Immigrant’s Experience Makes for Bittersweet ‘Mary’s Dream’

Don’t let the presence of Justin Tanner at the director’s helm fool you--”Mary’sDream” at the Cast Theatre is not a comedy. Taking a hard look at social class and the immigrant dream, this new play by Angelo Michael Masino traces the downbeat arc of an Italian American laborer’s failed ambitions.

A quartet of poignant portrayals drives the bittersweet tale of Michael (Masino), a construction worker who’s losing his innately optimistic spirit trying to make a better life for his wife, Mary (Christine McQuade), and unborn child. It’s a responsibility Michael takes very much to heart--because he’s third generation, he believes it’s up to him “to move us on.”

His frustration is aggravated by the apparent good fortune of his friend Murph (Tony Ketchum), who parlays mob connections into riches. The elevation of Murph and his sassy wife, Molly (Kathleen Lambert), into the ranks of the tacky nouveau riche is amusing.

Surprisingly, however, Tanner’s staging is least effective with the funny bits, which often feel forced (a subplot involving a neighborhood exhibitionist and a sex toy particularly misfires). The production is strongest in its heartfelt depiction of Michael’s deepening depression, and his noble refusal to make the moral compromises that enabled Murph’s success.

Masino mined a potent source for the self-sacrificing immigrant experience in Pietro Di Donato’s novel “Christ in Concrete,” with its central metaphor of laborers who fall to their deaths in wet cement. Yet despite the play’s short running time, Masino is hard-pressed to fill it with sufficient narrative to keep its characters’ struggles from becoming somewhat repetitious.

BE THERE

“Mary’s Dream,” Cast Theatre, 805 N. El Centro, Hollywood. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 5. $15. (323) 462-0265. Running time: 1 hour, 5 minutes.