Jackie Hoffman as aging actor Ariana Russo (left) and Kelly Kinsella as her fly captain, Margo, in E. Dale Smith’s Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings).
In Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings), the multitalented Jackie Hoffman portrays Ariana Russo, a barely talented amateur actor who is literally and figuratively at the end of her rope. Stuck in the minor role of the ghostly and ghastly Fruma-Sarah, in a community theater staging of Fiddler on the Roof in Roselle Park, N.J., she must spend the first “hour and seven minutes” of the show offstage, strapped in her flying harness and waiting for her cue to soar.
Ariana (Hoffman) and her flask with Margo (Kinsella) at her back.
Ariana’s only companions are a stagehand named Margo (Kelly Kinsella) and a large flask of bourbon. As the minutes tick by and the liquor is guzzled, Ariana spills out the details of her messy life and calls into question the solace and the sacrifices that come with doing “40 shows in the past 15 years.”
Emerging playwright E. Dale Smith is largely successful in crafting a one-act that smoothly segues from satire to pathos. There are jabs at Roselle Park’s Italian community and some priceless digs at the world of community theater, including throwaway gags about productions like “Assassins, Jr.” and an “all-female Equus.” Indeed, this version of Fiddler, Ariana explains, stars an actor named Joey Esposito as Tevye, and the shtetl girls are dressed in an “unexpected polka-dot motif.” Smith is equally deft at poking fun at the gay community (“Every time you go over to their houses, all of the beds are made”) and of the drinking life (“Livers are replaceable. Talent is a finite resource”) before turning dark. Ariana saw gay life as aspirational until realizing she had been married to a homosexual man for decades. Drunks are hilarious until they cross the line to become worrisome alcoholics.
Still, Smith and director Braden M. Burns make a couple big asks of the audience in terms of willfully suspending their disbelief. First, the fact that Ariana is secured to her rope for an hour when it takes mere seconds to strap her in makes sense only via the visual metaphor it paints. And perhaps the bigger sin is that Burns has Hoffman dangling from a cord on a stage the size of a large coffee table, but it fails to serve up any moments of laugh-out-loud physical comedy.
Second, Ariana, who works days as a real estate agent, tells a straightforward tale of encountering a ghost while showing a house, and it comes across as if, yes, apparitions obviously exist and this is a normal workplace danger. Ghosts are a thematic presence here, Fruma-Sarah being one and Ariana at risk of fading into one, with her allegiance to whiskey making her ever more the pariah. But Fruma-Sarah’s recounting of having to break out in a tap dance to drown out the spooky footsteps at a haunted home in South Orange, accepted without a bit of doubt from Margo, is more a distraction than it is a reinforcement of a theme.
Ariana (Hoffman) contemplates her life as Margo (Kinsella) looks on. Photographs by Hunter Canning.
More effective is the play’s surprising exploration of the sacrifices involved in being a good mother. Ariana’s boozing and selfishness have burned the bridge between her and her only daughter, while Margo, twice divorced and with a teenage son, must decide between being there for him or joining a professional touring company. In a lengthy monologue, she ponders whether to “abandon my son to go do the one thing that I love,” to which Ariana can only bitterly reply, “Jesus, you talk a lot.”
Hoffman, whose recent credits include a hilarious turn as Yente in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene production of Fiddler, gracefully treads the comedy-tragedy divide, offering just enough shtick and a sure sense of comic timing that she turns on and off at will to divulge the sad clown behind the greasepaint. Kinsella, in a mostly thankless role that feels built to serve as a prompt for her costar, seems listless. Stagehands are not necessarily known for their buoyant personalities, but Dan Alaimo’s smart lighting design of Rodrigo Escalante's tight and tidy backstage space is not the only reason Margo ends up primarily in the shadows.
Those who have successfully blocked out the Donald Trump era might be triggered by the political rhetoric that Smith has sprinkled into the mix, and for a work that was developed during the pandemic and is apparently set in the present day (Margo’s ex-husband “still has a bumper sticker for Trump.”), the show blissfully, if bizarrely, takes place in a New Jersey of the mind where COVID never appeared, not even as a ghost.
Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings) runs through July 25 at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre (338 West 23rd St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 5 p.m. Saturdays and at 4 p.m. Sundays. Patrons are required to show proof of vaccination upon arrival. For tickets and information, visit frumasarah.com.
