Louis LaRusso II was a struggling playwright living in his mother’s old townhouse on Willow Avenue when he realized the secret to his success was right beneath his nose. “My problem as a writer was that I wanted to write from my imagination, from what I considered was an incredible hipness,” recalled LaRusso in an interview shortly before his death in 2003.
It was only when LaRusso began writing about the people he grew up with in 1940s Hoboken, like his longshoreman father and seamstress mother, that critics and audiences began recognizing his talent. Within six years, his Broadway play “Lamppost Reunion” was a double Tony Award nominee.
“I like to think of myself as a colloquialist, kind of a Palooka of playwrights,” said LaRusso in 2003. “I came to life in this simple dialogue of my people.”
Just as LaRusso once labored to capture the voices of his forebears, actors in the generation that found fame through his plays are now working to keep LaRusso’s own unique voice alive. This Sunday, March 1, stage and screen actor Vincent Pastore will direct a staged reading of LaRusso’s play “Marlon Brando Sat Right Here” at The Cutting Room in New York City.
A writer’s deathbed wish
For Pastore, who is best-known for his portrayal of Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero on HBO’s “The Sopranos,” the production is a return to familiar territory.
“I met Louis back in the ’70s when he had ‘Knockout’ on Broadway with Danny Aiello,” said Pastore, “and he brought me into the New York theater scene in the early ’90s. When Louis was on his deathbed, he said to me that he wrote his plays for actors like me. Paul Sorvino, Danny Aiello, Dan Lauria, guys like us.”
By writing for and casting these actors, LaRusso was instrumental in launching many of their careers. When LaRusso first met Aiello, for example, he was a bouncer at the Improv comedy club who had never had an acting role in his life.
Now Pastore is returning the favor. “Just before Louis’ death, he asked me to keep his work going,” said Pastore. He has done his best to fulfill that wish, acting in or producing readings of numerous LaRusso plays in the following decade.
In 2007, Pastore starred in a reading of LaRusso’s most famous play, “Lamppost Reunion,” at the Hoboken Historical Museum. The next year, the production was picked up for a full revival at the Arclight Theatre in New York City.
Pastore has performed other LaRusso plays in Hoboken since then, including “Brando” in 2009, also at the Historical Museum, and “40 C.P.S.” in 2011.
The bard of Hoboken
“Marlon Brando Sat Right Here” serves up a vintage slice of Hoboken, but it is far from the “good old days.” The play is set at Gracie’s Place, a fictional greasy spoon at Fourth and River streets catering to the longshoreman who once made Hoboken hum, and the action takes place over two days in 1955.
A year before, “On the Waterfront” was filmed in the city, but Brando and the glitter of Hollywood are long gone, and an imminent longshoreman’s strike looms over the diner’s patrons and proprietors.
In his writing over the years, LaRusso returned again and again to the city of his childhood memories and the characters he found within it. “Brando” is one of 26 plays LaRusso set in Hoboken – what Horton Foote was for Wharton, Texas, LaRusso was for the Mile Square City.
“He had a Clifford Odets-type style,” said Pastore. “He’s more street than Pinter or Shakespeare.”
Although Pastore will not be acting in this production of “Brando,” he leaves LaRusso’s words in good hands. Fellow “Sopranos” alums Robert Funaro, Maureen Van Zandt and Dan Grimaldi will fill the play’s three lead roles.
Local connection
While many of the actors in the production hail from New York, at least one has a direct Hoboken connection. Nicholas Wey, who will play the role of Larry, lived in Hoboken until he was five and still has many relatives in the city.
Larry is a proxy for a young LaRusso, the teenage son of a longshoreman union boss who feels dissatisfied with his gritty surroundings. Wey said he identifies with the character, and not just because he is currently studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the same school where LaRusso first explored acting before settling on playwriting.
Larry is “caught somewhere and he can’t get out,” explained Wey, “and I think I related to that in a certain way back home, and my dad certainly related to that growing up in Hudson County.”
Having parents from Hoboken didn’t hurt when it came to perfecting Larry’s accent either. “Deep down inside I still have that Hoboken regionalism,” said Wey. “If I get angry or yell at someone it comes out more… so it wasn’t that hard to pull it off.”
When playing a character based on LaRusso, said Wey, it also didn’t hurt to work with actors like Pastore and Grimaldi who could describe LaRusso’s mannerisms from personal experience.
Through a new generation of actors like Wey, there is cause for renewed hope that the “simple dialogue” of LaRusso’s past-time Hoboken will not disappear completely.
“Marlon Brando Sat Right Here” will be performed on Sunday, March 1 at 3 p.m. at the Cutting Room, located at 44 E. 32nd St. in New York City. Doors will open at 1 p.m. for lunch, followed by a pre-show of Frank Sinatra tunes performed by Steve Maglio and Frank Pisani at 2 p.m. An audience Q&A will follow the reading.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online at www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/760903. There is a $20 food/drink minimum.
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.