By Eva Trieger
POWAY, California– Anyone who has ever been in a band, fantasized about being in a band, or been in love with a band member, will find something honest, poignant and relatable in Jonathan Rosenberg’s original musical Long Way to Midnight.
Through a process, “Scripts in the Box,” playwrights are able to gain immediate feedback while airing the script to an intimate audience. Joyce Reynolds Sinclair of TheaterWorks shared this model with Rosenberg who enjoyed this approach with good results. Taking to heart the comments and suggestions of viewers and actors, Rosenberg is already doing some fine tuning.
This unique model of taking a play reading and making it personal, esoteric, and almost clandestine, lends some charged air to the content. Jonathan Rosenberg and Ilene Kruger solicited a group of diverse people last Saturday afternoon in the living room of their home. Each participant was given a script, with a preface page of questions to consider during the reading. Rosenberg explained that he was seeking candid reactions to his work, and that we would have an opportunity, between acts, to share our insights or hurdles.
The group was comprised of couples, singles, middle agers, a teen, a singing coach, some actors, some teachers and one dog, who, while well behaved, was not welcomed into the living room with the rest of us. Over hummus and other refreshments, we made introductions and played “Jewish Geography”, each of us sharing reviews of other shows we’ve loved and actors we’ve admired. It was a cohesive, energetic group and I felt, as a listener, that I was part of a chosen few and became invested in the reading.
The story is one that middle aged rock and rollers will know and comprehend. We spend our lives becoming what our families, parents, and society dictate, but our passions run deeper, and Michael, the main character, loves playing music. This does not provide the lifestyle desired by Gail, his materialistic wife, nor does it offer the nachas, sought by his aged mom, and so he is a psychiatrist by training, but a frustrated one with thwarted dreams of pursuing his music.
While other characters, former love, Donna, daughter Sarah, a housekeeper, and fellow band member round out the cast, the most touching and humorous character is Michael’s mother. She is worried about Michael’s happiness, her own mortality, and doesn’t quite know how to accept the boundaries of the mother-son relationship. Rosenberg provides a tender and touching treatment of the mother, Eve’s death, and his writing is so honest and true that the actor portraying Michael actually wept during this section of the play. In fact, in the small living room, many sniffles were heard as people experienced the loss as their own.
Rosenberg hopes to have Long Way to Midnight produced within the next six months. Readings have been well attended and responses have been positive. In the words of Neil Young, “Rock and Roll Can Never Die” and it’s clear that Jonathan Rosenberg agrees.
*
Trieger is a freelance writer who specializes in cxovering the arts. She may be contacted at eva.trieger@sdjewishworld.com