Google the words “Philadelphia playwright,” and you’ll find Bruce Graham. This often caustic, darkly comic playwright speaks loudly the dialect of Philly in works like ‘North of the Boulevard’, ‘Rizzo’, and the annual staging of ‘The Philly Fan’.
Graham is now bringing his Philly flare to 1812 Productions‘ ‘The Flatlanders,’ a Poconos snow-bound, strained couples comedy, on stage at Plays & Players Theatre through Feb. 18.
Written by Graham and directed by Matt Pfeiffer, ‘The Flatlanders’ stars real life husband and wife Jennifer Childs and Scott Greer.
The production has a unique lyricism to its tone and characters beyond Graham’s usual angry union workers, ward leaders, bookies and Italian mayors – real neighborhood guys.
“’The Flatlanders’, to me, represents what I think is a different side to Bruce,” notes Childs, actress and artistic director at 1812 Productions. “There’s still that snappy, fast-paced dialog and wit that we know from all of his work. And ‘The Flatlanders’ does have its own edge. But it’s also sort of romantic, which is something I’ve rarely experienced from him.”
Graham lets out a loud laugh at the thought of a tonal sea change.
“This is a valentine for Scott and Jen,” Graham says. “It’s so nice to be able to write for specific actors in Philadelphia. I couldn’t do that back in the day and with early plays of mine such as ‘Burkie;’ because we had no theaters here. There’s also a lot of me in ‘Flatlanders’ and my relationship with my wife, with whom I just shared our 43rd wedding anniversary. There’s a lot of my wife and her quirks in Jen’s character, too.”
‘The Flatlanders’ takes place in a Poconos bungalow during one evening across several hours, a time where its characters, Ronnie and Michael, will delve deep into each other’s never-revealed secrets, while seeking out new ways to thrill each other.
“During the time from when I first started to write ‘The Flatlanders’ — over a three-year period — I kept asking these little moral questions about two people who have to break into someone’s house because their car died. I was able to put in more gags or get more mileage out of the jokes that existed. Once I established what was going to happen to them, I was able to put all the icing on the cake, which was cool.”
‘The Flatlanders’ Ronnie, a pillow fetishist and an interior designer, and Michael, a realtor who always worries that he is boring, allows the married Greer-Childs union its own say.
“There’s space within Bruce’s characters so that Scott and I can bring our own rhythms and our own pieces of ourself in there as well,” said Childs. “And laughter – in the rehearsal room that Matt Pfeifer has set up for us, all we do is laugh.”
‘The Flatlanders’ is on stage at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Place, through Feb. 18. For information and tickets, visit 1812productions.org/the-flatlanders
