Review of "Bus Stop"

Strangers in the night
Drama and comedy binds the stranded characters of ‘Bus Stop’

By PAULA SHEIL
Record Staff Writer
Published Thursday, Jul 7, 2005

A classic of American theater, William Inge’s “Bus Stop” cooks up a slice of rural life full of love, lechery and laughter with a crust of loneliness and despair.

The 1955 comic romance is the second of three shows being presented this summer by the Stockton Theatre Project, a collaboration among the city’s leading theater companies. The series concludes next month with a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific.”

“Bus Stop” is acclaimed as an ensemble piece, director Harvey Jordan said. The story unfolds after a bus load of strangers is forced to spend the night in a diner because of a snowstorm.

“Inge said he did the play as a study in ensemble acting, creating a reason why people were stuck together,” Jordan said. “He didn’t want to just trap these people together to impact each other, but to force them to take time to consider one another. From that, they grow.”

The central story concerns Bo (Brian Peccia), a randy cowboy who expects to wrangle a woman like a wild pony, and a nightclub singer named Cherie (Catherine Frye), who objects to being emotionally hogtied. Don Murray and Marilyn Monroe filled the roles in the 1956 film version.

Convinced Cherie is the love of his life, Bo managed to get her on the bus with him and plans to marry and keep her on his Montana ranch. She’s trying to figure out how to get out of a one-night stand, enlisting the help of the local sheriff, Will (James Key). Bo’s sidekick, a cowboy named Virgil (Sean Dinnell), steadies the emotional seesaw.

Nineteen-year-old Frye comes to the role of Cherie not intimidated by Monroe’s work. Jordan has toned down Cherie’s Ozark accent and cut some lines referring to her backwoods beginnings, Frye said. The goal is to make the character as “realistic as possible” while preserving the comic aspects.

“She’s a very eccentric character, and I am keeping her very sincere,” Frye said.

People who have seen the film but not the play will discover a slightly different “Bus Stop,” with less background on the main characters and more humor.

“In general, the play is lighter,” Jordan said. “It is a mix of comedy and sentiment and drama.”

Two other dalliances take place in Grace’s (Joanna Bernazzani) diner. She wants to serve up something more than steak for bus driver Carl (Dean Phillip Gundlach), and her waitress, high school student Elma (Megan Devencenzi), falls for a Shakespeare-quoting passenger, Dr. Lyman (Jordan). Stewed in alcohol, Lyman spends the evening recounting affairs with former students.

Peccia, 22, who appeared in productions of “Man of La Mancha” and “How I Learned to Drive,” is no stranger to men who want what they want when they want it. His Bo is “like a puppy who doesn’t know how big he is.”

“That’s where his charm comes from,” Peccia added. “He goes to rodeos. He ropes cattle. He looks at Cherie as kind of like a prize.”

(Copyright © 1998-2005 ONI Stockton, Inc)