I wanted to post a report of a special event I worked on at The Times Center last month. It was a staged reading of a new play, "The Idealist," produced and written by Jennifer Strome. The reading was also streamed live over the Internet to be viewed by people across the world in addition to being broadcast over Gatewave, a radio station for the visually impaired.
There were great performances in the cast, especially from Alison Pill as two central roles in the play, the French-accented Tereska Torres and a modern-day businesswoman. Martin Vidnovic gave a wonderful performance in the central role of Meyer Levin, filled with righteous anger and indignation at a society that was pushing him towards the edge into obscurity and irrelevance despite his illustrious writing career and his legal standing with regard to his dramatization of The Diary of Anne Frank. He commanded the stage as a man trying to understand what went wrong. Tony Roberts was also very influential in a relatively small but pivotal role as Otto Frank, trying to navigate unfamiliar waters of American business and entertainment. Samantha Soule was also great as a 1950's ambitious book editor and as a theater director in 2009 who is trying to resurrect the story of what happened fifty years ago and find out what the real issues are. This part actually anchors a large portion of the show. There was also a four-person Greek chorus filling in the holes and playing the peripheral characters around the four leads.
I would definitely like to see a fully-staged production of the show because I think it provides a valuable history lesson and could have a wonderfully meaningful emotional impact. For more information about the play, please visit http://www.theidealistonstage.com.
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