Urban Stages, NYC: Theatre Review

'THE SWEEPERS' : AT  WAR'S END, A NEW DAWN IN A LITTLE ITALY

The New York Times
By Lawrence Van Gelder
April 9, 2002

Change is in the air. The time is the summer of 1945. The atomic age is about 
to dawn. World War II is drawing to a close, and life in these United States 
is about to be transformed, including life in a little backyard in Boston.

In that yard and among three longtime friends and neighbors — women of 
Italian-American background and Roman Catholic upbringing — John C. Picardi 
has set "The Sweepers," his often humorous, eventually gripping drama that 
for all the specificity of its time and place nevertheless resonates across 
the ensuing decades of sociological change, conflicts and casualties.

Briskly directed by Frances W. Hill and playing through May 5 at Urban 
Stages, "The Sweepers" focuses on Dotty, Mary and Bella. The doll-faced, 
slightly ditsy Dotty (Brigitte Viellieu-Davis) has a husband in a nearby 
veterans' hospital and a son on Okinawa. 

The tall, rather repressed Mary (Donna Davis) has a husband and a son in the 
service. Bella (Dana Smith), shapely and alcoholic, has long ago been 
abandoned by her husband and still grieves for the beloved brother she lost 
in World War I, but thanks to a draft board's finding that her boy, Sonny 
(Matt Walton), has a serious heart murmur, she needn't worry about him.

Well, at least not about the possibility of losing him in the war. Never mind 
that some of the neighborhood toughs regard Sonny as a draft dodger. The 
handsome, muscular Sonny has used the war years to earn a law degree, to work 
for a politically well-connected firm and to win the heart of his boss's 
daughter, the pretty and clear-eyed Karen (Ivy Vahanian), whose family is a 
generation ahead of Bella in terms of assimilation.

Bella, whose frequent mysterious disappearances have Dotty and Mary 
speculating about a secret boyfriend, ought to be happy for her son, who 
hopes to uses his legal training for the betterment of mankind, especially 
oppressed Italian-Americans. Instead Bella is afraid that Sonny is being 
turned into what these women call "an American," and that the polished, 
stylish Karen is going to take him away into a different life among different 
people with different values in a different neighborhood. 

So as the war winds down, emotions intensify in the yard, where a statue of 
the Virgin Mary watches over all and listens to the prayers of those who 
believe. Dotty must deal with her reactions to her hospitalized husband and 
the anticipated homecoming of their son. Mary, feverishly wrapping newspapers 
and collecting tin cans for the war effort, cannot seem to accept what most 
people would regard as the coming of peace. And Bella, egged on by her 
friends and her sense of sacrifice in the upbringing of Sonny, stakes 
everything on her insistence that Karen and Sonny observe an Old World rite.

She demands that they hang out their wedding-night sheet to prove that Karen 
was, as she and her friends say, pure.

At this point, Mr. Picardi's play, which has had its fun with topics like 
Dotty's ignorance and the quality of the food at Sonny and Karen's wedding, 
achieves uncommon emotional tension that sets the stage for the climactic 
revelations of "The Sweepers."

If the accents of the principals seem to come and go, the play is 
nevertheless well cast, and the set and lighting of Roman J. Tatarowicz, the 
costumes of Kevin Brainard and the sound design of Marc Gwinn fix the action 
firmly in its time, while Mr. Picardi's writing renders his characters 
timeless.

THE SWEEPERS 
By John C. Picardi; directed by Frances W. Hill; sets and lighting by Roman 
J. Tatarowicz; sound by Marc Gwinn; costumes by Kevin Brainard; technical 
director, Andy Smith; stage manager, Ken Hall; assistant stage manager and 
props, Michael Gray. Presented by Urban Stages, Playwrights' Preview 
Productions, Ms. Hill, artistic director; T. L. Reilly, producing director; 
Sonia Kozlova, program director. At Urban Stages, 259 West 30th Street, 
Manhattan. 

WITH: Brigitte Viellieu-Davis (Dotty), Donna Davis (Mary), Dana Smith 
(Bella), Ivy Vahanian (Karen) and Matt Walton (Sonny). 

 <A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/arts/theater/09SWEE.html">At 
War's End, a New Dawn in a Little Italy</A> 
 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/arts/theater/09SWEE.html