Charlie Conlon, a Northern Irish man, is having a drink with his friend Jake Quinn at the neighborhood pub when in walks Hollywood starlet Caroline Giovanni. Conlon spins around and suddenly his gestures are light, airy and feminine, and his voice is a few octaves higher.
He is Caroline.
The lights fade, and the actress morphs back into Charlie again.
A scene later, neither Caroline nor Charlie can be found. In their place is Jock, Caroline’s robust security guard with a deep, southern twang.
No, Charlie doesn’t have multiple personalities. He is just one of the more than 13 characters taken on by only two actors in Alpine Theatre Project’s “Stones in His Pockets.”
“This show is all about actors and lights,” Timothy Williams, who plays Charlie and a handful of other characters, said on a break from rehearsal last week.
The play, which launches the Whitefish professional theater’s 2009 season beginning on June 16, is a hilarious, dynamic and touching performance that pulls at the heartstrings about as much as it tickles the funny bone.
With a stage stripped of all but a small stool, a bench and a backdrop of the sky, the show opens with Charlie and Jake, two blue-collar workers in their mid-30s employed as extras on the big-budget Hollywood movie, “The Quiet Valley,” that has taken over their small hometown of County Kerry, Ireland.
Throughout the play, written by Irish native Marie Jones, the actors switch swiftly between genders, ages and nationalities to demonstrate the contrast between the fast-paced, superficial world of Hollywood and the harsh reality of life in rural Ireland.
“It’s a great mixture of really, really funny comedy and also a very touching story,” said Director David Ackroyd.
The first act ends abruptly “in a slightly very moving moment,” he said. “The rest of the play is dealing with the resolution of the two guys and how they’re affected.”
Nick Spear, who plays Jake, and Williams were handpicked for the roles.
“The minute we said we would do this play, we thought of them,” Ackroyd said. “Both are brilliant. (They’re) great friends, and they feed off of one another. They inspire and challenge one another.”
In rehearsals this week, the transitions from character-to-character were so smooth and the acting so sharp that it was easy to forget there were only two actors on stage.
Despite the ease with which Williams and Spear seem to portray the 13-some characters, Williams said when Ackroyd called, in addition to being honored and thrilled, he and Spear were both a little scared.
But they tackled the roles head-on, listening to native Irish dialects on CDs and studying up on the history of Ireland. Even though neither of the actors knew which roles they would be playing, Spear and Williams held weekly conference calls months before rehearsals began.
“We prided ourselves on doing it right by researching and having a historical base,” Williams said.
Both members of actors’ equity, Spear moved to Whitefish from San Diego, Calif., with his wife two years ago, while Williams is originally from Las Vegas. Ackroyd said this is Williams’s fourth production with the Alpine Theatre Project.
“These guys have been working hard,” Ackroyd said. “They do several different kinds of accents – one from Northern Ireland, Southeastern Ireland, an English (accent) and American. They got these language tapes and studied very hard. There was a lot of work involved. When we went into rehearsal they pretty much had these accents.”
Originally developed in Ireland 10 years ago, the Olivier-Award winning “Stones in His Pockets” ran for four years in London’s West End before moving to Broadway, where it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Comedy.
The decision to bring the play to Whitefish was a collaborative effort, said Artistic Director Betsi Morrison. She and Executive Director Luke Walrath have been interested in the play since 2001, when they saw it on Broadway.
One of the biggest artistic challenges, Morrison said, was trying to tell a full-color story without a set or props and only two men.
“But we have two extremely competent actors. Tim and Nick are doing an amazing job,” she said.
Walrath said Stones is a perfect match for Alpine Theatre Project.
“It fits the mission of our company to provide something new and different than what’s currently offered in the valley,” he said.
“Stones in His Pockets” runs June 16 through 28 at Whitefish Middle School’s Central School Auditorium. For more information or to purchase tickets, call the box office at 406-862-SHOW or visit www.alpinetheatreproject.org.