Theatre in Review: Stoopdreamer (the cell)A lost slice of New York comes to achingly vivid life in Stoopdreamer. I'm referring to Windsor Terrace, a section of northwestern Brooklyn that was once home to a thriving community of Irish Catholics. It was the kind of working class enclave where jobs could be had at the Brillo factory or National Metal Art, where every mother dreamed that her son would become a cop, and where, on Sunday, the neighborhood men "would gather in groups according to what county they came from," attend the last Mass of the day, and head for Farrell's Bar, "the sun reflecting off of their Holy Name Society pins." Indeed, Stoopdreamer unfolds in Farrell's Bar, in the present, its glory days long past and the customers few and on the far side of fifty. As Jimmy, the bartender, notes, the neighborhood has changed beyond recognition as the hipsters have moved in. Across the street is a place offering 56 different craft beers. At Farrell's, you have two choices: Budweiser or Budweiser. As Jimmy tells it, the beginning of the end came when Robert Moses announced a plan that would lop off a big chunk of Windsor Terrace in order to build a depressed highway. It required the displacement of more than 1,200 families and dug a slash through the middle of the community, kicking off a diaspora that, over the years, would be exacerbated by the lure of the suburbs, the flight of small industry from the city, and changing demographics. "By fall of 1954, that end of Windsor Terrace became a ghost town," Jimmy says. Pat Fenton's new work isn't so much a play as a cantata for spoken voices, an Irish wake for a way of life that is gone and never to return. Jimmy is joined in reminiscence by Billy Coffey, who dreamed of being a writer but nevertheless succumbed to pressure and put in his 20 years as a cop on the beat, and Janice Joyce, a lady of certain years who long ago fled to New Jersey, and, on this night, has returned, looking for a piece of her past. There is a hair of a plot, the resolution of which is obvious from the moment it is introduced. However, Stoopdreamer is so gorgeously written that the words are more than enough. We are told of women who "accepted the routine of working next to a conveyor belt in a steam-filled laundry room, pinning numbers with brass safety pins to endless bundles of starched shirts as they rolled by." Pete Hamill is quoted as remembering that, on hot summer days, there were "so many Irish saloons in the neighborhood with their doors open, that you could keep up with the changing ball score of the Brooklyn Dodgers by just walking by them. Every one of their radios would be tuned in to the game." We hear about Moon Mullins, whose life of drudgery in a factory was justified by the two weeks he spent each August in Far Rockaway, where he "had everything he needed, a good night in bed with a woman he didn't know, holding him tight, plenty to drink, and music." There's Paddy the Hawk, who, according to legend, died hiding in Gus' Diner the day it was demolished. And there's Ursula, who works the box office at the local movie house, watching the life of the community go by. "She watched them go by in wedding limousines with horns blaring and people cheering on the sidewalks, and she watched them go by in funeral hearses silently heading toward the tall black gates of Greenwood Cemetery." Wakes were held at Smith's funeral home, "a sort of celestial passageway out of Windsor Terrace." Under Kira Simring's sensitive, light-fingered direction, all three members of the cast shine. Jack O'Connell, gifted with a face like the map of Ireland, brings plenty of crusty charm to the role of Jimmy, although he stumbles on his lines a little bit. Bill Cwikowski captures Billy's complex love-hate feelings for a way of life he treasured, yet which pushed him down a path he never wanted. Robin Leslie Brown is appealing as Janice, who ran a little wild in her youth and wonders where it all went. Adding another layer of evocative detail is Gertjan Houben's production design, which layers the upstage wall with images of Windsor Terrace in its heyday -- street scenes, movie houses, jukeboxes. Most powerful of all are the images of the neighborhood torn up by the demolition. Most of the projections are in black-and-white, but some of them bleed into color, a deft metaphor for the past fading into the present. M. Florian Staab's sound design blends radio sports broadcasts, earthmovers, thunderstorms, and an array of period pop tunes, plus his own original music, into a highly effective soundscape. The costumes, by Siena Zoé Allen, are also fine. New York, of course, is forever in a state of flux, and no neighborhood ever stays the same for more than a generation or two. To live here is, in one sense, to be forever in a state of loss. Every part of the city should be so lucky to have a writer like Pat Fenton, who, at least for an hour, can take us back to a time, place, and way of life that, at least for a little while, seemed like it would last forever. --David Barbour 
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