was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on September 16, 1998. All rights reserved.
Find Kelsey Theater, on the campus of Mercer County College, and you're in for a delightful evening as "Move It And It's Yours!," a fine and funny new musical, plays there through September 27. Written by Trenton-born Bill Weeden, with David Finkle and Sally Fay, and staged by Susan Rosenstock, the musical, a world premier and Passage Theater Company's first major production under producing artistic director June Ballinger, entertains and makes you smile. That this professionally-produced new show is running here rather than Off-Broadway is our good fortune.
The play's main character, a baby grand piano, occupies center stage in an otherwise bare apartment. Charlie, its owner, is about to marry for a second time and is in the process of moving. He plans to give away the piano to the first comer who will move it out. The plot is slight and simple, but it is not the plot that captivates us: it's the succession of wacky, odd, and amusing characters who parade through Charlie's apartment to consider his offer.
Charlie is a middle-aged man, a would-be musician who dreamed of success as a song writer even as he played small piano gigs at night. Eventually, without acknowledged sorrow, he sold out his musical potential for the good life, becoming instead the "crackerjack" editor of Cheese Horizons magazine.
While he long ago faced his lack of success, Charlie is now giving away the instrument (literally) of his dream, giving it away without regret, willing to let his old dream become "someone else's dream," because his fiancee has no room for the piano in her apartment. The uncomplicated plot is, finally, gently moving, for Charlie learns in the course of an afternoon that even after his dream has dissolved, the piano gives him pleasure. And his fiance? See the show and find out.
While this is Charlie's story -- and he is onstage for its entire two-hour duration -- he (and perhaps his ex-wife) are the show's most conventional characters. Charlie is played with a casual and believable ease by Bob Walton. He is supported by an gifted ensemble all of whom play their characters (sometimes two or three) superbly, and with a fine sense of comic timing.
Andre Montgomery is terrific as the hyped-up jogger who delivers dictation into a voice recorder, and later, as a red-sequin-clad artist who wants to blow up the piano. Laura Kenyon as Bryna, director of a senior citizens center, acts and sings and struts beautifully, with a hilarious accompanying senior chorus line whose members carry four-pronged canes. Kenyon returns to good effect as two very different, demure characters.
Tom Frey is excellent as Jared, a tongue-tied, straightlaced, nervous man with the tape measure who surreptitiously measures the apartment. It's the piano's soon-to-be-vacated home that he and his wife want; and they'll take the piano, too, if they get it. Very shortly after, actor Frey reappears is Sheldon, a funky British rock artist who wants the piano to rock on; Rebecca Dennis plays Eloise, his petite, seductive girl friend, who doesn't.
Jill Abramovitz also plays three roles, including Charlie's fiance, Susan, and his ex-wife, Diane. Steve Liebman is touching, lonely, and funny as Lou, the fat hardware store owner; he doesn't want the piano either, but he's following a dark-haired, timorous, little plunger-and-pail thief up to the apartment where she has fled.
The writing is superb as all of the characters who come into Charlie's apartment are distinctly and vividly drawn in their peculiar oddities. It's not merely the parade of wacky characters that captures our fancy, but their interaction as they vie with each other for the free piano. And it's not only the acting and the writing that are top-notch. The singing voices are, too. So are the songs, which each character renders on the baby grand, each cleverly suited to its character. Would-be piano owners coming to view the piano and try it out bring their own musical talents, as do the actors. Every actor who sits down at the piano plays their own music. Offstage keyboards are by musical director Wendell Smith. Philip Heckman's appropriate and often delightful costumes underscore the comedy.
Certainly August Wilson's 1990 play "The Piano Lesson" went deeper, but this play has its own funny lesson to teach. While the wisdom this play puts forth -- Life is difficult, Life is what you make it -- may not be new or profound, it doesn't matter. The lesson is as enjoyable as they come.
-- Joan Crespi