Jersey City Arts HS present ‘Arms & the Man’

In an intimate space where the actor’s talent could not be missed, Jersey City Arts High School presented ‘Arms & the Man’ with grace and maturity. This 1880’s war farce with themes of love and lies was made easily accessible to a modern audience by the knowledgeable cast and simple but literal set pieces. Arms & the Man is set in 1885 in Bulgaria where a war is taking place. The show opened with Karla Aybar, who did a lovely job as Raina, the beautiful and kind female lead in the show. Her interaction with the talented Jeffrey Sanchez who played the “chocolate cream soldier” was believable and cute. Also introduced in the first scene was Marleny Figueroa whose attitude and bite was great for her part as Catherine, Raina’s mother. And then there was the gifted Bernadette Carter who really stood out as being completely immersed in her character, Louka, throughout the entire show. Her use of an accent suited her very well and while it may have been a confusing aspect to the show as a whole to have only some characters with accents, it served her regardless. She was able to show her emotional range later in the play in her contact with Alex Gurevich who played Serguis. Together they created scenes with great tension and believability. Gurevich also did a good job with his accent work and was good at switching between being funny and quirky to frightening and domineering towards Louka. Another actor, Alex Goold, who played Petkoff was also able to portray emotion and rage in his voice specifically and successfully acted as somewhat of a caricature of the temperamental but oblivious father. The use of scenery was aesthetically pleasing and very literal. The back wall cleverly transformed from the wall of a bedroom, to outdoors in a garden, to “not much of a library” back in the house. It had a very proper yet homey feel and did not distract from anything on stage which is good. The costumes were certainly period specific and nicely done and the makeup was tasteful and appropriate.

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