[NYguy]

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts..._the_wo_1.html

'The Tallest Building in the World' review: New play tells tale of the construction of the World Trade Center



Wednesday, April 27, 2011

While John F. Kennedy was intent on getting a man to the moon, Guy Tozzoli was shooting for a corner of the sky just a bit lower.

But Tozzoli, the project director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was still aiming high. He desired to build, as the new play at Luna Stage Company is called, “The Tallest Building in the World” — the World Trade Center. (When it was built, it had that distinction.)

Many of us only appreciated the buildings after 9/11 took them away from us. Gifted playwright Matt Schatz, however, allows us to value them on a different level. He shows us the intense design phase, as well as the painful trial and error that had to occur before these plans got off the ground.

To make the story his own, Schatz doesn’t use the actual names of project director Tozzoli, architect Minoru Yamasaki and structural engineer Leslie Robertson; he calls them Gino, Yama and Lee. That allows him to take a little more dramatic license. Schatz needs it in order to condense about eight years worth of blueprints, models and discussion into one evening’s entertainment.

At first, this would seem to be a story without suspense. Even when plans go awry and there’s confusion worthy of the Tower of Babel, we all know that the Twin Towers will eventually be built.

And yet, the play works splendidly because Schatz is a master of snappy dialogue. The confrontations — and there are plenty of them — crackle among all three characters.

The play is not unlike a bridge game where one player dares to bid high, only to be doubled by an opponent, which leads to a redoubling. Better still, director Troy Miller stages it as a tennis match where two champions are close to the net and engaged in a ferocious series of volleys that go on longer than expected. (Not that the play does; it weighs in at a comfortable two hours.)

David Bonanno gives such a convincing performance as Gino that one might actually think that a genuine project director had been hired. Bonanno makes Gino the ideal mediator, who listens carefully to Yama and Lee when they spar, showing no apparent favoritism. Such people often cannot get tough when the time comes, but Bonanno displays Gino’s necessary ruthless side when the situation warrants it.

Given that the early ’60s was a time when “Made in Japan” still meant a wretched lack of quality, Pun Bandhu plays Yama with shrugging-it-off confidence that those on the defensive often display. He has the fury of the unwavering artist who won’t compromise — but he eventually finds that he must.

Whether or not the real Leslie Robertson was a nerd, Schatz has characterized his Lee as one — and Kane Prestenback unabashedly plays him that way. Think Woody Allen with a Ph.D. “If you act like a spas(tic),” he reasons, “you can be pushy.”

Whether or not an audience agrees with Schatz’s theory, Prestenback certainly shoves his way into meetings — and into a fine performance. He has everything but the white tape in the middle of his glasses holding both frames together.

In the interests of saving time and money, was the building of the World Trade Center compromised? Schatz does remind us of one incontrovertible fact. In 1945, an airplane hit the Empire State Building and simply bounced off. That structure, of course, still stands, suggesting that “they don’t make them like they used to.”

It doesn’t say much for today’s project directors. But Matt Schatz reminds us that today’s playwrights can still fashion sturdy and effective two-act dramas.

The Tallest Building in the World

Where: Luna Stage Company, 555 Valley Road, West Orange

When: Through May 15. Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.