“A Pair of Star Crossed Lovers Take Their Lives”

by Olivia Lilley

When I stepped into the theatre, the smell of old books and the feeling that twenty-seven years of opening nights had taken place here was everywhere, in every speck of dust, in every creak of every audience seat. A lone sax on a scratchy radio moaned as if coming from a distant window across the alleyway. I was transported to the East Village storefronts of the 70’s and 80’s and I had only just entered the theatre. When the show began, the atmospheric choices of the preshow were dwarfed by the grand entrance of Mary Arrchie legend/artistic director, Richard Cotovsky. He is not a relic from some other time, but a living, breathing force of nature who’s lived through it all: now and then. The past was here before us all at once. At last, we jumped in through the grainy TV screen full of the faded colors, parachute pants, and windbreakers and we were there, a fly on the wall, as if it were all happening for the first time, in HD. When Rudy Galvan crashes onto the scene, language heats up and sexual tension bubbles.