Stephanie Spohrer, opens in "Liars and Lovers" at the Arena Players

Stephanie Spohrer, (pictured below) who joined the Riant Theatre as an intern this season, is currently appearing in Liars and Lovers at the Arena Players, through May 22nd.  Please check it out and show your support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Liars and Lovers' debuts at Arena Players

Published: April 26, 2011 6:13 PM
By STEVE PARKS  steve.parks@newsday.com
 
Alex and Greg are students at a state university sharing an off-campus apartment. They also share an acquaintance with an attractive blonde. Greg has a romance lit class with Cindy, who's been dating Alex for two months. Alex is confident that tonight's the night. He wants Greg to disappear.

So far, you might mistake "Liars and Lovers," an absorbing new play by Plainview author/actor Thomas Tafero, for a romantic comedy. But you'd be wrong about this psychodrama making its world premiere at Arena Players.

"Liars and Lovers" was developed in workshop under the direction of Frederic De Feis for about two months. (Meanwhile, Tafero played a lead role in another Arena world premiere, "One White Crow," which closed in March.) Tafaro's dialogue is authentic college contemporary -- minus the spoken-word texting shorthand. It brims with intelligence masking naiveté.

Alex and Greg have known each other since high school. But they're not friends. With Alex running errands for their date, Cindy arrives at the apartment to find Greg waiting for her. We learn, with Cindy, of Alex's school-bully past. He once beat Greg so severely that Alex was sent to reform school. Young Alex had reason to act out. Abandoned in infancy by his father, he was orphaned at age 5 by his mother's terminal drug addiction. A foster mom abused him sexually.

Greg was raised by religious cultists who equipped him with demented social skills.
Cindy, while less forthcoming in her psychological profile, nevertheless confesses that she's a virgin on this night she intends to spend with Alex.

As the least dramatically developed character, Cindy presents a challenge for Stephanie Spohrer. Reacting to Greg's self-serving insinuations and Alex's transparent lust, Spohrer displays a convincing mix of post-pubescent daring and doubt. Michael Gilbert's Greg exerts such maniacal passive aggressiveness that we want to strangle him. As Alex, Evan Donnellan almost does. He allows us to glimpse the bully who's been all but shackled by his roommate's mind games.

Cindy is on to Greg when she observes that he's jealous -- not of Alex, but of her. But it's no gay "bromance." What the guys have, Cindy observes, isn't love. "It's codependency."

WHAT World premiere of "Liars and Lovers," by Thomas Tafero

WHEN | WHERE Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., through May 22 at Arena Players second stage, 296 Rte. 109, East Farmingdale

INFO $20-$25; arenaplayers.org, 516-293-0674