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Hugh Patrick Brown: An Unflinching Life Behind the Camera

Hugh Patrick Brown: An Unflinching Life Behind the Camera

Hugh Patrick Brown, center, on location in Cham Village in Vietnam.
Hugh Patrick Brown, center, on location in Cham Village in Vietnam.
From Cambodia to a chicken flying contest
By
Mark Segal

An hour with the retired photojournalist Hugh Patrick Brown is an hour entertainingly spent. While his career as a photojournalist for Time Life took him to some far-flung and unusual locations, Northern Ireland, China, and Cambodia among them, during a conversation at his East Hampton residence he recalled his first assignment for People magazine.

“They had shut down Life and started People, and within about six weeks they sent me to Ohio to photograph a chicken flying contest. Every year they mount these mailboxes open at both ends on a grassy hill, put the chickens in, and push them out with plungers. The stuff you remember. . . .”

Though only in his 20s when People launched, he had been a working photojournalist for five years. He majored in journalism at Wagner College and worked for the school newspaper. After graduation he attended the Army Officer Candidate School, and in April 1968 he went to Vietnam as an officer with the 1st Infantry Division.

After seven months as a platoon leader in the field, he became a company commander at Lai Khe, a base 35 miles north of Saigon. With a few months to go before his discharge, he went to work for The Hurricane, an Army magazine. “I was put in charge of a couple of guys who did radio interviews but they didn’t need supervision, so I was able to do whatever I wanted to do.” 

Though he went to Cambodia for a few days after the United States invaded that country, he spent most of his last few months in the military in Saigon, where he met many civilian journalists. He separated from the service there and went to work as a stringer for Time magazine.

After returning to the U.S., he was hired by Time Life, where he remained until the early 1990s. He worked as part of the press corps at the Nixon White House, “but I didn’t really like that, it was group journalism, everybody running at the same time, snap, snap, snap.”

Restless, he took off for Northern Ireland in 1972, spending the better part of three years there. “Freelance is kind of hand-to-mouth, but I was single, and it was fun.” While there he met W.H. Van Voris, who had earned his Ph.D. at Trinity College in Dublin and was writing a book. “Violence in Ulster: An Oral Documentary,” for which Mr. Brown took the photographs, was published in 1975. Asked if it was dangerous there, he said, “You had to be a little careful, but I spent seven months leading a platoon in the bushes in Viet nam, and that’s dangerous.” 

In 1981, Mr. Brown was sent by Fortune magazine to Guangzhou, China, to photograph a factory. One striking image from that assignment was shown at the Amagansett Library in September as part of an exhibition that covered 40 years of his work. Lit by daylight through a grimy window, that photograph of six workers kneading dough at a large wooden table has the look of a Vermeer painting.

In 1975 he photographed E.O. Wilson, an American biologist known for his work with ants and for his book “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,” for which some called him Darwin’s heir while others said his thesis echoed Nazi doctrines on eugenics. 

Suspecting the impending controversy, Mr. Brown photographed the young scientist working with ants in his lab. Published in People, it turned out to be the only such photograph. “It’s my money maker. Everyone wants my picture of him, so every couple of months I get another check for 11 dollars and change.” 

Other assignments for People led to his spending a week with the basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he moved from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Los Angeles Lakers. He also photographed Muhammed Ali when he was training for his fight with Larry Holmes at Deer Lake, Pa. Other notable portraits have included Seamus Heaney, Frank Langella with Edward Gorey, and Candace Bergen.

Images of conflict range from snipers in Derry to the Duran-Leonard fight. Among his more pastoral subjects are a river scene in Hue, Vietnam, shallow-draft boats in China tied up to a huge ship, seagulls at Main Beach in East Hampton, and several photographs of Thai children.

Mr. Brown has reunited annually with members of his Vietnam platoon for the past 23 years. Asked what could bond them more than the experiences they shared, he said, “After a few years, you know what happens? We tell all our war stories, we get tired, and we go to bed. Our wives are more social, they wind up organizing it.”

He returned to Vietnam in 2008 with his wife, Penny, and two members of his platoon and their wives, and found the country much changed. “The average age is 22 to 24, so most people don’t remember the war.” A highway he had traveled during the war that had been flanked by rice patties and water buffalo is now suburbia, and the area around Lai Khe was unrecognizable.

“We were driving up Highway 13, and at one point we stopped and one of my friends got out of the car and started talking to this Vietnamese man. ‘Were you V.C.?’ he asked, and the man said, Yes.’ They had a long conversation about it.”

Robert Rheault, who appears in Ken Burns’s film “The Vietnam War,” was a friend of Mr. Brown. The head of special forces in Vietnam, Colonel Rheault left the military in 1969 after a controversial incident involving the execution of a suspected Vietnamese spy and became director of an Outward Bound program in Maine that helped Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Mr. Brown worked with Colonel Rheault at Outward Bound, taking photographs that were used in fund-raising. 

He said of a picture taken in the Tian Shan mountains of Uzbekistan with a group of Afghan veterans, “It was an interesting bunch of guys. We spent a week or two with them in Moscow and then Uzbekistan and then brought them back to the U.S. I did a piece on that trip for The Boston Globe.”

Ms. Brown’s mother bought the house they now live in 1946 and built a second one toward the rear of the property. “She deeded us this house and Dan, Penny’s brother, the house in back. Penny and I were both working in the city, so we rented it out during the summers and came out during the winters.” He decided to retire four years ago, and they have lived in East Hampton full time since then.

He belongs to the East Hampton Classic Boat Society, whose advertising and website he oversees. He doesn’t own a boat, and he admits to limited woodworking skills. “I scrape and I paint and I sand. And I crew.”

One photograph pinned to his study wall shows Mr. Brown in the Life office with Carl Mydans. Mr. Mydans photographed General MacArthur going ashore at Luzon in the Philippines; David Douglas Duncan, a combat photographer who became a close friend of Pablo Picasso; Alfred Eisenstaedt, another eminent photojournalist, who took the Life magazine cover of a sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day in Times Square, and Fritz Goro, a noted photojournalist and science photographer. Mr. Brown wasn’t exaggerating when he called Life “the one publication where the photographers were the big guys, not the writers.”

The Art Scene: 11.02.17

The Art Scene: 11.02.17

Robert Schwarz's "Starbridges" are three-dimensional mandalas made from wire, monofilament, aluminum, hardware, and sometimes fluorescent lights.
Robert Schwarz's "Starbridges" are three-dimensional mandalas made from wire, monofilament, aluminum, hardware, and sometimes fluorescent lights.
Local Art News
By
Mark Segal

Painting and Piano

The Artist Study in Southampton will present “Life’s Stages: A Collaboration,” an exhibition of paintings by Karen Kaapcke that will be on view from today through Nov. 16, and a reception and concert by Alan Moverman, a pianist, on Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m. A talk by the two artists will take place on Saturday afternoon at 3.

Ms. Kaapcke, a representational painter, and Mr. Moverman became friends after a chance meeting. As he followed her art, he sensed a musical aspect to many of her paintings. She, in turn, has been working for the past year on a series of paintings inspired by musical selections, among them works by Beethoven, Aaron Copland, and Bill Evans. 

Mr. Moverman’s concert will include compositions by those three, Schumann, Bach, Arvo Part, and Gyorgy Ligeti. 

 

Sculpture in Gansett

“Starbridges,” an exhibition of more than 20 sculptures by Robert Schwarz, an East Hampton artist, is on view at the Amagansett Library through Nov. 28. Olivier Bernier, an art historian, will discuss the artist’s work at a reception on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Mr. Schwarz’s constructions are three-dimensional mandalas made from wire, monofilament, aluminum, metal hardware, and, in some cases, fluorescent lights. He has likened them to “models of titanic spaceships or artifacts found in the depths of space — the unconscious.”

 

Art of Darkness

Jeff Lincoln Art and Design in Southampton is showing “Heart of Darkness,” an exhibition that examines the “dark sensibility” in art and design, through March 31. The show includes black and purple Aymara textiles and dark basalt and pyrite stone sculptures by Conrad de Kwiatkowski and bronze works by Thomas Houseago, a British sculptor. Also represented are John Chamberlain, the Haas Brothers, Jeff Zimmerman, Anna Karlin, John Eric Byers, Thaddeus Wolfe, and Wendell Castle.

 

Firestone in Paris

The Eric Firestone Gallery of East Hampton will present “Henry Chalfant: 1980” at Paris Photo, the international photography fair that will take place at the Grand Palais from next Thursday through Nov. 12. Mr. Chalfant is considered one of the most significant documentarians of New York City subway art of the late 1970s and 1980s.

The installation will include 18 monumental digital prints on Kodak metallic paper of graffiti-covered subway cars and eight of the original sheets of vintage hand-cut collaged prints. The prints illuminate Mr. Chalfant’s creative process. A short video about the photographer will also be shown.

 

For Holiday Show

Ille Arts in Amagansett has requested submissions for its 2017 Holiday Show, which will run from Dec. 2 through Jan. 15. Unframed photographs, drawings, paintings on paper, prints, and collages will be accepted at the gallery on or before Nov. 5, but they must not exceed 22 by 30 inches in size. The gallery will frame works uniformly at the artists’ expense. More information is available by emailing [email protected]

 

Call for Works

The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton has issued a call for submissions to “What the Hell?” — an exhibition that will take place from Nov. 16 through Dec. 3. Artists have until Friday, Nov. 10, to submit up to three images to art4thewhiteroomgallery@ gmail.com. Detailed information can be found on the gallery’s website.

Warhol, Lichtenstein Dominate

Warhol, Lichtenstein Dominate

“Campbell’s Soup I,” a complete portfolio of Andy Warhol’s soup can series from 1968, sold at Sotheby’s auction house last week for $850,000.
“Campbell’s Soup I,” a complete portfolio of Andy Warhol’s soup can series from 1968, sold at Sotheby’s auction house last week for $850,000.
Sotheby’s
New records and high visibility for artists associated with the East End
By
Jennifer Landes

New York’s Print Week, which included the fall sales of editioned works on paper and multiples at the major auction houses early last week and at the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s annual fair over the weekend, featured new records and high visibility for artists associated with the East End.

On Oct. 23, “Campbell’s Soup I,” a complete set of 10 Andy Warhol “Soup Can” screenprints from 1968, broke a record for any set of that subject, selling for $850,000, well above its estimate of $500,000 to $700,000, to a British art dealer at Sotheby’s. On Oct. 24, at Christie’s, a set of 10 Warhol “Flowers” screenprints went for $852,000. A full set of six “Dollar Sign” Warhol prints sold at Christie’s for $324,500.

Another Warhol portfolio of “Soup Can” prints, “Campbell’s Soup II” from 1969, was auctioned at Christie’s but was broken up into single lots. These sold in a range from $16,250 for “Tomato-Beef Noodle O’s” to $37,500 for the more iconic varieties such as “Scotch Broth” and “Chicken ’N’ Dumplings.” The prints were from the estate of Giuseppe Rossi, the surgeon who saved Warhol’s life after Valerie Solanos entered his studio and shot him through the lungs, esophagus, spleen, liver, and abdomen in 1968. The artist was pronounced dead at the hospital, but the doctor revived him after massaging his heart and removing his spleen and part of his lung in what has been considered a miraculous effort. Warhol gave Dr. Rossi the portfolio along with other prints as a token of his gratitude, and the two remained friends long after his recovery.

Single Warhol prints also led auction sales, with a “Marilyn” selling above its $220,000 estimate at $287,500 at Sotheby’s and a “Moonwalk” selling for $212,500 at Christie’s.

Roy Lichtenstein’s “Nudes” series was also popular last week. “Nude With Blue Hair” sold for $552,500 at Chris­tie’s, and a “Nude With Yellow Pillow” relief print broke a record for this subject, selling for $250,000 at Sotheby’s.

The print fair opened to the public last Thursday in its new location at the Javits Center’s River Pavilion. Some of the East End artists with work on view were Vija Celmins, John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Max Ernst, Childe Hassam, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Enoc Perez, Elizabeth Peyton, Dan Rizzie, James Rosenquist, Richard Serra, Billy Sullivan, and Donald Sultan, along with more Lichtensteins and Warhols. Tara Donovan, who recently had a “Platform” exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, was featured at the Tamarind Institute’s booth with a grouping of her index card matrix prints.

‘Salesman’ to Open at Bay Street Next Thursday

‘Salesman’ to Open at Bay Street Next Thursday

"Death of a Salesman" in rehearsal in Northampton with Joe Minutillo directing
"Death of a Salesman" in rehearsal in Northampton with Joe Minutillo directing
Meg Sexton
“Riding on a smile and a shoeshine” in Sag Harbor
By
Jennifer Landes

Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The different generations of actors who have taken the stage as Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” since its premiere in 1949 attest to its endurance as a classic of American theater.

The play’s searing examination of how the American Dream goes wrong for a family dependent upon a father who makes his living “riding on a smile and a shoeshine” continues to resonate even as its values seem to have been inverted over time.

Now, a Literature Live! production of the play at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will begin performances for school groups on Monday and the general public next Thursday.

Joe Minutillo will direct Arthur Miller’s drama with a cast that includes David Manis, Carolyn Popp, Rob DiSario, Scott T. Hinson, Willy Cappuccio, Keith Cornelius, Chloe Dirksen, Rachel Feldman, Tina Jones, and Neal Mayer.

Mr. Manis, who plays Willy Loman, has had roles on Broadway in plays such as “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “War Horse.” Ms. Popp returns to Bay Street as Linda. Her previous performances in Sag Harbor include work in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” and “Steel Magnolias.” Mr. DiSario, who plays Biff, was in “The Night Alive” at Guild Hall and “The Crucible” and “Men’s Lives” at Bay Street. Also a veteran of “Men’s Lives” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mr. Hinson plays Happy.

The play will run through Nov. 25 with public performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m. and matinees on Saturdays at 2 p.m. Tickets range in price from $20 to $55 and can be purchased online or through the Bay Street box office.

Bay Street Is Rocking and Rolling Sag Harbor This Week

Bay Street Is Rocking and Rolling Sag Harbor This Week

Nancy Atlas and All Star Comedy
By
Star Staff

Nancy Atlas and Joseph Vecsey, two mainstays of Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, will perform this weekend, with the Nancy Atlas Project set to rock the venue tomorrow at 8 p.m. and a new All Star Comedy show lined up for Saturday night at 8.

Fans of the Montauk rocker and her band have been advised to snap up the few remaining tickets sooner rather than later. Ms. Atlas has opened for Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Buffett, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and many others. She will be joined onstage by Johnny Blood on lead guitar, Brett King on bass, Richard Rosch on drums, and Neil Surreal on keyboard, harp, and accordion. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 tomorrow.

Mr. Vecsey, known for, among other things, Optimum’s “The Un-Movers” series and his podcast “The Call Back,” will host the comedy show, which will feature Crystian Ramirez (“Last Comic Standing”), Damon Rozier (ABC’s “What Would You Do” and BET’s “Comic View”), and Mike Canon (MTV’s “Guy Code” and “The Nightly Show”). Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 the day of the event.

Gloriosa Piano Trio

Gloriosa Piano Trio

At the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill
By
Star Staff

The Gloriosa Piano Trio, experienced chamber musicians who often work with living composers, will perform in the Salon Series at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow at 6 p.m. Consisting of Yoonie Han on piano, Jennifer Carsillo on violin, and Kevin Bate on cello, the group will play Saint-Saens’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor (Op. 92), from 1892, “The New Yorker Trio” by Karen LeFrak, a contemporary American composer, and “Of a Spring Morning” by the French composer Lili Boulanger, a prodigy who died at the age of 24 in 1918. 

Tickets are $25, $10 for members. 

The Art Scene: 10.26.17

The Art Scene: 10.26.17

Local Art News
By
Mark Segal

Five at Ashawagh

“Illuminations,” an exhibition of work by five East End artists who take different approaches to the landscape as subject, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 11 to 4.

During an opening reception on Saturday from 4 to 8, 20 percent of all sales will benefit Share the Harvest Farm, an East Hampton nonprofit dedicated to growing and donating produce to food pantries and community centers. Appetizers featuring the farm’s organically grown produce will be served.

Participating artists are John Todaro, a photographer, and Cynthia Loewen, Frank Sofo, Teresa Lawler, and Lynn Martell, who are painters.

 

New at Halsey Mckay

Two exhibitions, “New Information,” a solo show of work by Sara Greenberger Rafferty, and one that pairs Betty Tompkins and Jean-Baptiste Bernadet, will open at the Halsey Mckay Gallery in East Hampton with a reception Saturday afternoon from 4 to 6 and continue through Jan. 6.

Ms. Rafferty works in a variety of mediums, including painting, performance, video, and photography, often transforming photographs and images into material objects. “New Information” features small-scale, photo-based plastic works that represent “the synthesis and absorption of images and texts in daily life,” according to a press release.

In the late-1960s, Ms. Tompkins began a series of large paintings of genitalia and sexual acts, closely cropped and with blunt, deadpan detail, which have been censored and labeled as pornography. Mr. Bernadet’s abstract paintings take the medium itself as their subject.

The French critic and curator Eric Troncy, who first hung their seemingly unrelated works together in a 2015 gallery exhibition, has said that, despite the generational and visual differences between their work, “exposing their painterly differences seemed precisely the means of emphasizing the importance of painterly craft to both.”

 

Paintings, Sculpture at Ille

“The Immensity of Particles,” a show of paintings by Emily Cheng, and “After Argos,” recent bronze and glass sculpture by Marianne Weil, will be on view at Ille Arts in Amagansett from Saturday through Nov. 27, with a reception to be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

For more than two decades, Ms. Cheng’s paintings have been structured around large circular and floral forms that “radiate outward into planetary orbs, tendrils, and vertebrae-like networks,” according to the critic Jennifer Samet.

Ms. Weil’s sculpture combines blown formed glass, lost-wax cast bronze, and copper into unusual and expressive vessels, often welded to steel stands, that merge the fragility of glass with the durability of metal.

 

Opening at White Room

The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton will present two solo exhibitions, “Hidden Desires” by Ann Brandeis and “Horse Show” by June Kaplan, from today through Nov. 12. A reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. 

Ms. Brandeis’s photographs are from her ongoing series, “The Landscape of Memory,” which combines realism with some of the techniques of Surrealism, among them the alteration of space, perspective, tonality, and focus.

Ms. Kaplan will show paintings and mixed-media representations of horses, whose stylized, swooping curves are rendered in profile and often set off by dripped paint, scribbles, and other abstract elements.

A group show of work by Anna Fenimore, Alyssa Peek, Zoe Breen, Kevin Bishop, Asia Lee, Kat O’Neill, and Melissa Hin will also be on view.

 

East End Artists in Quogue

“Fall Collective: Celebrating East End Artists” will be on view at the Quogue Library’s art gallery from Saturday through Nov. 30. Participating artists are Ellen Ball, Claudia Baez, Carolyn Conrad, Christopher Engel, Barbara Groot, John Haubrich, Virva Hinnemo, Dean Johnson, Fulvio Massi, Anne Raymond, Will Ryan, and Dan Welden. A reception will take place Nov. 5 from noon to 1:30 p.m.

 

Haim Mizrahi in Sag

“Visions of the Abstract: The Jerusalem Series,” paintings by the East Hampton artist Haim Mizrahi, will be on view at the art gallery at the Center for Jewish Life at 36 West Water Street in Sag Harbor from Saturday through Dec. 5, with a reception set for Saturday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Mr. Mizrahi, who was born in Israel and immigrated to the United States in 1983, created the paintings during an extended stay in Jerusalem, where he was inspired by the city’s ancient and modern contrasts, which are harmonized in his work.

‘Romeo and Juliet’ Auditions for Young and Old

‘Romeo and Juliet’ Auditions for Young and Old

At Guild Hall
By
Star Staff

Auditions for both high school students and adults for a production of “Romeo and Juliet” will be held at Guild Hall on Friday, Nov. 3, from 6 to 9 p.m., and Nov. 4 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Rehearsals will take place evenings and weekends in January, February, and March, and performances are scheduled for March 14 through March 25. Josh Gladstone will direct.

Roles available for students are Romeo, Juliet, Benvolio, Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Balthasar, Peter, Prince Escalus, and Apothecary. Appointments can be made by emailing [email protected] or calling 631-324-4051. Sides from the script will be available to read from, but the director encourages the preparation of a one-to-two-minute classic monologue. 

A Time-Traveling Farce in Southampton

A Time-Traveling Farce in Southampton

Dane DuPuis, John Leonard, and Catherine Maloney in “Boeing Boeing” at the Southampton Cultural Center.
Dane DuPuis, John Leonard, and Catherine Maloney in “Boeing Boeing” at the Southampton Cultural Center.
Dane DuPuis
Upon hearing the title of the play — “Boeing Boeing” — younger audiences might ask, “What, what?”
By
Judy D’Mello

These are turbulent times to land a sexual romp that relies on comic possibilities to outweigh its sexist tendencies. Not to mention that when “Boeing Boeing” was last staged on Broadway, it was co-produced by none other than Harvey Weinstein. If onstage farce relies on hairbreath timing, then the offstage timing of this one is pretty hilarious too.

Upon hearing the title of the play — “Boeing Boeing” — younger audiences might ask, “What, what?” Older audiences might recall a bedroom farce that had a brief run on Broadway in 1965, when the play is set, and a film version starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, publicized as “the big comedy of nineteen-sexty-sex.” The play was revived for Broadway in 2008, backed by the Weinsteins, and featured a stellar cast that included Mark Rylance, who won one of the two Tony Awards the show earned. Written in 1962 by the French playwright Marc Camoletti and translated to English by Beverley Cross, “Boeing Boeing” is considered the most performed French play around the world.

And here it is on the East End until Nov. 5, the season opener for Center Stage Theatre, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary at the Southampton Cultural Center. Neil Simon once said, “The simplest aspect of farce is you need a lot of doors. And you need people to go running in and out of them, just missing each other.” Check, and check. There are seven doors onstage and six cast members, making it the epitome of a bedroom farce, featuring slamming doors, delicious innuendo, and spectacularly improbable situations. The basic premise involves Bernard (Dane DuPuis), a 1960s playboy (as they were called) who lives near the airport in Paris with a perpetually grumbling French housemaid (Catherine Maloney), and who has three air stewardess (as they were called) fiancées, each of whom thinks she’s the one and only. A scrupulous timetable keeps the raucous romances going until the day his childhood friend Robert (John Leonard), a shy and awkward provincial from Wisconsin, pays a visit to his apartment with the seven doors, and is unexpectedly thrust into a household saturated with panic and sex. 

“It’s a completely nonsensical period piece,” said Michael Disher, the director and founder of Center Stage Theatre. “And it’s important to remember that it is a period piece, set during a time when flight attendants were like runway models in the air. It’s fun and frothy, a terrific tonic that is much needed right now.”

The sparse audience at the Sunday matinee agreed. They seemed to delight in the lusty and ludicrous stewardess-juggling shenanigans, the near misses, the pratfalls, and even the predictable head-on collision at the end — as well as a set that is tricked out in thoroughly mod ’60s style.

The female actors are the true force behind this production, each delivering an impeccable performance: Shannon DuPuis as Gloria the TWA air hostess, Samantha Honig as Gretchen from Lufthansa, and Josephine Wallace as Gabriella, the fiery Alitalia stewardess. But it is Catherine Maloney, a shaky French accent notwithstanding, who steals the show as the haughty maid Berthe.  Ms. Maloney, a regular on community stages across the East End — and understandably so — is once again spot on with her delivery as a woman wearied by having to alternate between cook, pimp, and air traffic controller. 

John Leonard gives a riotous performance as Robert, the virginal and unsophisticated friend from the Midwest, desperate to find just one woman with whom to settle down while watching his friend juggle three. It’s a nebbishy performance full of hyperventilating and brow mopping, and Mr. Leonard does it well. 

Even in a play where audiences are willing to suspend disbelief, Dane DuPuis’s portrayal of Bernard, the Lothario lead tied up in amorous convolutions, is all wrong. Mr. DuPuis, the Southampton Cultural Center’s photographer and a relative newcomer to the stage, does not quite convey suave or debonair, or that panache particular to the “Mad Men” era. His romantic interactions with the stewardesses are boyish and silly. In an inexplicable styling choice, he sports a contemporary fade haircut and facial growth, making him more Justin Timberlake than 007. 

But luckily, as Ray Cooney, Britain’s greatest farceur, once said, “Farce is teamwork. There is no standing behind beautiful monologues. It’s mundane language. The characters aren’t standing center-stage, spotlit, intellectualizing about their predicament. They’re rushing about dealing with it.”

And as such, this is a great team that delivers a mischievous romp about ordinary people who are out of their depth in a predicament that is beyond their control and that they are unable to contain. Sex is the McGuffin here. It’s all about love in the end.

“Boeing Boeing” will run until Nov. 5 at the Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane, Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets cost $25, $15 for students. Dinner and theater packages are available online at scc-arts.org or by calling the box office at 631-287-4377.

'Lies' Leads New Season at Hampton Theatre Company

'Lies' Leads New Season at Hampton Theatre Company

At the Quogue Community Hall
By
Star Staff

“Clever Little Lies,” Joe DiPietro’s comedy about love, marriage, deception, and infidelity, will open the Hampton Theatre Company’s 2017-18 season today at the Quogue Community Hall and continue through Nov. 12.

When Alice’s husband, Bill Sr., comes home on edge after playing tennis with their son, Alice invites Billy and his wife, Jane, over for cocktails and cheesecake. Chaos ensues as Alice digs for the truth, resulting in even more honesty than anyone expected.

Reviewing the play for The New York Times in 2015, Charles Isherwood called it “good old-fashioned comfort food for theatergoers who prefer entertainment that caters to their long-established tastes, plays that offer a blend of comedy and sentiment, with maybe just a hint of a sting.”

The cast includes Diana Marbury, the company’s artistic director, as Alice, Terrance Fiore as Bill Sr., Ed Brennan as Billy, and Carolann DiPirro as Jane. Andrew Botsford, president of the H.T.C. board, will direct.

Performances are set for Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 2:30 p.m., with an additional matinee on Nov. 11. Tickets, which can be purchased at hamptontheatre.org, are $30, $25 for senior citizens (except Saturdays), $20 for those under 35, and $10 for students.