Theatre in Review: The Shoemaker (Theatre Row)

	Danny Aiello. Photo: Ben Hider

Less than a minute into The Shoemaker, the playwright, Susan Charlotte, announces her intentions with unusual clarity. Hilary, a middle-aged woman, enters a shoe-repair shop. The owner refuses to help her, claiming, oddly -- it is the middle of the afternoon -- that he's closed for the day. Hilary is not to be deterred: "My sole is broken," she announces - and if you think she's talking only about footwear, you're deeply mistaken.

Both blatant in its intentions and listless in execution, The Shoemaker handles its characters like dolls in need of repair. First among them is the title character, who, given his personal history, views memory as a curse to be avoided at all costs. As the play begins, it is September 11, 2001, and he is busy ignoring the events outside his door. With Hilary as a captive audience, he expounds on the art of shoemaking, his fraught relationship with his daughter, and his recent encounter with Louise, a young woman with a pair of high heels in need of fixing. Such digressions are more than a little bewildering. Instead of asking the questions that haunted everyone on that terrible day -- Who did this? Why is it happening? What will happen next? Did anyone survive? -- Charlotte's characters are content to shoot the breeze.

Well, not entirely: Hilary, a professor of film, brings up Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, triggering the Shoemaker's unwanted memories of growing up Jewish in Italy before World War II. She also pushes him to admit that Louise must have worked at the World Trade Center -- although there's little reason for such an assumption. This allows both to tear up periodically, however.

Hilary exits and Louise enters, giving the Shoemaker a profound shock -- but what follows is more small talk, about the Bronx Zoo, animals (Louise is fond of deer), the game Simon Says, and the experience of toasting marshmallows at summer camp. "You didn't come in here to go on and on," says the Shoemaker -- little does he know. Really, you'd never know that a world-shaking calamity is taking place right down the street.

The truth of Louise's fate is revealed, in a Rod Serling twist that leads to an aria of anguish by the Shoemaker -- who, by the way, spends much of his time arguing with his dead father. (And why not? The old boy answers back.) After all this chitchat, he must finally face how the Holocaust forever sundered his family, leaving him with a crushing burden of survivor guilt.

This climax isn't really moving, largely because the ultimate destination of The Shoemaker is never in doubt, even it if takes its own sweet time getting there. Sadly, the author has found no meaningful action with which to make her point; worse, her mix-and-match approach to global tragedies is profoundly unenlightening. She has nothing to say about the murder of six million Jews or of 3,000 Manhattan office workers; she's only interested in deploying them for their tear-jerking characteristics.

Antony Marsellis' slow-moving direction seems designed to keep the action going for at least 90 minutes. Given the fact that they are rarely given anything convincing to say or do, all three cast members perform reasonably well. In the title role, even when saddled with the most meandering monologue, Danny Aiello has a way of commanding your attention, making you feel that something significant might happen any second. (Then again, as star and co-producer, he is more than usually culpable for what's on stage at Theatre Row.) You have to admire the way Alma Cuervo, as Hilary, listens to Aiello- intently, as if absolutely vital information is being shared. Lucy DeVito brings a low-key charm to the role of Louise, even if the role is nothing more than a plot device.

Cause Célèbre, the company behind the production, is reportedly focused more on writing and directing than on production values, an assertion borne out here. On the plus side, Ray Klausen's repair-shop setting is loaded with evocative details, including advertising flyers, an American flag, family photos, and an Atwater Kent radio. And David Toser's costumes are perfectly fine. But Bernie Dove's lighting doesn't do enough to distinguish between interior and exterior states. If the voiceovers of the Shoemaker's father -- Dove also did sound design -- were less crudely executed, the scenes in which the Shoemaker talks to his father might work better. The excerpts from "Nessun Dorma" are a nice touch, however.

With its slow pace, lackadaisical action, and lachrymose treatment of deadly serious subject matter, The Shoemaker clearly aims to be the feel-bad hit of the summer. But, by juxtaposing these profoundly complex and terrible events and using them for easy tears, Charlotte flattens them both into one dimension. Her obvious sincerity is no excuse; when dealing with material this grave, good intentions count for nothing. The Shoemaker wants to make an important statement; instead its clumsiness and sentimentality prove offensive.--David Barbour