Laughs and Human Drama at the Bickford

While talking about the playwright Richard Dresser, John Pietrowski makes a comparison people often scoff at. But he insists it's true.

“I get laughed at about this but I think Richard is our Chekhov, I do,” said Pietrowski, who’s directing Dresser’s “The Last Days of Mickey and Jean” at the , Sept. 22 through Oct. 9.

“Chekhov is a very realistic writer, we like to think, and if you really look at it, a lot of it’s very funny and a lot of it is very funny social commentary,” Pietrowski said. “I think Richard is doing the same thing.” He adds that both create typical character types, but the truths of their pieces are found by digging beneath the seemingly standard characterizations.

In the instance of “The Last Days of Mickey and Jean,” the characters are Mickey, a retired Boston gangster, and his longtime girlfriend, Jean. The couple is traveling the world, currently in Paris, but Mickey is getting restless and hoping for some work. Jean has stuck with Mickey through thick and thin (and even a few wives), but she’s longing to go back home, and regrets not having a family of her own.

On the surface, Mickey and Jean seem like a stereotypical gangster couple, with laughs coming from the pair living abroad, away from their comfort zone. But there are elements of their relationship that ring true.

“In a very funny way, he becomes completely dependent on his girlfriend,” Pietrowski said. “And she really is the central character of the play. She is the woman who has put up with his machinations, has put up with his lies. And she begins to learn, over the course of the play, that she had, all along, all of the tools to be a very creative, competent human being.”

The director added that he found parallels between the story and current issues, such as the financial breakdown. at the beginning of the play, Mickey has gotten away with his crimes while having enough money to retire in comfort and travel the world (even if he’d like to settle down).

“I think this is what Richard is up to and I often think that he isn’t given credit for that,” Pietrowski said. “He’s a fantastic playwright, a fantastic humorist, but he’s got something going about how we live in this world and how things actually bring us down, it’s the small things, not the huge things.”

Even with all this talk about Chekov and human behavior, “The Last days of Mickey and Jean” is very funny. It has plenty of one-liners (one character wonders why the Mona Lisa is so small if everyone wants to see it) and plenty of funny situations, including Oliver Wadsworth playing three different characters, one being a somewhat pathetic love interest for Jean, and another a transvestite Mickey brings back to his and Jean’s hotel room. But Pietrowski said in addition to those obvious laughs, there’s more humor underneath.

“I think that directors who aren’t interested in getting underneath a play will always focus on the one-liners, which are there, to the (detriment to) the deeper situations, and, I think, the very sly satire that Richard is putting out there,” he said

The production is a co-production between three theaters: , where Pietrowski is the artistic dirctor, the Bickford, and Oldcastle Theatre in Bennington, VT.

The collaboration came about because the play fits the mission of both the Playwrights and the Bickford. Playwrights stages new plays, and while “Mickey and Jean” isn’t technically new (it debuted in Massachusetts last year) it’s been changed enough for Playwrights. And it’s a perfect fit for the Bickford’s mission of bringing new life to existing plays.

The collaboration also gives the Playwrights a venue as the company looks for a new venue. Bennington got involved because of an agreement for it and the Bickford to collaborate on a play.

The production had a run in Bennington over the summer, which gave Pietrowski a chance to make some changes for the run at the Bickford. That includes making the transitions smoother and adding a scene that was in an earlier draft, but removed for the Bennington run.

“I get to see things and make some changes, the actors get more time with the play, and good actors will get better as time passes,” Pietrowski said. “And the writer gets to see the play in front of a couple of different audiences and make sure that it’s doing what he wants it to do.

“There’s a real problem in the theater world with new work. We call it ‘World Premiere-itis.’ Everybody wants to do the first production of a play but then nobody wants to do the second and third productions. And it’s really in the second and third and fourth productions that you learn about the piece. It’s an advantage in many, many ways.”

"The Last Days of Mickey and Jean" wil be performed at the Bickford Theatre, 6 Normandy Heights Road in Morristown, Sept. 22 through Oct. 9. Tickets cost $40 for general admission, $36 for seniors, and $20 for students. Call 973-971-3706 or go to BickfordTheatre.org for tickets and information.