Jane Holahan
Some theater thoughts, all connected in degrees of separation.
• Congratulations to Eliseo Roman, who is on Broadway again. He's playing one of the Angels of Mercy in "Leap of Faith," now in previews. It opens April 26 at the St. James Theatre.
Roman, who was born and raised in Lancaster and cut his performing teeth at the Ephrata Performing Arts Center, American Music Theatre and Dutch Apple, was part of the amazing Broadway company of "In the Heights," a few years back.
He's been busy since then, spending time out in San Diego at the La Jolla Playhouse, in the cast of the new musical version of "Little Miss Sunshine," written and directed by James ("Sunday in the Park with George") Lapine.
"Leap of Faith" is based on the 1992 Steve Martin movie about phony faith healer Jonas Nightingale, who gets stuck in a small town and comes to question his ethics and values.
Four-time Tony nominee Raul Esparza stars. Alan Menken ("Little Shop of Horrors," "Beauty and the Beast") wrote the score.
More than a dozen years ago, Roman gave up his job at a bank here and made the move to New York. It would take more than a decade before he got a break but he never gave up on his dream. His own leap of faith seems to have paid off.
• Too bad more people didn't come to hear playwright John Guare's lecture at Franklin & Marshall College March 22.
Guare wrote the brilliant dark comedies "House of Blues Leaves" and "Six Degrees of Separation," as well as the film "Atlantic City."
Charming, funny and thoughtful, he gave a wonderful lecture about writing plays, his relationship with actors and directors and the role of theater in our lives.
He was this year's Lapine Family Visiting Theatre Artist (yes, the aforementioned James Lapine). Alas, only several dozen people came to the free and public lecture. If you weren't one of them, you missed out.
• Is there any better diplomat for the Fulton than Barry Kornhauser?
His plays keep popping up at the best regional theaters in the country. And Kornhauser always makes sure he lets audiences know in the program his home base is his beloved Fulton.
Most recently he wrote "Recipe for Disaster" for the Tony Award-winning La Jolla Theatre (yes, the same one). It's a play for young audiences about civility, in which two boisterous, bickering chefs almost ruin it for their young apprentice.
His "Balloonacy," a nonverbal piece created for very young kids, which was commissioned by the Tony Award-winning Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis (which has commissioned Kornhauser to do several plays), was recently invited to the biennial international Quest Fest in Washington D.C.
Another piece for very young children is his "A Child's Garden of Verses," commissioned and premiered by the Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre in Atlanta a few years ago.
It's a highly interactive show in which kids enter a garden and grow their imaginations. Audiences in Atlanta have loved it.
(Three Tony Award-winning regional theaters. Now that can't be an accident.)
He's working on a commission to turn Jane Yolen's acclaimed Holocaust novel "The Devil's Arithmetic" into a play.
And word is his enchanting musical, "A Christmas Carol," written with Ron Barnett for the Fulton 10 years ago — if you saw it, I'll bet you remember it) — is being published.
Here's hoping some other theater companies across the country will be lucky enough to see it.
