Bryan McElroy as Rudy Pazinski
 

King o’ the Moon by Tom Dudzick
Mercury Theatre, 3745 N. Southport until Sunday, May 25.
review by Ed Vincent
"Highly Recommended" OPJ

An orchestrated innuendo featuring verbal syncopation of sexual pleasure and 
mankind landing on the moon, not a bad beginning and it gets better.  The
character development is wonderful and filled with a lot of real life issues.
For all of the targeted dysfunctional avenues that appear to beckon these
family members to take, somehow even with a brother who is AWOL
from a seminary things go all right.  The road is rough at times and filled
with real issues of both past and future that we all can relate to.

The cast includes American heroes on the moon, an awol seminary student
who is protesting the war, a young retarded boy, a recent army boot camp
graduate headed for Viet Nam, a sister with a hellish marriage, a widow and
a widower.  If you are currently not one of these people in real life the chances
are you will be, sometime in the future. Rudy Pazinski, the seminary student noted a calling the church as a child when he began to dress as Jesus for Halloween.

If you can think of a given topic, politics, religion, sex, morality, or tree climbing,
it will be part of a discussion in this nicely written drama.  The acting is good by
all the participants and the characters are done well by their work.  Rudy Pazinski, thought he heard a calling from God, but the local priest thinks he just feel  asleep with  the TV turned on.  His one sister once knocked over the Virgin Mary, and is still defending the action as an accident that she could not have avoided.

The sister who knocked over the Virgin Mary, Annie Pazinski, did a great job
of gestured theatrics with her facial origami of surprise and anguish-all perfectly timed. Maureen Pazinski (played by Ashley Bishop), the wife of Eddie Pazinski (played by Ryan Kitley), the new soldier, tells Annie Pazinski (played by
Erin Noel Grennan) about the  Florida shaped birthmark on the ass of a lover, whose name she can not remember.

There is plenty of good sibling rivalry between the boys, one the soldier, the
other an aspiring Priest.  The soldier tells his brother that since Jesus was a 
carpenter using Masonite to repair the tree house floor was totally unacceptable.

There are plenty of plots and sub-plots within, the Crusader priest trying to 
save his bother and end the war, the sister-in-law who feels bad about not
giving Vinnie Carducci a handjob before he was killed in Viet-Nam, and
a sister nicknamed "Crisco" (for fat in the can) by Vinnie , who killed a 
squirrel with her car on the way home from the hospital.

We learn from a friend of Eddie Pazinski , that God was not found in Viet-Nam;
"He says God's not over there".  The play ends with resolution and all ends
tied neatly in a good manner.  This is a fine play with nice acting, wonderful
sets and a tremendous theater having an intimate feel.  Highly recommended by the OPJ.
 

Byran McElroy as Rudy Pazinski and Rondi Reed as 
Ellen Pazinksi 
 

KING O’ THE MOON, 
THE SEQUEL TO 
THE SMASH HIT “OVER THE TAVERN”
 RUNS AT THE MERCURY THEATRE UNTIL MAY 25

Chicago—Playwright Tom Dudzick’s funny and heartwarming King o’ the Moon, the self-contained sequel to the smash-hit comedy Over the Tavern is playing at the Mercury Theatre, 3745 N. Southport until Sunday, May 25.  The Jeff-Recommended show is produced by Libby Adler Mages, Mari Glick, William Pullinsi, and Tony D’Angelo, in association with Darren Lee Cole, the forces behind Over the Tavern.  Over the Tavern enjoyed record-breaking runs at the Northlight Theater in Skokie and the Mercury Theatre, and received raves from critics and audiences alike.  Pullinsi, director of Tavern and winner of twelve Jeff awards, will direct King o’ the Moon.

King o’ the Moon is the second installment in Dudzick’s trilogy featuring the Polish-Catholic Pazinski clan of Buffalo, New York.  The story picks up 10 years after the ending of Over the Tavern.  It’s July 1969, and Apollo 11 is making its historic journey to the moon.  A time of tumultuous change in our country’s history, the summer also represents a crossroads for each member of the Pazinski family.  

In the shadow of the lunar landing and an uncertain future, each Pazinski struggles to understand his or her place in a turbulent world and changing family.  “Like the decade it’s set in, this play has great urgency and passion, while retaining the family warmth and gentle humor of Over the Tavern,” said InTheatre Magazine.

In King o’ the Moon the action has moved out of the family apartment (over the tavern) and into the backyard. Wisecracking Rudy is still irritating the daylights out of everyone. And despite all that is going on around them, the Pazinskis demonstrate the humor with which a family can weather the world’s changes and even become more unified by the effort.

Over the Tavern has been a huge hit in theaters across the country. Playwright Tom Dudzick was commissioned by the Buffalo Studio Arena Theatre to write King o’ the Moon and Lake Effect, the final installments of the trilogy, after the enormous success of Over the Tavern.  However, one need not have seen Over the Tavern to enjoy this show.

In addition to the Pazinski plays, Dudzick is also the author of Greetings, which was produced off-Broadway by Arthur Cantor.  A Buffalo native who loosely based the Pazinski story on his own family history, Dudzick received his theatrical training writing and performing in local theaters in his hometown.  He currently resides in Nyack, N.Y. with his wife and children.  

The regular schedule for King o’ the Moon is Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. ($38.50), Fridays at 8:00 p.m. ($44.50), Saturdays at 5:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ($44.50), and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. ($44.50) and 5:30 p.m. ($38.50). There is a Wednesday matinee at 1:30 p.m. ($32.50). Tickets for all preview performances March 14 through March 23 are only $25 each.  Group tickets are available by calling 312.977.1710. For individual tickets call 773.325.1700.