The acclaimed documentary feature HARVEST OF EMPIRE screens at Two River Theater Sunday night as part of a three-day Vision Latin-American Film Festival at locations around Monmouth County.

Its performance spaces may have gone momentarily dark between mainstage productions — but this weekend, Red Bank’s Two River Theater becomes one of the newest participating hosts for an arts event that’s primed to connect with some new audiences: the annual Vision Latin American Film Festival.

A presentation of the Latino Coalition of New Jersey — the nonprofit organization that’s hosted the annual Latino Festival of Monmouth County in Freehold Borough since 2005 — the newly expanded program offers up a slate of seven feature-length dramatic and documentary films selected to increase the understanding and appreciation for the various Latino cultures that thrive in New Jersey.

“Through the eyes of the filmmakers, we will see Latino perspectives on relationships, politics, family, religion and customs that surround their lives,” the coalition says in its press materials for the filmfest, which will feature introductions by guest speakers as well as post-screening Q&A discussions.

The celebration of Latino cinema has forged a separate identity from the summertime festival in Freehold, with a two days/ three nights schedule of recent works from North and South America that screens this weekend in three different Monmouth County locations — including Two River Theater Company’s branded Bridge Avenue artspace.

“YOU’RE the idiot!” points out genial Quizmaster™ Jim Norton, as Tuesday Night Trivia returns to the very Birthplace of Trivia…Asbury Park. (photos by Stuffy)

The question was a tricky one, regarding the founding of the NHL, and the number of member teams at the time that the league came together in 1917. The correct answer (four) fairly flummoxed fans who were brought up on the legend of the hallowed “Original Six” franchises — prompting Quizmaster™ Jim Norton to observe with a dry drip of feigned arrogance, “To all of you who actually submitted ‘The Original Six’ as your answer…and who even underlined it, like I’m some kind of an idiot…well you’re wrong. Fuck you. YOU’RE the idiot!” It was just another Tuesday in Asbury Park — traditionally a day of rest for many local businesses, there in the drab foothills of the working week — and a day often given over to some creatively wacky pursuits; a fact hammered home by this Tuesday’s head-spinning Steel Cage Match of a city council election. But on May 7, a homegrown tradition returned to take root, as the pop-cultural force of nature known as Tuesday Night Trivia reappeared with a reassuringly familiar host (Gentleman Jim) and a new lease on life, at an all-new host venue — the atom-age retro rec room Asbury Lanes. It’s a welcome-back for an event that originated at The Brickwall last year, moved to The Downtown in Red Bank for an aborted run — then hastily bugged out to the center Lanes, home to such live game shows as Sex Toy Bingo and occasional editions of Bachelors & Bachelorettes (co-hosted by Norton with DJ Values). In fact, it pretty much cements the standing of the Lanes as the closest thing we’ve seen to a “game show bar;” a place where aspiring quizmasters/mistresses can find their inner Wink Martindale — just as coffeehouses, community theaters and comedy clubs continue to nurture new generations of the quite possibly talented in their own way. “Honestly, I never set out to be some sort of live game show host,” claims Norton of this latest “bottom rung of show business” endeavor. “It sort of found me.” According to Gentleman Jim — a suburban family guy and recovering title insurance agent who, when he’s not acting as self-described “emcee, scorekeeper, off-the-cuff insult comic and Ombudsman” of the weekly event, can be found serving as a serious soundman pro for everyone from Frank Sinatra Jr. to Iggy Pop — the role of the Quizmaster™ (yep, he claims to have trademarked the word) is one for which “you’d better bring something else to the table…make people laugh along the way.” None of which is to suggest that Tuesday Night Trivia is not a serious — and at times seriously challenging — competition. Despite the emcee’s occasional wisecracks and discretionary awarding of bonus points, “TNT” is an interactive attraction for which participants are expected to bring the sum total of their knowledge in each of six categories: General Knowledge/ Science/ Current Events; Sports, Games and Leisure; an audio Music round; History and Geography; a Picture round keyed to visual clues, and an Entertainment and Pop Culture round to finish it off. Teams of up to eight players are encouraged to sign up prior to start time (selecting a colorful name for one’s crew is optional), filling out paper quiz sheets as the host reads off the questions from his somewhat magisterial perch on the club’s stage. Ten points are awarded for each correct answer (15 points on optional “bonus rounds”), with team totals tallied up after each round of competition — and the night’s top two teams getting to share in some “valuable prizes.” “We try to do it a little differently than other places that have tried this sort of thing,” says Norton, a veteran of such legendary local punk bands as Crucial Youth and the Shock Mommies. “It’s early enough so that it’s school-night and work-night friendly…but it’s hard enough so that we don’t have 16 ‘winning teams’ in one room.” It’s a level of difficulty that this correspondent can attest to, having taken part in several TNT tourneys — sometimes solo, sometimes with a hastily assembled team of random acquaintances shanghai’d in off the street — and we can vouch that it pays to diversify with a table of armchair experts on anything from basketball and Broadway musicals, to Periodic Table melting points and post-2000 country hits. “You’re gonna have a fun time, eat, drink, and hang out with your friends,” says Norton. “The bar gets to sell some drinks — and I get to play God for a little bit.” There’s no charge to take part in Tuesday Night Trivia, and no cover to take it all in from the sidelines. Doors open at 7 pm, sign-up starts at 7:15, with game time scheduled for 7:30 and food/beverage table service available. Check the Facebook page of “Tuesday Night Trivia at Asbury Lanes” for updated info and Nortonly wisdom.

Fred Grandy (right, with Christian Pedersen) — he of both Gopher and US Congress fame — makes like Olivier in Anthony Shaffer’s SLEUTH now playing at Surflight Theatre in Beach Haven. 

Long-time supporters and observers of Surflight Theatre — Beach Haven’s can-do professional purveyor of crowdpleasing entertainments — might be forgiven for believing that the LBI landmark exists beneath some colossal jinx cloud, Job-like test of faith, or Richard Bachman gypsy curse.

The venerable venue very nearly entered the realm of bygone nostalgia a few years back following a bout with suffocating debt and  bankruptcy — an interlude from which it emerged under the too-brief tenure of producing artistic director Roy Miller at the start of the 2011 season. Before departing Surflight the following year, Miller — whose sudden passing a few weeks back seems to be part and parcel of the theatre’s trials and tribulations — rolled out his great big Rolodex of connections and packed the playhouse’s “comeback” season with personalities that ranged from Justin Guarini to Judd Hirsch; Dawn (Mary Ann) Wells and Cindy (Shirley) Williams; Laugh-In’s Jo Ann Worley and Brady Bunch’s Eve Plumb.

A 2012 fire at a neighboring restaurant that also damaged the Surflight property would appear to have signaled the theatre’s ultimate phoenix-like rise from the ashes — but then along came Sandy. The Octo-pocalypse, its winds and waters of mass destruction — and the long dark aftermath of utility outages, inaccessible neighborhoods and transportation issues — put a piercing exclamation point on a lousy year; ensuring the cancellation of the Christmas production and casting all prospects for 2013 in deluge-dampened doubt.

Still, springtime saw the re-emergence of the Surflight brand under executive director Ken Myers with a newly rebuilt stage and shop, a work-in-progress renovation campaign (to which Broadway legend and serial Tony winner Tommy Tune contributes a benefit concert later this month), and a full slate of productions that kicked off in April with an earlybird salue to ABBA.

Beginning tonight and opening officially on Thursday, May 9, the 2013 Surflight season continues with a new staging of Sleuth, the Tony’d-up, twisted-inside-out, drawing room mystery by Anthony Shaffer that’s directed here by Clayton Philips and starring another familiar face from countless TV nights — none other than The Love Boat‘s affably goofy Gopher, Fred Grandy.

It’s a decidedly different characterization for the actor — that of one Andrew Wyke, successful British author of detective novels and smoking-jacketed lord of a country manor that’s choked to the gills with bizarre antique toys, slightly sadistic games and potential traps around every rococo corner. It’s there in this house of mystery that the grandiose gentleman coerces his wife’s lover, playboy hairdresser Milo Tindle (Christian Pedersen, sensational in New Jersey Rep’s Dead Ringer) into a grand deception that twists and turns upon each of the principals in ways that can only truly be appreciated by losing one’s self in the deliciously nasty play’s world of murderously good manners and oppressively eccentric atmosphere.

It turns out that the regional theater thing is also a new twist to the Grandy resume. The Iowa-born Harvard grad — a lifelong Republican whose first widescale public exposure was his role as best man for the wedding of his friend David Eisenhower to Presidential daughter Julie Nixon — served four full terms as a United States Congressman, serving on the House Ways and Means Committee and stepping away from elective politics following an unsuccessful bid for the governorship of the Hawkeye State.

A career as a reliably right-wing commentator followed, on outlets that ranged from National Public Radio to D.C. area talk station WMAL — with the host of The Grandy Group program (an editorializer against Islamicization, for whom the phrase “Shariah-compliant” is an oft-wielded verbal cudgel) resigning amid a broadcast brouhaha involving statements made on-air by his wife Catherine Mann-Grandy. It was a kerfuffle during which supporters of Grandy (who serves these days on the executive staff at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy) branded even conservative WMAL as “Shariah-compliant.”

With a brief interview window between intensive rehearsals of Sleuth, Grandy and your upperWETside correspondent left the politics to fester like seaweed on the Ocean County beaches, and spoke of sitcom signatures and of Sleuth, the vehicle by which the GOPher emerges from the burrow of prolonged  showbiz hibernation. Read on…

upperWETside: Well, here’s a question for you…once upon a time actors were regarded as gypsies, tramps and thieves; fit only to be run out of town on that proverbial rail. There’s still probably a little residual feeling along those lines somewhere out there…but with Congress pretty much scoring negatives across the board with everyone, do you feel like you’re working the better side of the street these days? 

FRED GRANDY: Acting is probably the most honest profession I’ve ever been involved in! Why do you think they call it legitimate theater?

This is the first acting project of any real consequence that you’ve done in a long time, and I’m interested to know how it came about. Did you shop the idea around to various producers, or did Surflight come to you with the role in mind?

No, I auditioned for the part along with a lot of other people; I got it — and the next couple of weeks are as far ahead as I’m thinking right now, in terms of show business!

I’ve been out of the loop for a long time…I spent about eight years out of show business entirely, and then radio pretty much precluded my being active as an actor. But this is a great way to dip my toe back in, and I’m inching my way back in the water, you could say.

So of all the roles in all the plays in all of history, you’ve hooked up with one of the showiest, most dialogue-heavy parts ever devised. I caught Laurence Olivier in the old movie recently, and he’s just having a glorious time being his hambone self…by the end of the picture, he’s consumed about half of the props on that busy set…

It’s a pretty cunningly written role…and a lot of words! You’re on the stage pretty much throughout, and just giving it your everything all the way. But as far as Olivier, Michael Caine, I purposely stay away from watching someone else do a part…or at least I subconsciously stay away.

The Andrew character is also about as far a cry from Gopher as you can get. I need to tell you here that my wife, or at least her eight year old self, grew up being a tremendous fan of Gopher back in the day. Apparently she and all of her friends each had a crush on various LOVE BOAT cast members…somebody even had Captain Stubing. Me, I was going out to bars and whatnot on Saturday nights.

Well, I wasn’t always home on Saturday night to watch it either! But for eight years it ran almost always on Saturday night…and even back when we were making the show, Saturday was always the least watched night of network TV. And really, only after The Love Boat did Saturday become a destination for TV watchers; that combination with Fantasy Island made for a successful block of programming. Well, CBS had their big Saturday block with All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett…

Looking over the List of The Love Boat guest stars that walked up that gangplank over the course of the series, it seems that you only needed to stay in one spot and the rest of show business came to YOU. Was there anyone who you were just especially astonished to meet and work with?

It was a real Who’s Who of pretty big names…everyone from young Tom Hanks to Ethel Merman, who played my mother in a few episodes. It was especially exciting working with her; getting to know her personally.

Even when you left Hollywood for Washington, it was kind of like old home week for a while there…it seemed like half of America’s favorite TV characters were getting elected to Congress. 

Well, there weren’t THAT many of us, but I was first elected when Ronald Reagan was in the White House; our movie star president…then after me we had Fred Thompson going to the Senate, and Ben Jones in the House. Then Sonny Bono was elected as I was finishing my last term, although we weren’t in Congress at the same time.

And later on, Al Franken. 

Al Franken I haven’t met. Not sure if we’d have much to agree upon!

While I can understand how a distinguished member of Congress might want to downplay a nickname like Gopher or Cooter, do you agree that the goofy sitcom character can be father to the serious statesman?

Name recognition is everything in elective politics as in show business…so something like Gopher can go a long way. It has a certain logic.

Well, the name recognition can come in handy when it’s still the pre-Memorial Day interlude down on Long Beach Island. How’s everything coming together there?

The theatre was very hard hit, but they’ve recovered nicely. The whole town’s looking a lot better, and the people here are taking everything the way I’m taking my career — one day at a time!

Sleuth opens on Thursday, May 9 and continues at Surflight Theatre with a mix of matinee and evening performances through May 19. Take it  here  for tickets ($45) and more details on  other upcoming events at the Beach Haven playhouse — including a fundraiser engagement starring Broadway legend and serial Tony winner Tommy Tune. 

The one-woman show, for which Kron won an Obie Award in its 1999 staging at New York’s Public Theater, is being performed by its creator for the first time in several years, during an all new engagement at Red Bank’s Two River Theater. It’s a production that re-teams the playwright with director Mark Brokaw — as well as with Two River Theater Company’s John Dias, who brought her play “Well” to Broadway a few seasons back.

The title notwithstanding, “2.5 Minute Ride” is an approximate hour and a half of high comedy, matter-of-fact tragedy, poignant fantasy — and the reality that life means having to drive many hours to get from one to the other. Framed as an unseen slide show on a sparsely appointed stage (designer Allen Moyer works with lighting director Philip Rosenberg and the audience’s own imagination to fill in the “missing” elements), the play finds Kron, laser pointer in hand, quantum-leaping from the slapstick sitcom of her aging family’s annual caravan to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio — to the “malevolent ground” of the Birkenau death camp, where she accompanies her ailing father on a trip to the place in which his parents met their fate.

Delivered by the playwright in a largely breezy, conversational tone that doesn’t let the pace flag for a second, it’s a “Ride” that hurtles willy-nilly through time more so than space; a midway attraction that travels parallel tracks, branching off into unexpected detours  — a strangely funny scene at a Winona Ryder movie, a Gestapo member’s thought-provoking words to his interrogators, a supermarket encounter with the ghosts of Kron’s grandparents — that somehow converge on a satisfying end point. It may take a moment to realize that the ride has reached its conclusion, but a conclusion has most surely been reached.

Kron is hardly the first performer-playwright to have collaged a solo show from a scrapbook of family memories (or to have used the spectre of the Holocaust as the glue that holds the images in place), but unlike too many “Journey to Me” theatrical pieces, the author is not the center around which the universe revolves — she’s an observer-participant who cedes the spotlight to her impressions of her notoriously picture-phobic mother; a crippled and contrary aunt; a cantankerous closet-case uncle and a lonely brother whose Jewish Singles explorations lead him to embrace the Orthodox faith. The implication is that all of these people reside within her to varying degrees — and that it takes an understanding of these (at times unsympathetic) figures to form a portrait of the storyteller.

An out lesbian in a clan that would just as soon never have to attend another wedding — and a self-appointed caretaker who’s often in need of directions herself — the Lisa Kron of the script uses keynotes like food to trigger jumps between memories, and goes from complaining about the Sandusky theme park to wishing that the hopelessly confusing real-world Poland of her travels was replaced by a more easily navigable “Poland World.”

Lisa Kron has the take-no-prisoners timing of a battle-tested standup comic, the sizing-up savvy of a seasoned sideshow barker, the laser-honed instincts of a photojournalist, and the entrancing oral-tradition skills of that one good friend whose stories are a joy to listen to. She’s no slouch as a playwright and a performer either, and for the duration of this “Ride” she’s got the audience strapped in right where she wants them.

“2.5 Minute Ride” continues with a mix of matinee and evening performances through May 12. Tickets ($20 – $65 adults) can be obtained by calling (732)345-1400 or visiting www.trtc.org.

Reunited once more for their most ambitious tour in over 25 years, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong take it to the boards of the Count Basie on May 1, for an evening of  mirth, music and munchie-inducing classic routines.

Is this any way to observe 420 Day? If you’re the elder stoner statesmen Cheech and Chong, you’ve spent that nationwide celebration of cannabis culture in seemingly uncharacteristic fashion —  up before the sun, doing tightly scheduled rounds of press, and interfacing with fans on social media platforms that range from Facebook and Twitter, to Pinterest and everything short of Christian Mingle.

Truth be told, Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong have a collective work ethic that’s seen them embrace new tech, new formats and new channels of distribution almost as fast as they’re dreamed up — and, with their first big tour in over 25 years now underway, the Grammy winning kings of most media have a lot of lost time to make up.

On the night of Wednesday, May 1, Cheech and Chong’s Third Reunion Tour finds the gold-plated “cult” stars of stage, screen and stereos heading into Red Bank, for an 8 pm appearance at the Count Basie Theatre in which the pair recreate many of the classic, bongwater-basted sketch routines from their smash comedy records of the 1970s — a post-Woodstock era that routinely saw single releases like “Basketball Jones,” “Earache My Eye” and “Sister Mary Elephant” crashing the Top 40 charts (and causing as much angst among radio programmers as among parents of the nation’s easily corrupted youth).

It’s a debut for the duo, in the borough that claims a couple of their spiritual offspring — Jay and Silent Bob — as “homegrown” favorites. It’s also a chance for the veteran comedy team to promote the first new Cheech and Chong project in a generation — the soundtrack to the feature-length Cheech and Chongs Animated Movie!, with nine all-new songs augmenting a cartoonified collection of vintage vignettes from such discs as Cheech & Chong’s Wedding Album, Los Cochinos, and Big Bambu (coincidentally, Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie! kicked off its tour of screenings and podcasts on 4/20).

With Marin having stretched his mainstream chops in recent years (through projects that ranged from playing cops on network TV series, to producing a series of children’s music albums) — and with Chong’s intermittent screen appearances overshadowed by a controversial 2003 federal prison sentence (documented in detail here) for selling drug paraphernalia online — the stock characters of the street-savvy Chicano and the eternal hippie look to take on new dimensions of time and tide and life experience.

4/20 came and went without a scheduled phone interview — but an apologetic Chong called upperWETside the following evening to bring us up to date. Flip the record over for more, man…

upperWETside: Thanks for making time for this! I got a look at your itinerary for 420 Day and it looks like you guys didn’t get a chance to inhale a breath all day long. Doesn’t it kind of fly against the spirit of 420 though, to have such a structured day, where you get up early and do everything in 15 minute increments?

TOMMY CHONG: There are people who are lobbying to get April 20th officially designated as Cheech and Chong Day, but really, there’s no such thing as 420 Day for us! We have so much press to do, so many things on the schedule, that we’ve gotta be the most alert out of anybody. It’s like we’re Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny; we’ve got one day of the year where we really can’t afford to lay back!

Would it be spoiling things for anybody by this point, to suggest that your slacker stoner characters are actually hardworking pros who show up on time?

We’re actors, man! We have a show to take out on the road, we gotta make sure the trains are runnin’ on time. Same as when you’re directin’ a movie; you’re the guy who has to keep on schedule or you’re hearin’ it from everybody. I’ve had the chance to direct four or five and they’ve done really well for the most part — a lot of directors are lucky if they get to do just one or two.

Well, being in my 50s, I was of the generation that was most susceptible to corruption by Cheech and Chong. You guys were being compared to Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, but to us you were more like Huntley and Brinkley…you were the news! A whole nation of suburban pre-teens picked up an awful lot from your old routines. But when you look back on it, your humor was pretty self-deprecating and good natured compared to a lot of comedy that followed. The Leonard Maltin book calls UP IN SMOKE a “silly pothead comedy that breaks down all resistance with its cheerful vignettes,” and that about says it there.

That’s exactly right, man. We took the mystique, and the danger, away from the pothead lifestyle…and we took away the scary edge from the Chicano thing; made it all fun and friendly and something where we could all have a laugh together. See, I don’t like it when comedians get serious or mean…I don’t like to see people get hurt. I grew up on Bob Hope, Red Skelton…I hated it whenever THEY got serious, but a lot of what we did kind of relates to the way those guys did it. A lot of comedy that’s out there is mean-spirited…but in our kind of comedy nobody gets hurt; the cops and the authority figures get teased, but everyone gets high and gets happy.

We’re seeing the legacy of your earlier movies to this day, in things like THE HANGOVER. They’re probably still not teaching NICE DREAMS in film school, but you could trace the Cheech and Chong vibe back through Mike Myers, Kevin Smith, definitely something like THE BLUES BROTHERS…

Oh, Aykroyd and Belushi were big Cheech and Chong fans…Lorne Michaels and the rest of the people on the show, not so much. Belushi in particular was a good friend; they both came to our set when we were filming, and Aykroyd actually directed one scene uncredited! It’s when I’m supposed to be peeing and you can see the prop guy’s hand in the shot, holding a hose. We decided to leave it in. Why? Because it’s funny, man!

So yeah, I like to think that we inspired a lot of movie makers…and I feel that we’re also kind of responsible for Howard Stern; that we kind of opened doors up for a lot of other people to come through. Chris Rock, who called us The Masters, and guys from that generation.

And how sweet is it to be able to bask in that appreciation while you’re still around to hear it?

It’s great, but I gotta tell you there was a time when we were hotter than hot. I remember once we played a concert, and there’s Richard Pryor helping us off the stage, like he’s some valet or something. Richard Pryor, man! And when Carol Burnett copies you, you know you’ve made it. We were so hot that (Jeffrey) Katzenberg chartered a private plane to come up to Victoria, British Columbia just to get us to do a cameo in It Came from Hollywood. I was with my family after my mother’s funeral, Katzenberg shows up in person saying ‘we NEED you to do this movie’ — how can you say no?

And now after all this time you’ve got a new feature to promote together; one that sidestepped the whole Hollywood thing entirely by doing a special one-day release, then going to Facebook before dropping on disc. What can you tell us about the ANIMATED MOVIE project?

It is all the original routines, just the way you heard ‘em on record, only we visualized everything in cartoon form, which is something we did back with the original Basketball Jones film. With the distribution, we took kind of the Louis CK approach, you know, where he produced a special and sold it directly to the fans. And it’s been doin’ really well already with foreign sales. We’re already smilin’!

The other thing we did with this project was something that’s brand new in Cheech and Chong history…a soundtrack album, where we had a new songwriter come in to help us create a whole bunch of new songs.

It’s kind of coming full circle, isn’t it, to the days when network TV wasn’t exactly clamoring to put you on the air, and when you used records and the rock audience to punch a hole into the mainstream. Would you describe it as an alternative, even experimental, way to have established your act, so far outside the standard comedy circuit?

It’s something that George Carlin, and maybe one or two other people, were sort of able to do. But we were kind of workin’ our own thing, and we were fortunate to have the support of people who knew their way around the business. We had the pleasure, just the other day, of inducting our producer, Lou Adler, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Carole King was there with us; she sang afterward. It was a real thrill to be there, to be able to be part of that.

It was a no-brainer for you to have always incorporated music into the act, and you’ve toured off and on with bands over the years…including Tower of Power and War, who you’re playing with out west later this year.

This leg of the tour is just Cheech and Chong — and Shelby Chong, my very funny, very beautiful wife, who opens the show. My son Paris Chong is with us too; he’s our road manager and he plays bass onstage with me. We do a podcast, or pot-cast, together also — The Chong and Chong Show. I am all about my family…my kids, Rae Dawn Chong, Robbi, Marcus, Paris, Gilbran, and Precious Chong, are all really talented.

This is something that you get asked in some shape or form all the time, but do you see the slow creep toward legalization of weed as genuine progress, or just the continued blockage of an evolution that should have occurred a generation ago? Bear in mind that we’ve had at least three presidents now who’ve copped to having partaken at some point…

And you just KNOW that Ronnie Reagan did it…early-on Ronnie anyway. Yeah, it’s something to stop and think about, especially when you see the surgeon generals come out in favor of legalization as soon as they leave office. But maybe even more of a dramatic change in our lives has been the computer, the cell phone. It’s made the roadside phone booth disappear, for one thing! But we’re livin’ in a world now where as soon as you say something, even before it’s totally out of your mouth, everyone’s checkin’ up on what you said. Everyone’s recording it; callin’ you on it. Hypocrisy has it rough these days…hypocrisy’s runnin’ out of places to hide.

That leads into the question of what one thing, more than anything else in 21st century America, truly blows your mind?

Besides the computer? You just need to look at who’s been elected President of the United States for two terms. And even after all that there are still a handful of Republicans who don’t believe their eyes; who are still waiting for the mirage to disappear. There’s a frustration and a disbelief that works its way out in a lot of negativity, and it’s like nothing’s ever gonna change their minds.

With me, man, it’s all based on love. It makes comedy club owners very nervous, when I go into spiritual mode, when I go into my love mode. But I was brought up in the jazz culture, and that’s a big part of how I approach life.

When I was 15, 16, I met people like Wes Montgomery, Jon Hendricks. The jazz musicians were the wise sages; they knew the answers long before Cheech and Chong…they turned me on to books, to ideas, and to the jazz credo of taking a theme and improvising with it; going off in another direction and always coming back to that theme. I use that jazz credo with our humor, and with everything in my life.

Tickets for the May 1 appearance of Cheech & Chong are priced from $38 to $88, and can be reserved right here.

Playwright Lisa Kron performs her one woman show 2.5 MINUTE RIDE, opening this weekend at Two River Theater.

In the hands of its creator, it’s a thrill ride unlike any other; a midway attraction that clatters up a rollercoaster track in Ohio’s Cedar Point amusement park — and hurtles down the other side on a grim pilgrimage to the concentration camps at Auschwitz.

Although it lasts a bit longer than its title suggests, 2.5 Minute Ride is an experience that’s more of a trip through time than space — a “funny, complex meditation on tragedy, grief and family” that unfolds exclusively through the spoken word performance of Lisa Kron, the play’s sole cast member and the author who netted an Obie Award during its inaugural Ride in 1999.

Returning to the one-woman show for the first time in five years — and reuniting with Mark Brokaw, who directed that 1999 production at NYC’s Public Theater — Kron comes to Two River Theater for a new staging that opens this weekend and continues through the second week in May. Going up inside the mainstage Rechnitz Theater at the Bridge Avenue artspace, it’s a Ride that also re-teams the Tony nominee with Two River Theater Company artistic director John Dias, who co-produced the Broadway production of her play Well in 2010.

“I’ve performed this show hundreds of times, and in all kinds of theaters — tiny rooms, huge prosceniums, thrust stages and black boxes,” explains the playwright who’s also performed excerpts from the piece at Sundance Theater Lab and other venues. “All I really need is a chair and a stool, plus some lighting and sound cues.”

The playwright will be getting more than just that standard-issue stool, however, as joining her for the Red Bank ride will be another veteran of the Public — award winning scenic designer Allen Moyer, whose makeover of the Rechnitz space is described by Kron as “a subtle design that’s made to look like a theater set within a theater set.”

At the heart of the experience will be the stories of Kron’s social activist mother Ann — who built a family ritual around those annual treks to Cedar Point — and her father Walter, who despite some serious health issues undertook a sojourn to the sites where his own parents were murdered during the second world war. The parallel storylines switch back and forth in a way that, the playwright notes, “does not tell you when to laugh and when to be solemn.”

“I hadn’t really intended to become a writer — I guess that I sort of began by telling funny anecdotes,” says the Michigan native, a co-founder of the New York-based Five Lesbian Brothers theatrical company. “I was not interested then in telling my own personal story, but it occurred to me that I have two parents whose lives intersected with major events in history.”

“You can say that I have a very deep groove with this show by now,” says Kron of the work that’s been performed by several other actors, and even translated into Japanese. “As a rule I don’t go to see (other productions) — it’s an unsettling experience to me not as a person, but as a playwright.”

With a high-profile new production now up and running, Kron has lost none of her proprietary passion for the signature stage work that has helped her “become a better actor because of it — and the pleasure of it is that it feels brand new every time, like an ongoing conversation with the audience.”

Playing in previews through April 25 and opening Saturday, April 26 (sold out), 2.5 Minute Ride continues at Two River Theater through May 12. Tickets (ranging from $20 to $65 each) and full schedule details can be reserved right here.

Troma Studios multi-media mogul (and barnstorming Barnum) Lloyd Kaufman — seen here with studio mascot TOXIE on the steps of Asbury Lanes — returns to the Shore’s atom-age rec room for the 14th TromaDance Film Festival, Friday night and all day Saturday. 

In an interview with Dorothy Creamer on our old Red Bank oRBit site (archived here on the upperWETside), Troma Studios‘ merry mogul Lloyd Kaufman described his ultra-underground, infra-indie empire as “the jalapeño peppers on the cultural pizza” of a fastfood entertainment industry…a resolutely outsider paragon of poverty-row pedigree, now closing in on 40 years’ worth of a decidedly vintage-vaudeville approach to “creating movies of the future.”

The film production and distribution marque that gave us The Toxic Avenger hasn’t mega-morphed too far beyond its 1980s roots as a video-age inheritor of a proud drive-in tradition; a successor to all of those sub-American International outfits that were little more than a stogie-chomping would-be mogul with a three-line phone and an art-metal desk. Under the leadership of Yale-educated businessman Kaufman and co-founder Michael Herz, the Troma brand would accrue a library of cult favorites that numbered among them Class of Nuke ‘Em High, Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, Surf Nazis Must Die!, and Poultrygeist (for which our own Mike Black contributed to the score).

Armed with both a gore-drenched Herschell Gordon Lewis sensibility AND an extra edge of “strong social satire,” the “Toxie” franchise made mainstream inroads with a trio of sequels,  Marvel comics adaptations, a Saturday morning kidtoon and an off-Broadway musical that boasted music by Bon Jovi’s David Bryan. And, in the tradition of Roger Corman and his various proteges, several Troma epics would see some of the earliest screen work by Samuel L. Jackson, Vincent D’Onofrio and director James Gunn.

What Kaufman and Troma appear to have done best is to remain a boil on the butt of the industry — both the one-dimensional dumbdowns of the MilkDud multiplexes, AND the predictable pretensions of the fair-trade-tea festival circuit. It’s a dynamic that inspired Kaufman and kompany to crash the annual Sundance Festival to establish the pirate-satellite celebration of all things inconveniently indie known as the Tromadance Film Festival — and it’s extended to an ongoing online crowd-funding campaign to invade the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for the purpose of producing a documentary (“about how independent art must fight corporate conglomerates to stay alive”) with the working title of Occupy Cannes.

Before anyone gets to go sunning their bikini lines away on the French Riviera, however, the time has come for TromaDance, an event that’s moved from the snowy slopes of Utah — to Asbury Park; specifically the atom-age tenpins taproom turned retro-rocking rec room that is Asbury Lanes. The fightin’ Fourth Avenue landmark — pretty much the only thing left standing on a block characterized by vacant lots, boarded-up bars and the skeletal carcasses of bankrupt condo projects — has provided snug harbor for the freakishly free of charge filmfest, and on Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13, the center Lanes once more welcome the distinguished ambassador of the alternative arts for the 14th edition of the event that’s turned the Asbury waterfront into a “trash Cannes” for slumming cinephiles, unrepentant rockers and Fat Guys who go Nutzoid for vaudeville that remains verboten even in a post-ironic age where the concepts of the underground and the taboo have been rendered moot.

The sequel to one of the most viral cinematic punchlines of all time sees its New Jersey premiere on the late night of April 13, when BIRDEMIC 2: THE RESURRECTION screens at Asbury Lanes as the final offering of the 2013 TromaDance Festival.

It’s a fitting forum for a Jersey-centric concern that’s embraced the Garden State — home to the Toxic Avenger and many other characters within the frequent setting of Tromaville, NJ — as an appropriately “underdog” base of operations for the TromaDance trip.

Collecting dozens of D.I.Y. films out of every global corner from the USA and Canada to Iran and Lithuania, TromaDance 2013 unspools starting at 5:30 on Friday evening, with an “of the people, by the people, for the people” policy of free admission, first-come-first-served attendance and favoring only of “the filmmakers whose blood, sweat, and hard work are on the screen.”

Although the majority of the onscreen action consists of shorts with titles like “Titans of Newark,” “Sandwich Crazy,” “Space Werewolf” and “The Nazi from Beyond,” a couple of feature-length freakouts take the center Lanes — including Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, a portrait of the nearly forgotten second-generation crooner who flared briefly and brightly as a WOR-TV right-wing talkshow wildman in the 1980s before suffering as precipitous a fall from the public eye as has ever been seen in American life. Kaufman, who famously suffered a dislocated shoulder and a physical ejection from the studio when he appeared as a guest on the program, will introduce a free screening at 6:30pm on Friday.

Saturday’s schedule of free flicks, which climaxes with an 8pm “work print screening” of the Kaufman-directed Return to Nuke ‘Em High, will be capped off at 11pm by the New Jersey premiere of Birdemic 2: The Resurrection, director James Nguyen’s follow-up to his chirpie cheapie that became a viral punchline on every clip show this side of Tosh. The screening — for which a $10 admission will be charged — should go a long way toward answering the question of just how much deadlier a Birdemic becomes, when it becomes self-aware…

“We don’t take ourselves seriously, but we take our movies seriously,” Kaufman told Red Bank oRBit in 2009. “I think that strong social satire is the reason we’re still around. Most of the Troma movies are not just hard-bodied lesbians and people getting their nuts cut off.”

A detailed schedule for the weekend’s wonderments appears below.

Go-to blues authority and pedigreed purist John Hammond “arrives like a big train coming” in a concert TONIGHT at Monmouth University; one of a springtime slate of Performing Arts shows that further features the MU debut of Southside Johnny AND the return of Roger McGuinn.

Press releases, for the Center for the Arts at Monmouth University! We’re happy to be able to do them…and happier still to share the word on FOUR forthcoming shows (brought to you by Vaune Peck, Eileen Chapman and the terrific team at Center central) on the stage of the Pollak Theatre; beginning TONIGHT with seasoned stringbender John Hammond, and continuing with appearances by Step Afrika, Southside Johnny and the return of Roger McGuinn!

Bluesmaster Hammond Booms the Room

Tom Waits called his sound “compelling, complete, symmetrical and soulful; a “great force of nature” that arrives “like a big train coming.”

“A virtuoso. A conjurer. A modernist,” said no less an authority on American music than T-Bone Burnett. “The language goes out through the night…The Big Boom. Boom the room.”

The performer they’re talking about is John Hammond, an artist with a recording career that dates back 50 years — and with a name that in and of itself conjures an entire American century of world-shaking sounds.

As musical pedigrees go, they don’t come much more awesome than being the son of legendary record man and activist John H. Hammond — the same Hammond who’s credited with discovering everyone from Basie to Billie Holliday, Bob Dylan to the Boss. That said, John Paul Hammond has independently and indisputably forged a name for himself as a master blues guitarist and vocalist; a Blues Hall of Famer and multiple Grammy nominee whose recorded debut in 1962 served to keynote a journey that would take in eclectic collaborations with the likes of Waits (whose music formed the foundation of 2001’s Grammy-nominated Wicked Grin), Dr. John, Duane Allman, Robbie Robertson, and G. Love.

The man who once boasted both Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix in his band continues to stake his considerable reputation on his skills as a solo performer — and on the evening of Friday, April 5, the ongoing journey brings John Hammond to the stage of one of the area’s premier venues for acoustic music, the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University.

Presented as part of the 2012-2013 Performing Arts Series by the Center for the Arts at Monmouth, the 8 p.m. event finds Hammond doing what he does best — delivering the blues, through his big voice and harmonica and National guitar — in a way that renders any further embellishment moot. With acoustic blues having been rediscovered — as it has been every so often, by a new generation of fans — Hammond stands uniquely poised to “show them how it’s done,” with laserlike focus, crossroads authority and a youngblood troubador’s passion that hasn’t dimmed a lick since he emerged from the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s.

Fans of homegrown blues are in for an additional treat, as the concert features a special guest opening set by Billy Hector, the veteran slide guitarist, blues belter and songsmith whose résumé as a bandleader (Hot Romance, The Fairlanes, The Shots) and solo performer has seen him share the stage as a peer of some of the most formidable names in music (including the late blues pioneer Hubert Sumlin) — and dazzle crowds with regular headline spots at Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Festival events. It promises to be a fine fit for Hammond, who remains an artist with impeccable taste in music, his instrument, and the audience he plays to. ($30/ take it here for tix)

Step Afrika! troupe makes a joyous noise

It starts down on the ground, with a percussive pound that shakes the stage. A “sandpaper drag” and a click of heels that gets picked up by a clap of hands; a slap on the chest; a snap of the fingers and a whoop, shout, whistle from the heart. This is whole-body music, in all its tapping, clapping, snapping, spoken-word rapping glory — and this is the sound of Step Afrika!

From our nation’s capital comes the troupe known as “the first professional dance company in the world dedicated to the tradition of Stepping” — and if that bears further explanation, you should know that Stepping is a century-long dance tradition that was developed and perfected by the members of African American college fraternities and sororities.

It’s a serious pursuit on the college Step Team competition circuit — and in the hands (and feet) of choreographer Jakari Sherman’s company of dancers, it’s a form that goes ten steps beyond, with echoes of everything from Broadway showstoppers to South African gumboot dance; ballet-trained movements to acrobatic leaps, flips and tumbles.

Traveling the world as official cultural ambassadors of the United States — and riding a resurgent wave of interest in this exciting “new” dance form —the nonprofit company founded by C. Brian Williams conducts an annual tour of colleges and universities across the country, in between trips to such venues as Lincoln Center and the White House. On the night of Friday, April 12, the Center for the Arts at Monmouth University welcomes Step Afrika! to the Pollak Theatre stage for the first time.

Presented as part of the 2012-2013 Performing Arts series at Monmouth, the 8 p.m. performance finds artistic director Sherman and company stepping up for a mixed-bag program of short works that speak to all aspects of the African American experience — with the breathtaking dance moves augmented by vivid costumes, and that nonstop infectious beat.

There will also be a special Beginner’s Step Dance workshop with Step Afrika on Thursday, April 11 at 3:30 p.m in Anacon Hall. No experience is needed. The workshop is open to the public and is FREE for anyone who has purchased a ticket to the concert on April 12. Otherwise there is a $20 fee to participate.  ($32-$42/ take it here for tix)

Southside Johnny takes his Poor Fools to school

As longtime locals on the “Real Jersey Shore” can tell you, a “Southside sighting” is as sure a signifier of holiday good times as anything in the seasonal section of your neighborhood megastore.

For years, this founding father of the Sound of Asbury Park has toasted the New Year and celebrated Independence Day through a series of annual high-profile concerts with the Asbury Jukes, the partystarting organization that he’s fronted for some 40 years. He’s even been known to take part in an all-star Christmas benefit or two, despite being playfully introduced by Bruce Springsteen as The Grinch.

For the 8 p.m. show at the Pollak Theatre, Lyon will be stepping out in front of The Poor Fools,  the stripped-down, “free-wheeling bluegrass inflected folk rock experiment” that made its debut at the 2012 Light of Day concert in Asbury Park. A back-roads tour of the songs, singers and regional seasonings that helped spice up the S.O.A.P. soup, the Poor Fools project presents the veteran big-band ringmaster in an intriguing “no rules, no fences” setting that takes in “a wide range of music from Dylan, Mose Allison, Muddy Waters, NRBQ, Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris, The Band, George Jones and more” — with excursions into Asbury Jukes territory; the classics as well as the deep-track grooves.

Having just released their new album Songs From the Barn, this CD release show will highlight as described by Johnny “a loose mix of songs, stories and banter between the musicians and — hopefully — the audience.” The concert features Lyon in a rare public appearance as guitar player, joined by a team of multi-instrumentalists that include Juke’s musicians and long time collaborators. Band members will be taking turns singing, switching off on instruments and  trying out new material, in a format that finds Southside “just lookin’ to have a good time. It’ll be a little side trip between the usual Asbury Jukes touring and our next recording.”

It’s also another milestone marker for an artist who’s never shied away from investigating all aspects of his signature R&B sound — witness Grapefruit Moon, an album of Tom Waits interpretations that he recorded with La Bamba’s Big Band. The man with the famously acerbic sense of humor remains a genuine lover of music, and when Southside Johnny comes to campus this February, he’ll be opening up his big heart, and giving fans reason to declare an all new hootenanny of a holiday.  ($28, $39, $47/ take it here for tix)

McGuinn Takes Another Turn

By the time he and his fellow Byrds flocked out of the West to take up guitars against the Brit invaders of the mid 1960s, he was already a young veteran in granny glasses — a creature of the jug-band hootenanny scene (Chad Mitchell Trio, The Limeliters) who made Dylan and Seeger’s songs sing to a pop audience; who was present at the creation of modern country rock, and who blazed new trails through a rare virtuosity and pure love of music.

Get Roger McGuinn started on his experiences in the big-time music business, however, and he’ll tell you that “it was always the commerce guys who had all the real fun.”

Nearly fifty years since The Byrds topped the charts with hits like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “My Back Pages” — electrified, trippy folk tunes defined by the signature jingle-jangle of the 12-string — Roger McGuinn is having the time of his life, taking an encyclopedic catalog of American music to multi-generational live audiences.

It’s a seemingly never-ending tour that’s brought him to Monmouth University several times in recent years — for a series of group guitar workshops as well as intimate acoustic concerts — and on the evening of Friday, April 19, the engagingly down-to-earth Rock and Roll Hall of Famer returns to the stage of the Pollak Theatre for a solo showcase that’s expected to draw not only from a rock pedigree that’s stretched from Bobby Darin to Bobby Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, but from the immense portfolio of traditional songs that comprised his four-CD box set The Folk Den Project — an epic endeavor collected from his regular postings on his website (ibiblio.org/jimmy/mcguinn/).

To watch and listen as Roger McGuinn transforms a full-band rock classic into a one-man tour de force is a breathtaking thing — and all in a night’s work for a constantly surprising performer who’s deeply rooted in American musical tradition, while standing as a passionate advocate for do-it-yourself technology and peer-to-peer communities. A man who looks both forward and back. “So much older then, and younger than that now.”

Students, local musicians and passionate civilians will also have the chance to sit in with McGuinn, the day before his concert with a 90-minute Music Industry Workshop/Guitar Circle on the afternoon of April l8th at 1:00. It’s an intimate get-together in the auditorium of historic Wilson Hall, and one in which all are welcome to bring their string-thing instruments as the master expounds upon guitar theory, 21st century recording technique and his decades in the music business (this from one who claims “no sympathy for the recording industry — no recompense for the wicked”).  ($33/ take it here for tix)

They told me there was a broken light for every heart on Broadway…and when the play called NOIR hits the stage in downtown Long Branch, you can take it to the bank that a femme fatale and a greenhorn gumshoe had better keep aware of their surroundings.  (photo by SuzAnne Barabas)

I.

The “Middletown side of Red Bank,” they call it. That place just across the river where the sidewalk races your dreams to see which one can run out faster than a rube’s luck at a find-the-lady table. It wasn’t much to look at — a couple of beaten-down country clubs, a little roadside joint called Nick’s or somesuch — but as I slid over Cooper’s Bridge I picked up a faceful of north wind that damn near knocked my hat into the drink, and reminded me that I wasn’t exactly enjoying this view from behind the glass of a vodka Collins at the Pearl Lounge.

I’d come to this godforsaken little acre to check out a tip from Gabe the Hungarian, a character I knew from too many nights spent down on the dark end of Broadway Long Branch — a neighborhood that’d long since been given over to the odd bit of Leon Rainbow graffiti and the occasional zombie flick. The Hungarian and his missus, who pretty much had the whole block to do with as they pleased after hours, were in the business of putting on certain types of entertainments for certain discerning customers, at a little out-of-the-way establishment called New Jersey Repertory Company — and their “opening night receptions” were the kind of near-legendary wingdings that I for one wouldn’t miss for the world.

Seems that a lawyer by the name of Stan Werse had come to them some weeks back, with a story so far-fetched that it naturally intrigued my Hungarian friend into pondering whether he could do business with this tall stranger who drove a late-model Chrysler with a kiddie seat strapped into the back. I asked Gabe for the facts, just the facts, and he riffed to the effect that “Andrews has left town, Klein is dead, Lydecker is dead, Betty…well she’s still alive, but someone has beat the pretty off her. Clay Holden has his first big chance as a detective…but this is one case that he may not want to solve.”

He showed me a folder that the counselor had left with him, marked only with a single word on the front: NOIR. I told him I’d look into this Werse guy, mostly as a favor, and set off down the block to see Ingrid at the Free Public Library.

My request to grab some interwebs time was met with a little European ice, although things warmed up considerably after I paid my fine for never bringing back the Wally Stroby novel I checked out in 2009. An online once-over told me that our attorney friend was strictly on the square — lifelong Jersey guy, State Bar Association, Widener School of Law, former prosecutor, municipal public defender in places like Middletown, Tinton Falls, Union Beach — and that he “loves politics and is an accomplished Playwright.”

Hot-botting the word “Noir,” I landed on the Asbury Pulp site and learned that it’s “a conflation of two phenomena” that says in essence, “doom is cool. You just met a woman, you had your first kiss, you’re six weeks away from the gas chamber, you’re fucked, and you’re happy about it.”

I scratched the skintag on the back of my neck and stared at the screen while the Freep staff made noises about closing up. Something about this whole business had taken a turn for the Werse, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Sure, the public defender was hardly the first solid citizen to have developed a taste for the darker side of Noir — to slip out of the suburban house for a dance with that lurid and seedy genre of empowered temptresses and damaged anti-heroes and streets lit only by the embers of an unfiltered Chesterfield — but it still didn’t add up. Why would a hard-working professional and respectable family man risk everything, just to throw in for a couple of hours with characters like a bitter and cynical cop, a mystery woman and “a not-as-dumb-as-he-looks resident enforcer?” And why in Sam Hill would he use his real name? I grabbed my hat and decided to pay a visit to our playwright.

II.

The single-name shingle on the door told me that Stan Werse was a Lone Wolf in private practice — and the fact that he answered his own phone suggested it was the kind of one-man office where Philip Marlowe could make himself at home. Werse in person was a long drink of water; dressed in black like Johnny Cash and given over to pronouncements like “never trust trust a policeman…just when you think one’s alright, he turns legit.” I was about to remark how much he sounded like a character from an old movie when it hit me: The Asphalt Jungle. The cat was quoting verbatim dialogue from Asphalt Jungle, and Out of the Past and The Big Sleep and a dozen other vintage Films Noir from the 1940s and 50s.

The public servant took a bottle of something out of his desk and set it down in front of me, with the assurance that “it’s a gift, for you…these guys are clients of mine.” I was about to uncap it and take a swig when I noticed the grinning skull on the label, and the big lettering that read Blair’s Death Sauce.

“I’ve been bought for less, counselor — and tempted by spicier,” I jibed, playing abstractly with the little plastic death’s-head that dangled like a hoodoo totem from the neck of the bottle.

The counselor wasn’t even pretending to laugh, however — a shadow crossed his face as he leaned back in his chair, looked past me and intoned, “We’re from the generation of unfulfilled dreams and diminished returns…we never had our Woodstock. We went to the movies in Middletown.”

I was about to smartphone the nearest film-quote website when it dawned on me that this wasn’t a snippet of existential fatalism from some character played by Robert Ryan or Van Heflin. This was the playwright in his own words, and the playwright was talking like a man who had a story to get off his chest — a story behind a story.

I decided to drop the vaudeville act and get right down to brass tacks. “What’s the skinny, Stanley? What can you tell me about NOIR?”

“Noir? Noir is about the anxiety, the violence, alienation and obsession that permeate those stories,” the lawyer mused, peering through the venetians at an unseen something outside the soulless officeplex. “It’s also a style…there’s a certain hyperreality to the characters, and on the other hand a gritty reality that people didn’t want to face.”

“Actually, I meant…”

“The cataclysm of World War Two resonated with the public…violent death became commonplace,” the counselor continued, standing up as if to make a summation. “The language in the Noir stories was elevated, and the lines were phenomenal.”

“Not noir…NOIR!” I spat, twisting the cap off the Blair’s bottle as if wringing some palookaville fink’s neck. “What can you tell me about the play called NOIR? I mean, I got a heavy deadline over at the paper and all…”

The lawyer sat back down, dropping into his swivel seat with something akin to a whole-body sigh. At length he rolled his thoughts into words on his tongue, and said,”NOIR is like…it’s like walking into a vault at RKO Pictures, and finding a great film that was never released.”

As he talked, the whole twisted backstory behind this NOIR episode came into focus. How after winning a New Jersey Playwriting competition in 2010, he felt a compulsion to write “something more visceral” — and how his award winning “neo-noir” screenplay 1954 cemented his interest in that bygone era, as well as a sobering realization that “all noirs require a secret…and our lives today are anything but secret.”

Turns out too that our Lone Wolf legal eagle had some helpers after all — including one Marc Geller, a director type who called the shots when Werse’s script first went public at the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival. It’s probably no coincidence that Geller’s been there on the scene for this world premiere engagement in Long Branch; a gig that goes up in previews on April 4 and runs through May 5 before high-tailing it out of LB. He’s apparently called in some chits and assembled a crew for this caper that features Darrell Glasgow as the greenhorn detective, Catherine LeFrere as the lady of mystery, along with Thomas Grube and Michael McCoy — the sort of pros who seem to pop up in a totally different city, under a totally different name, every couple of months.

Werse, for his part, had somehow managed to get some innocent parties caught up in this whole thing — including his brother Eric, who he talked into composing some original music and a “mood-setting” song that spotlight the trumpet playing of Bill Crawford, and even an arrangement by Middletown-based Christian singer Nancy Scharff. I mean, you kind of expect a jazz cat to be hanging around this lowlife scene…but the lady who does the big Christmas benefit shows at the Count Basie?

III.

While he spilled the details, I was beginning to sweat like a hunk of rancid pork that some joker had carved into a likeness of Robin Williams — and to feel a sting that started in my fingers and worked its way into my scalp, my nose, my lips and the booger-vaults of my bloodshot eyes. Was it me, or was it starting to get hotter than fenced plutonium in here? I took an impulsive gulp from the bottle in front of me, and unfortunately lived to regret it.

“My play starts as a flashback, and has a narration,” the attorney continued. “It has certain noir conventions — the spider woman who ensnares men; the sap who gets drawn into it — but the last thing you want is to lapse into camp or self-parody.”

“Know what I want, counselor? I want to believe you’ve been watching too many of those Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake pictures,” I said, playing it cool as possible as I hoisted my sweat-drenched form from my chair with a hideous sucking sound.

“I want to believe that you’ve got more sense than to mess around and get played the chump by the shadowy side of the street. And I want to know that when quitting time comes this evening, you’ll be hurrying home to Millstone, to that beautiful family of yours, to take stock of what’s real in this world, and to swear off the fatalism, the obsession, the self-doubt that can sap a Noir fan’s soul.”

“Self-doubt,” the playwright repeated, swiveling around to face the wall as I saw myself out of the room through blazing and blinded eyes. “My moment of self-doubt has lasted from 1958 to the present.”

I crashed and stumbled down to the stairs to the lobby while a symphony of delicious, white-hot agony crescendoed through every soaked fiber of my being, and the foyer floor rose up to greet me as I landed on the gift bottle that I’d hastily pocketed on my way out the law office. I watched like a dead man through pain-puffed eyes as the thick, dark red liquid oozed out of the broken bottle — and I thought, in those moments before everything went crimson, that if NOIR the play kicks ass even a fraction as much as this Death Sauce, then the Jersey Shore has anointed itself a new Philosopher King of a delightfully damned place called Noir.

Ticket reservations, showtimes and additional information on NOIR can be found right here.