Rollercoaster of Love: Play Relives Heyday of Jazz
Tony Award -Winning Play Weaves Tragic Tale of Love
BY KARI WETHINGTON

The lifestyle of jazz musicians is a mystery to mainstream America and is even more enigmatic when juxtaposed against the middle-class family values of postwar America, which is exactly what Warren Leight’s autobiographical play Side Man does. 
The play, directed by first-year Asher Rapkin this weekend in Wilder Main, centers around 30-year old Clifford, the son of a “side man” jazz musician. Played by first-year Erik Talvitie, Clifford takes the audience through a series of flashbacks that recall the dramatic and heartbreaking landscape of his childhood in New York City. The cast, though young and for the most part new to the Oberlin theater scene, thoroughly handles the play’s penetrating themes with efficacy and ease. 
During the big-band era, sidemen were wandering musicians who played anything asked of them and spent most of their time on the road, taking frequent breaks to hit the unemployment check line. Clifford’s father, Gene — played by first-year Gabriel Graff — is a side man that spends his days practicing his beloved trumpet, chatting with his musician buddies or searching for a new club to play. 

(photo by Claire-Helene Mershon)

The rollercoaster begins when Gene meets his future wife, Terry, played by first-year Jill Briana Donnelly. The dynamic character, who becomes increasingly psychotic as her drinking problem becomes more acute and her marriage goes downhill, is a perfect match for Donnelly’s ability to become fervently entangled in the atmosphere of a tense scene. Though Graff is aptly expressive in his scenes with the other musicians, the interactions with Donnelly seem exaggerated, and his storytelling interludes disconnect him from the characters around him. This may be more of a directorial mistake instead of Graff’s own, but it nonetheless detracts from a number of scenes. 
Clifford, looking back from his present state in 1985, reviews the meeting and marriage of his parents in the early 1950s, when jazz was everything to the couple. He later sees the demise of their quaint domesticity as the conflict between music and economics puts strain on the family relations. As Clifford repeatedly switches from monologue to interaction with the heated episodes, Talvitie keeps the transitions smooth and makes the character endearing. 
The most melodious scenes occur between Gene and his musician friends Ziggy with the lisp, Al the unromantic “Romeo” and Jonesy the “addict” — played by first-years Steve Prince, Thomas Taylor and Dan Keegan, respectively. These characters bring Side Man’s comic aspect to the forefront. Prince, Taylor and Keegan never fail to keep their interchanges inviting due to their incredible nonchalantness. For all of the 30 years that the play spans, most of these interchanges take place in the neighborhood restaurant Charlie’s Melody Lounge, where Patsy, the unsentimental waitress serves as a sort of unlikely moral guidance for Clifford and a comic sidekick for the sidemen.
Under Rapkin’s direction, Side Man strikes a familiar chord of sentimentality for even those who aren’t professed music-lovers. The play winningly portrays the power that jazz held in the lives of those who devoted themselves to it, and realizes the effects that musicians had on others, especially their family. The cast is successful in its attempt to bring this slice of American history into a nostalgic light. 
OSTA presents Side Man in Wilder Main on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $3 at Wilder Desk.