Allan Appel Photo
Peter Chenot as sheriff Will offers to help Megan Chenot as the troubled chanteuse Cherie.
There are lots of bus stops on Chapel Street, but only one where you travel back in time — to the cozy, innocent world of Midwestern America, circa 1956.
Make that bus stop the English Building Markets, where the New Haven Theater Company has transformed its digs into Grace’s diner, the glowing, yellow, refuge from the storm that is the scene for William Inge‘s 1956 comedy, Bus Stop.
Courtmanche, as Elma, checks out the donuts and Kulp, as Grace, admires some bills.
This is the second production of the company’s third season in their English Building Markets locale, and Carol and Robert Orr’s vintage clothing and furniture emporium couldn’t be a more complementary setting.
The show runs March 3 to 5 and March 10 to 12.
On entering English Building Markets, you amble through an aisle lined by narrow-lapeled jackets, old mahogany radios, vintage office furniture, and Fiestaware that might have been in your parents’ or grandparents’ 1950s homes. Then the pupils widen as you behold, in the back of the store, a glowing, fully built set.
Built by the play’s director George Kulp, with half of the multitalented actors in the cast pitching in their carpentry skills, Grace’s diner features a 16-by-30 solid new floor, wainscoting, and a counter with four stools solid enough for the actors to stand on and carry on, which they do when it’s time to while away the snowstorm outside.
Cherie, or Cherry as Bo calls her, dances on the solid counter.
The spiffy, solid new set, along with 50 new, cushioned. comfortable, stackable chairs, which the company has purchased, have been made possible by a $3,000 capacity-building grant recently awarded to the company by the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven It’s the most substantial set the company has created, and it’s for a play that in many ways is very fragile. Or rather the characters are. Even the centerpiece of the subdued action, the tough cowboy Bo, is all bluster on the outside, until he reveals a tender heart.
Bus driver Carl, played by Erich Greene, listens to the soon-to-be-drunk Professor Lyman, played by J. Kevin Smith.
If the play sounds a touch hokey and innocently romantic, those are among the reasons why Kulp likes it and led the way in choosing it for the company’s current offering.
“I like the innocence, I like the relationships, I like the period,” Kulp said during a rehearsal in the run-up to the March 3 opening.
It was the first time the cast was strutting its stuff in the finally put-together diner, where a busload of strangers and locals meet to wait out a Kansas snow and enter each other’s lives in unexpected ways.
Sara Courtmanche, who plays the diner’s idealistic high-school-age waitress, was examining the shellacked donuts under a plastic cover.
Chenot proudly points out the new theater floor
The set also features great 1950s signs and wonders courtesy of the Orrs and the props treasure trove at Long Wharf Theater, said Kulp. Peter Chenot, who plays the sherriff, showed off one of the doors from his and wife Megan’s home, serving on the set as the doorway to the upstairs of the diner, where Grace and the bus driver Carl (Erich Greene) will be having a tryst.
That relationship — of the loyal, gentle, if transient variety — is one of the many aspects of this thing that we humans call love that Inge’s play examines. Which is another reason Kulp said he was drawn to it.
“It’s a moment in time, and they just have to deal with each other. It’s a comedy, but there are dramatic parts and some of the characters definitely have a journey.”
“I also like the physical parts of the show,” he added. “It’s full of physical life and is a good commentary on relationships.”
Kulp, who himself played Bo when he was a student in the 1980s at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, said making the set secure for all that physical comedy was a main reason why he and the other handy actors in the crew set about to build a permanent floor to hold the diner’s counter. When, in the second act, they give each other a talent show to pass away the time, that counter is the stage.
When he’s not a cowboy, Williams’ day job is at the Yale School of Architecture, where he builds digital lasers, 3-D printers, and robots.
In this production, the NHTC’s newest member, Trevor Williams, plays Bo. He said Kulp’s experience with the character is informing his own portrayal of the role.
Speaking with a Midwestern twang, which comes naturally from his Illinois and Ohio-based training and education, Williams said “running around in Bo is like painting in all the vibrant colors you can think of. Bo can go from thoughtful to storming off all within the same interchange. It’s a challenge to make those shifts as genuine as possible as opposed to cartoonish,” he said.
Kulp’s own challenge, he said, was to keep the play flowing, while hitting the dramatic moments and giving them their due.
With that, Kulp graciously said rehearsal had to begin.
He assembled the talent and said, “this is the first night we’re in Grace’s diner. The counter is rock solid,” and the run-through began.
Bus Stop runs at the New Haven Theater Company, in the back of English Building Markets, 839 Chapel St., March 3 – 5 and 10 – 12. Tickets are available here. The NHTC’s next production will be Proof, directed by Steven Scarpa.
