Modern Notions of Love in ‘Weehawken’ at Tiffany

Leave the kids at home for “Weehawken,” which author Yvonne Wilder describes as “a passionate comedy,” opening Friday at the Tiffany.

“It’s an adult romantic comedy that deals with sex and passion,” she said of the New Jersey-set story. “So there’s some explicit sex onstage, some nudity, too. I wanted to write about the condition of falling in love in the ‘80s. I come from a time when people (supposedly) fell in love, got married and stayed married till they died. Nowadays, a lot of us have been divorced. We fall in love--and don’t necessarily know what to do. The blueprint is no longer valid.”

The “culturally mismatched” lovers here are actress Nina (Jennifer Bassey of the TV soap opera “All My Children”) and contractor Ben (Paul Mantee of “Cagney & Lacey”). “They’re not willing to listen to each other, learn from one another. It turns to rage when they don’t get what they want. Nina’s sister Marie has taken the path of getting married and staying together (with her husband)--and sacrificing a lot of things: Freedom, adventure. So the sisters are also like two sides of the same woman.”

Wilder, who’s worked as a choreographer, director and actress (she’s the beleaguered mom in those Pay-Less shoe commercials), entered the business in a comedy team with Jack Colvin (who’s directing here). Her name then was Yvonne Othon, which she changed after completing the stage and film versions of “West Side Story.” “I’m a Latino lady, and I’ve got a Latino statement to make,” she said. “But this (play) isn’t that. I’m writing a novel about that.”

Director Constance Grappo (“Andrea’s Got Two Boyfriends”) is back with a new play, Susan Stauter’s “Miss Fairchild Sings,” newly opened at Burbank’s Little Victory Theatre. “It takes place in a mental hospital,” Grappo offered. “It’s the story of a lady janitor, Francine, who’s very dissatisfied with her own life. So she pursues a patient, Marguerite Fairchild--a top movie star who went crazy and killed her agent/lover--to vicariously get some excitement.”

Also on hand is a love interest (played by Lee Wilkof, Grappo’s real-life husband), “a kid star--an accordionist who’s now on the skids.” The theme, she added, “has to do with the characters not facing their own personal lives. They buy that old Hollywood line, what they told us in the movies. So this is about finding what we enjoy from the old pictures--the entertainment they offered--and then presenting the flip side, the reality in our own lives. All the characters have to find that balance.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: An aristocratic Russian family caught up in the Russian Revolution sets the emotional stage for Stephen Poliakoff’s “Breaking the Silence” at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Said The Times’ Sylvie Drake: “The playwright has created an extraordinary image of quintessential displacement--in one’s skin, in one’s beliefs and in one’s world.”

Kathleen O’Steen, in Variety, praised the acting of Kandis Chappell, Ken Ruta and Sally Smythe, and said that “director Warner Shook lets the character drama shine through, but unfortunately the play is muddled by too many peripherals that are unclear.”

In the L.A. Weekly, Tom Provenzano dubbed it “a superbly crafted production, flawlessly directed. . . . Technically, the play is gorgeous, with outstanding sets by Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio. But the great wonder of this production is the unusually high quality of performances.”

Said the Herald-Examiner’s Richard Stayton: “It is Poliakoff’s masterful shift from the political to the psychological that makes us feel that Anna Karenina must be about to hurl herself beneath the train. His last, amazing twists of plot and character pitch us into an emotionally devastating climax.”

Tom Jacobs wrote in the Daily News: “Poliakoff’s ideas can be summed up in a paragraph. Bureaucracies (particularly in totalitarian states) stifle innovation. Genius can be nearly intolerable to live with. And women deserve to be treated as equals. Not exactly great revelations, these.”

Drama-Logue’s T.H. McCulloh found the play “rich in characterization, shape and theatrical craft, made even richer by Shook’s freewheeling direction. Though he “allows a bit of self-indulgent physicality early on, his point is obvious, as the piece develops and his form balances rhythms beautifully.”