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5/12: The Con is ON, at the Center Lanes

May 12, 2012

Pow! Zam! Comics Conventions Aren’t for Shitty Highway Hotels Anymore… Focused upon Saturday’s Asbury Park ComicCon is CLIFF GALBRAITH, who joins with Pope of Popculturizm ROBERT BRUCE as promoters of  the city’s firstest-ever scholarly seminar/ swapmeet for the uplift of the sweetly sequential science.

One’s a satanic-bearded solid citizen who birthed unto the world a rodent named Roscoe, and a slew of instantly iconic screenprint ‘Sauruses. The other’s an all-seeing, all-knowing pontiff of Popculturizm; he who is invoked by name when conflicts must be resolved, and spot appraisals rendered.

Together they’re teaming up to fight crime — if by “crime” we mean the near-criminal lack of homegrown Comix Conventions here in the big-tent neighborhood that’s been home to so many comics creatives, not to mention some of the most influential collectors and connoisseurs the artform has ever known.

On this day, May 12, all will be put into perspective, as the first annual Asbury Park Comic Con at the Jersey Shore sets up its folding tables and longboxes inside the only venue that’s surreal enough to contain it — the atom-age retro rec room, tenpins taphouse (and alterna-arts odditorium) that IS Asbury Lanes.

Pencilled in between the hours of 10am and 6pm, the Con is the brainchild of two guys who’ve more than logged their share of hours on the frontlines of our nation’s flea markets, convention centers and drab Days Inn event rooms: Cliff Galbraith, the artist and writer behind RAT BASTARD — and Robert Bruce, the capo di tutti collectibles (and proprietor of the much-missed Groove Spot) who’s parlayed his mastery of the arcane and eldritch into a featured berth on Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men teevee program.

That Red Bank connection — both Rob and Cliff are residents of the Basie-birthing borough that recently scored third on Smithsonian Magazine’s list of top American small towns for culture (right behind Relocated Bayway and Centralia, PA) — extends as well to the internationally renowned and bracingly branded Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, Lourdes-like grotto for all who make the Askewniverse pilgrimage and base of operations for Mike Zapcic and Ming Chen (who are slated to conduct a live podcast session from the Lanes on Sat afternoon). As for why this event isn’t set to take place in its spiritual homeland of Red Bank, well, more on that in a moment.

Like any Con worth its acid-free backing boards, the Asbury Park affair boasts some amazing guests — among them the dynamically married duo of Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer (creators, both together and solo, of Milk & Cheese, Action Girl, and Supergirl Adventures). The Girl of Steel’s formidable presence extends to the participation of DC superspecialist Jamal Igle, and there’s a welcome injection of beyond-Bizarro World madness from uncategorizable comicker Michael Kupperman. There are also some 35 vendors on board — and as of late last night Galbraith was putting out the BatSignal for more, in the wake of the new Lanes owners having reconfigured/expanded the available floor space.

In one of the most eleventh-hour interview scenarios we’ve ever entered into, we caught up with Cliff Galbraith at the recently relo’d Zebu Forno in RB, even as the earlybird bargainhounds were doubtless suiting up for the trip to our favorite Fellini-esque Fourth Avenue funnarama. More, at the flip of the pulse-poundingly pixelated page…

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5/11: A ‘Wonderful’ Season in the Homestretch

May 11, 2012

Susan Heyward stars as Winnie, the “nearly nine year old” central character in MY WONDERFUL DAY, the Alan Ayckbourn comedy going up May 15 as the final show of the mainstage season at Two River Theater.

As the author of nearly 80 produced plays, he’s been a magnet for gleaming trophies, plaques and medallions that include the Tony, the Olivier and the Moliere Award, not to mention five honorary doctorates and — what was that other one? Oh yeah, a knighthood.

You’d think then with all of that precious metal clanking about, Sir Alan Ayckbourn would make a healthy amount of noise on this side of the Atlantic — but regrettably, the works of the dramatist best known for theNorman Conquests trilogy and Absurd Person Singular are apparently in no danger of challenging the likes of Nunsense for dominance outside of America’s biggest cities and universities.

Beginning this Tuesday, May 15, Two River Theater Company endeavors to change all that — as indeed they’ve worked to change the standard set of expectations for a “suburban” stage operation — when the professional troupe caps its 2011-2012 mainstage season with a new production of the 2009 comedy My Wonderful Day.

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5/8: Once More Unto the Breach for TRTC

May 8, 2012

Veterans of Broadway, major awards AND the Two River Theater, Michael Cumpsty (MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING) and Chuck Cooper (IN THIS HOUSE, JITNEY) return to the Red Bank stage in 2013.

“I feel like I’m having a dream,” said the playwright and performance artist Lisa Kron as she faced a capacity crowd at Two River Theater on Monday night.

“In high school, we, the theater people, were like the outcasts…this is the pep rally we never had.”

The occasion for the spirited assembly was the annual new season announcement  by Two River Theater Company — one of the most highly anticipated such events in New Jersey stage circles, and one presided over by John Dias, now in his second season as TRTC’s artistic director.

As introduced by the nationally renowned producer and some celebrated associates, the 2012-2013 schedule builds upon the successful template established in the current 2011-2012 season — a season that climaxes with the production of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s My Wonderful Day, going up in previews on May 15.

Utilizing both the mainstage Rechnitz auditorium and the “black box” Marion Huber space at TRTC’s branded Bridge Avenue arts center, the new slate of eight shows mixes classics of the English language with new American voices; intimate solos with exquisite ensembles, and new faces with a whole lot of returning favorites — with words from the likes of Noel Coward, August Wilson and a guy by the name of Shakespeare.

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5/7: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Trailer

May 7, 2012

John Paul Tremblay (“Julian”), Mike Smith (“Bubbles”) and Robb Wells (“Ricky”) are The Trailer Park Boys, the Canadian cult cable sensations performing a bit of “community service” this Friday night at the Count Basie Theatre.

The last time the world heard from the Trailer Park Boys, the trio of petty criminals, backsliding lowlifes and substance abusers was more or less secured within their natural habitat — behind bars, and lashing out against the media attention that helped make their mugshots a household brand in dozens of countries.

It was a fitting valedictory for “Julian” (John Paul Tremblay), “Ricky” (Robb Wells) and “Bubbles” (Mike Smith), the characters who evolved (so to speak) from several low-budget film projects by Canadian writer and director Mike Clattenburg.

Dedicated to the mantra “get rich, get high, and stay out of jail;” navigating life at Nova Scotia’s Sunnyvale Trailer Park with a work ethic, a moral code and an F-bombed vocabulary that made our own Jay and Silent Bob look like Frasier and Niles, the Boys spent seven seasons as the stars of their own “mockumentary” TV series — an international cult hit seen Stateside by DirecTV subscribers.

The series that ended in 2008 — think COPS times Sunny divided by The Office — gave noisy birth to two theatrically released feature films, an all new TV vehicle for the three actors (The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Hour), and several live appearance tours, the latest of which rolls into Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre this Friday night, May 11.

Subtitled The Ricky, Julian and Bubbles’ Community Service Variety Show, the stage presentation ostensibly springs the three recidivist jailbirds for an evening of court-ordered lecturing on the evils of drinking and drug abuse — an edu-taining interlude in which Bubbles gets to perform his ventriloquism act (and sing his signature anthem “Liquor and Whores”) while the other guys do their best to involve the audience and send the whole thing careening off the rails.

UpperWETside spoke to Julian and Ricky — yes, in character, and while riding in a luxuriously appointed tour bus that’s a far cry from the various trailers, sheds, beater Chryslers and jail cells they’ve inhabited over the years.

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5/3: Blunt Force Troma; Gruen & Unusual

May 3, 2012

Hello, Lloyd: One of the biggest events of the Whole Kid Year returns to Asbury town this weekend, when madcap mogul Lloyd Kaufman brings the TROMADANCE Festival back to the center Lanes for TWO big nights, May 4 and 5!

The MayDay claxon’s already sounded; things are getting tensely tight around Asbury Parque (and by extension, the Upper Wet Side) in anticipation of the blizzardlike blitzkrieg that is the Bamboozle Fest — a wristband Woodstock that not only corrals “the kids” for three days and nights within a space where people actually sorta/kinda live, but THIS year invites their fiftysomething parents to stay and do something other than idle in queue at the designated pickup/dropoff areas. More on THAT as it happens midmonth — for now the pace picks up considerably in and around the place Where Music Lollygags, and if you dare to stray from the clearly demarcated Festival Area you’re SURE to find something weirdly wonderful…

FRIDAY and SATURDAY! 13th Annual TromaDance Festival at Asbury Lanes. You don’t have to be a conventioneering connoisseur of the Troma Films brand to have a blast at this yearly freewheeling filmfest, but it helps to enter into the bargain with some working knowledge of the MegaLoBudget sleaze cinema “studio” that gave the world The Toxic Avenger (plus associated kid cartoons, sequels and Off Broadway musicals) — a brand that continues to survive, maybe thrive, in a climate where the Drive Ins, the home video market, and even FILM as we know it have effectively joined the body count of motion picture arts and sciences.

Originally kickstarted in Park City, Utah as a freebie flip-off to the corporate-indie Sundance suckfest, TromaDance returns in its 13th annual edition to the atom-age Asbury Lanes this Friday and Saturday (May 4-5), with that most Fellini-esque of neighborhood rockbars playing host for the fourth(?) time to a no-charge, “No VIP” event in which “celebrities and fans are treated equally.” Lording over the affair once more is that Disney of Disturbia, that David O. Sleazenik, that Louis B. Mayhem mogul of madness — Troma chief, producer, director and sometime actor Lloyd Kaufman.

Some three dozen shorts from filmmakers all over the world (none of whom need to pay an entry fee) will be screening over the course of the weekend, with each night also spotlighting a new feature-length fracas. Friday’s full-lengther will be Manborg, a “cult-tastic throwback to 80s sci-fi action films like ROBOCOP and THE TERMINATOR” from Steven Kostanski and the Astron-6 Video collective — in which “a soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.”

That latest from the director of Father’s Day will show at 8pm on May 4 (program starts at 7pm) — and at that same hour on Saturday, it’s a free screening of The FP, a grindhouse gangbang co-directed by the sibling tagteam of Jason and Brandon Trost, the amped-up cinematographers behind the likes of Crank: High Voltage and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Brother Jason stars in this story of “two gangs locked in a turf war in rural wasteland Frasier Park, in the deadly arena of competitive dance-fight video game” — a “fury of fierce footwork, triumphant montages and neon street wear” that features as narrator none other than James Remar of The Warriors (and, lately, Dexter). Take it here for Dorothy Creamer’s interview with Yale alumnus (and former GWB classmate) Kaufman, conducted for our old Red Bank oRBit site and archived for your enlightenment here on the upperWETside. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 7pm/ FREE!                                                                                                                                                                                                

That ain’t even the one-sixth of it; flip the record over for more…

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4/28: “It’s All Within Reach”

April 28, 2012

Laying down some tracks: to state THE OBVIOUS, one of the better bands on the fractured and fragmented Wetside scene is having a Record Release Party tonight; just one of many goings-on we can pretty much experience from our front porch this weekend.

3pm Wednesday April 25, and we’re getting a whiff of nostalgia in and around Asbury’s Convention Hall — if you call circa 1990 your idea of nostalgia. Not a blamed or blessed soul in sight within the Grand Arcade; no shops open; a clear cannonball shot both north AND south of here on the boards. Even the gulls and pigeons have gone off to scout other fastfood pastures.

This momentary snapshot was well out of date by the weekend, of course, and we offer it up only as a final echo of the Off Season That Wuz (within the Winter That Wun’t) here on the cuspidor of the summer-season corridor. It’s a season that was more or less heralded by the beauty-sleep-disturbing blare of a marching band on the morning of April 27; a neighborhood drumline blast that assembled to welcome the flyby of the retired Space Shuttle with a somehow appropriate quote from Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

From here on in around these blocks by the beach and boards, it’s time to batten down the hatches for Bamboozle’s burb-oid blizzard; to convert front lawns into parking lots and psych ourselves into a sleepless, senses-working-overtime parsing of the passing parade. It all starts NOW, with…

SATURDAY! Record release party for THE OBVIOUS at Asbury Lanes. Only those who are downright oblivious could develop an immunity to the charms of The Obvious, the greater Asbury punkpop combo that’s been helping to keep the electric garage door open in a landscape of acoustica Americana “authentica” and songer/singwriter narcissimo. Fronted by the ravishing Surojanie “Angie” Sugrim, the four-piece 2012 edition of the band that was last seen backing original Sugar Hill Gang old-schooler Wonder Mike at last month’s Garden State Film Festival has a new EP to peddle (Maybe She’s Bored With It) and a place to peddle it, tonight at the everlovin’ Asbury Lanes.

Produced by Bouncing Souls guitarist Pete “The Pete” Steinkopf at the Bouncing boys’ secret clubhouse recording studio in Asbury Park (on the same street as the groovy grotto where we peck out this blogfest), the record will be the centerpiece of an evening in which Angie and company are joined by a most solid lineup that further boasts Chemtrail, Lost in Society and Give Me Static — with admission a measly five bucks, there in the retro rec room and alterna-arts odditorium that hosted another high-artistic-value session by Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School on that selfsame afternoon. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 8pm/ $5

There’s more in store within upperWETside’s home neighborhood this weekend, and “It’s All Within Reach” (one of many failed promo campaigns from the much-maligned Gannett media octopus) with the flip of a pixelated page…

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4/19: RENT Controlled ‘n Ready

April 19, 2012

Original Broadway cast members of RENT, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp perform both solo and in tandem in a Saturday night concert event at Monmouth University. 

We spoke of many things — of baseball (esp. the Cubs and the Mets) and Spider-Man; of a band named XTC, and what it’s like to have a father in law who won the Nobel Prize. We even found a few moments to speak of a little phenom called Rent.

Illinois native Anthony Rapp was already a seasoned veteran of the stage (at age ten, he played the title role in the ill-fated musical The Little Prince) and screen (Adventures in Babysitting, Dazed and Confused) — and Adam Pascal was a native New Yorker whose only stage experience was in fronting a band called Mute — when the two became castmates (and their characters became roommates) in a show that did nothing less than change the face of latter-day Broadway.

Set in the once-forgotten but fast-transitioning landscape of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the AIDS-ravaged 1980s, Jonathan Larson’s magnum opus borrowed the framework of Puccini’s La Boheme for a production that would win a fistful of Tonys AND a Pulitzer (not to mention a whole new generation of diehard Rentheads), fueled by real grass-roots buzz and the mind-bogglingly sudden death of its creator on the eve of the show’s first preview.

In the original cast of the 1996 Off Broadway premiere and its Broadway incarnation later that same year — a cast that also boasted Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs and Law & Order‘s Jesse L. Martin — Pascal played Roger Davis, the HIV-positive musician, with Rapp as Mark Cohen, Roger’s filmmaker friend and roomie (the two roles were riffs on Boheme‘s Rodolfo and Marcello).

The actors would eventually go their own ways — Anthony would come out and advocate tirelessly for LGBT rights, while Adam would “marry up” and form a partnership with playwright and superstar cookbook author Cybele Pascal (prominent in the food allergy community, and daughter to the Nobel-winning Eric Chivian). And, while the show would launch the Broadway careers of the two young stars in earnest (Pascal would play lead roles in the Elton John-Tim Rice Aida, in David (Bon Jovi) Bryan’s Memphis, and in the 1998 revival of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret; Rapp would essay the title role in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown), it would also draw the Adam & Anthony team back together for the 2005 film version, and a 2009 tour.

On Saturday night, April 21, the colleagues reunite once more, in a concert presented under the name Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp: Original Stars of Broadway’s RENT — a touring production that comes to Monmouth University‘s Pollak Theatre for one 8pm show.

The three-part program is set to kick off with Pascal performing with his three-piece combo “Me & Larry,” a project that finds the singer adding his powerhouse vocals (as well as his underrated guitar and bass skills) to pianist Larry Edoff’s bold sound in a set that draws from their album Blinding Light, with some eye-opening new takes on some familiar showtune standards, to boot.

Rapp, who documented his own voyage through life and Rent in his memoir Without You, will be performing a mix of savvy originals and surprising covers with his own five piece band — and the two co-headliners team up again for the concert’s climactic segment, an interlude in which the stars share stories and signature songs from that most game-changing (and career-defining) of shows.

UpperWETside spoke to Adam and Anthony separately, and in that order. What follows is a merry mashup of those back-to-back phone conversations.

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4/18: Watson, the Needling

April 18, 2012

Wynn Harmon, Rich Silverstein and Gary Marachek look at THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES from a frantically farcical new angle, in the comedy going up April 19 at NJ Rep in Long Branch. (photo by SuzAnne Barabas)

You know the story: the creepy old mansion adrift on the ruddy, mist-shrouded moors of the West Country. The bloodline curse, the Great Grimpen Mire and the glowy-eyed hound from Hell. The celebrated sleuth, his easily flummoxed sidekick and the supernaturally-tinged suspenser that launched a thousand parodies, pastiches and pale imitations.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous creation Sherlock Holmes in 1901 (by what could diplomatically be called Popular Demand), he resurrected the iconic detective in grand style, with The Hound of the Baskervilles. The third Holmes novel — the author’s first Holmes tale of any sort since controversially killing off the character eight years earlier — was a jolly-good ripping yarn that immediately caught the public’s fancy; an instant classic that served to reinforce the fact that the brilliant deductive brain from Baker Street was bigger (and, for many, more real) than his walrus-mustached creator.

The basis for several straightforward screen adaptations (including some good ‘uns with Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing) and a slew of romps, The Hound of the Baskervilles hits the stage of New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch as a rollicking show-within-a-show — one that goes up in previews on Thursday, April 19 and opens on Saturday, April 21.

In the script by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, a ragtag troupe of small-time actors barnstorms their way around the countryside with their own production of The Hound — an endeavor that’s complicated by the fact that the three thespians (Wynn Harmon, Gary Marachek, Rich Silverstein) are forced to take on all of the parts in the show — male, female, canine and force of supernature.

The show that continues through May 27 marks the play’s New Jersey premiere, as well as the NJ Rep debut of director Mark Shanahan — an actor, playwright, voice artist and educator who’s intimately familiar with the concept of multitasking.

You wouldn’t be out of line to think that Hound would certainly fulfill one’s minimum daily requirement for farcical, fast-change thrills drawn from some of the most time-honored conventions of the “veddy British” mystery tale — but you would be wrong, my dear Inspector. There’s another Shanahan-helmed play in “town;” one that raises its first curtain some 72 hours after opening night at NJ Rep — and one that, incredible as it may seem, could even outpace Hound in the chaos department.

That other play is The 39 Steps, the Tony winning 2007 tour-de-farce adapted by Patrick Barlow from a vintage spy thriller by John Buchan — or, cutting to the chase, the 1935 screen version directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The show goes up on Tuesday, April 24 as the final production of the season at George Street Playhouse, continuing at the venerable New Brunswick venue through May 20.

A tale of mistaken manhunts, stolen secrets and confounding conspiracies comes equipped with wink-wing/nudge-nudge allusions to other works from the Master’s canon, along with a devilishly crowdpleasing device in which the supporting players in the four-person cast take on dozens of parts (including inanimate objects) in a breathless series of lightning-quick changes.

Shanahan, who understudied the lead in the show’s 2008 Broadway run AND directed two previous productions (when he wasn’t teaching a course in Hitchcock’s films at Fordham University), wrangles a cast that stars Tony nominee Howard McGillin as harried hero Richard Hannay. Stacie Morgan Lewis costars as all of the play’s female characters, with Michael Thomas Holmes and Mark Price as pretty much everybody and everything else.

UpperWETside managed to flag down the beyond-busy director as he galloped between Long Branch and New Brunswick on Route 18, like a man with a hellhound on his tail…

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4/16: …and Tell ‘Em “Joe Sent Me”

April 16, 2012

Jazz scholar/ WBGO disc jockey Gary Walker and guitarist Vic Juris are among the special guests TALKIN’ JAZZ with Joe Muccioli, in the series that returns to the Count Basie’s Carlton Lounge for three Mondays beginning tonight. 

Start Joe Muccioli to talking and he’ll tell you that “Jazz…grew up with America. It symbolizes American democracy.”

“You put several people into a place, a situation, and you honor all of their abilities, but at the same time you have rules, an underlying structure…a Constitution.”

A Red Bank resident and the Artistic Director of the borough-based nonprofit  Jazz Arts Project, the man they call “Mooche” has done a lot of talking, studying, teaching and listening on the topic of Jazz — and he’s walked the walk as well, having traveled the world conducting, arranging and working with everyone from Joe Piscopo to the London Philharmonic.

In the borough that birthed William “Count” Basie, they know Muccioli as the maestro behind the annual Sinatra Birthday Bash events at the  Count Basie Theatre; as the co-founder of the Jazz Arts Academy program; as the host of the way-cool Summer Jazz series atTwo River Theater — and as leader of the Red Bank Jazz Orchestra, the 17-piece organization that issued its maiden recording Strike Up the Band in 2011.

Add to that the fact that each and every April — a little bend in the calendar they call National Jazz Appreciation Month — Mooche hauls out his formidable “little black book” of Who’s Who contacts, commandeers the Basie Theatre building’s street-level Carlton Lounge, and offers music lovers access to a treasure trove of history, performance, sight, sound and scintillating conversation that could only be called Talkin’ Jazz. It’s a sophisticated series so cool that you’d be tempted to tell them “Joe sent me” at the door, were it not for the fact that it’s entirely free of charge and open to the public. It’s also a Monday evening affair that returns tonight, April 16, with a visit from one of the New York metro area’s most sought-after authorities on all things Jazz.

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4/13: Right Here in River City

April 13, 2012

Brett Colby IS Professor Harold Hill…and Father Alphonse Stephenson IS everyone’s favorite Pentagon-based Broadway conductor/ Catholic priest/ Jersey Shore legend…when THE MUSIC MAN takes over the stage of the Algonquin in Manasquan beginning April 20.

Hide the passed hors d’oeuvres; squirrel away the plastic tumblers of merlot — we’re back in First Nighting mode, for another freewheeling, freeloading round of adventures in local theatah, up and down this thing we called the Upper Wet Side.

We’ve already clued you in on the current engagement of Maureen McGovern and her show Carry It On at Two River Theater — and in days to come we’ll be posting interviews with ace director Mark Shanahan (who’s got not one but TWO fun projects opening imminently in Long Branch and New Brunswick), as well as original RENTmates Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp (coming on April 21 to the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University). Beginning right NOW, however, we’re kicking things strictly COMMUNITY, where everybody knows your name, and the star of the show probably has to help strike the set…

Simonelli Sez, all over the place. A longtime Monmouth County resident and a prolific playwright whose more than one dozen comedies and dramas are seen regularly on regional stages, Joe Simonelli has been an especially busy guy in recent months, at The First Avenue Playhouse in Atlantic Highlands (where his best known play Men Are Dogs continues a special monthly engagement) , at The Grange Theater in Howell — and at the Traco Theater in Toms River, the newly established downtown movie revival house where his original script Old Ringers begins a two weekend stand on Friday, April 13. A semi-sequel to Dogs, the “adult bawdy comedy” brings back two of that earlier show’s characters for a stand-alone scenario involving a quartet of senior ladies and an entrepreneurial adventure in the phone sex industry. The show continues through April 22 with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3 p.m. Traco Theater, 16 Washington St., Toms River • April 13 at 8pm (through 4/22)

Simonelli returns to the Traco in May with a fresh production of his With This Ring — but before that he’ll be back home on the Grange with a new staging of Roommates, an odd coupling involving a swinging ladies’ man, his divorced friend who comes to crash (and becomes the Thing That Would Not Leave), various meddling neighbors and still more mirthmaking machinery. Roommates opens at 8pm on Friday, April 27 and continues for four more shows on April 28, May 4 and May 5 (plus a 3pm matinee on April 29); tickets ($15) can be reserved by calling (732)768-2709. The Grange Playhouse, 4860 Route 9 South, Howell • April 27 at 8pm/ $15 (through 5/5)

That’s what’s opening tonight; flip the paperless for more going up tomorrow (April 14) and in weeks to come…

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