Making Peter Pope

By Edmund DeSantis

Director Jon Arndt

Produced by Theatre Entropy

At Live Bait Theatre

3914 N. Clark

Chicago, IL

Call 773-505-6766, tickets $12 - $15

Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8 PM

Sundays at 7 PM

Running time is 2 hrs 20 min with intermission

Through December 3, 2005

Making Peter Pope’s methodology covers familiar territory

Playwright Edmund DeSantis offers a gay oriented dysfunctional family play whose structure is stronger than the ideas presented. Despite being over written and covering turf already presented many times, Making Peter Pope has a pleasing element, a couple of interesting characters and a workable style that makes it presentable. This edgy comedy is about trying to find love, dealing with grief and struggling to communicate with your family.

Jason Palmer, as Peter Pope, is likable, cute and a fine convincing actor. DeSantis has Peter moving from being the narrator in and out of the story which is told as a memory play wherein Peter edits scenes and parts of dialogue that was presented with: “he/she really didn’t say that” interjections and explanations. Scenes are interrupted by characters from other scenes; Peter editorializes directly to us in the middle of scenes. All this works fine and doesn’t confuse us, actually it garners extra laughs.

Peter is surrounded by a zany group from his angry, desperate lesbian sister, Anna (Joan McClive) to his father’s new wife, Neva, (Nancy Greco) a nacho consuming ex-show girl and her daughter, Faye (Melissa Freiman) a pot smoking stepsister and her homophobic husband, Jeff (John Blick). The story starts with Peter talking about losing his mother and his grieving father, Leo (in a fine turn from John J. Robinson).

Essentially, Making Peter Pope is two stories nicely blended; one is about Peter trying to deal with his father following the mother’s death and the other concerns Peter’s struggle to find love with the macho Italian stud, Henry (Nico Tricoci).

Peter’s attempt to communicate with his stoic father who never fully accepts Peter being gay and the quick courtship with the ditzy Neva was the more interesting (and funny) storyline despite being a tad too long and slow to develop. Act two’s emotional confession by Leo to his son, Peter, that he has to get married again because he is afraid of life and he never had a clue how to deal with Peter or Anna. His fear led to his withdrawal from being a dad to his children.

The search for love by Peter than ends up being a courtship with Henry, a Godfather movie addict never rang true for me because I could sense that Nico Tricoci seemed quite uncomfortable with the intimate love making scenes with Jason Palmer. Also, it was a stretch to believe that Peter’s love for Henry over came his anger when Henry tells him, after they had sex several times, that his is HIV+. Not many people would forgive Henry’s selfishly dangerous betrayal of trust.

The show is funny in parts, especially from Nancy Greco’s Neva and Melissa Freiman’s Faye. Jason Palmer deftly narrates and plays his scenes with genuine sincerity. Too bad the gay relationship portions were so trite. I’d welcome more scenes dealing with the father-son relationship. Also the obnoxious sister’s scenes don’t add much so I would cut her character from the show.

If DeSantis would trim this piece down to an 80 minute one act emphasizing the father-son dynamic more and recasting the Henry role with someone more comfortable with playing a gay lover, Making Peter Pope would work much better. As it stands not, the show has enough merit to be worth a look.

Somewhat Recommended

Tom Williams

Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments

Chicago Stage Talk Radio Show

November 17, 2005