Is The Color of Light at The Schoolhouse Theater Off-Broadway Bound?

Is The Color of Light at The Schoolhouse Theater Off-Broadway Bound? Jesse Kornbluth’s new play, The Color of Light about Henri Matisse, opened this weekend to a packed house at The Schoolhouse Theatre in Croton Falls. Kornbluth’s play, drawn out in alternating short vignettes and longer, fully-played dramatic scenes, was as intriguing as the story he tells about Henri Matisse and the creation of The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence – widely considered his great masterpiece and one of his final works.

Kornbluth’s story picks up in Nice in 1943 during the Nazi occupation of France as Matisse is recovering from surgery for abdominal cancer. No longer able to paint, Matisse began creating cut paper collages that he would arrange in colorful patterns. Soon after his surgery, he took on a young nursing student, Monique Bourgeois. An amateur artist, Bourgeois instantly became his muse and he sought to teach her about perspective.

It’s not clear what about Ms. Bourgeois so captivated Matisse. Was it her interest in art or was he sorting out ideas and inspiration for his new cut-out art explorations imposed on him by his illness? Or did he see in her deep religious commitments the same passions he had for art. An atheist, Matisse diverted some of his attentions on Ms. Bourgeois to a half-hearted attempt to convert her from Christ to art. Yet he is surprised when she follows her calling and leaves him to become a nun.

What if Michaelangelo was a non-believer?

The second act picks up in 1948 at Matisse’s new home in Vence where Ms. Bourgeois, now Sister Jacques-Marie runs a small chapel out of a converted garage. Upon discovering that Matisse is in Vence she visits him to ask him to design a stained-glass window for her chapel. Her plan is to sell it to fix a leak in the roof. Instead Matisse offers to design her a whole new chapel and to pay for its construction if she will help him with his design. In his designs for the celebrated La Chapelle du Rosaire, Matisse finds the full expression of his cut-out method and a sort of apotheosis of his life’s work.

Cleverly woven into the story is the uncomfortable contradiction of Matisse’s atheism with his new project. He is confounded on all fronts from at once his friend Pablo Picasso, who questions his hypocrisy, and from Jacques-Marie’s Mother Superior who at first rejects his designs for their inherent apostasy. A special moment in the play is when Mother Superior, after seeing Matisse’s whimsical designs for the chapel’s window asks to see his designs for the chapel’s Stations of the Cross. Ha.

A pedigreed cast 

The Color of Light stars Tim Jerome as Henri Matisse. Mr. Jerome has appeared in 18 shows on Broadway including Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast and Man of La Mancha. In 1987 he received a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Featured Role (Musical) for Me and My Girl. In addition to bearing a striking resemblance to Mr. Matisse, Mr. Jerome’s performance carries the day with a quiet gravitas.

Ginger Grace returns to The Schoolhouse Theatre after playing Eleanor in Eleanor Roosevelt: Her Secret Journey last spring.  Dominique Salerno plays Monique Bourgeois/Sister Jacques Marie. Ms. Salerno’s solo show, The Box Show, where she plays 30 characters from inside a small cupboard, won the Overall Excellence Award and Encores Selection in FringeNYC. O.V. Daniels, a veteran of over 300 shows on television, film, off-Broadway and 6 national tours plays a lustful and exuberant Pablo Picasso. Carole Monferdini, who won an OBIE Award for her performance in Tommy Tune’s The Club and appeared in Charles Busch’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and the motion picture Next Stop Greenwich Village, deftly handles the somewhat vampiric role of Mother Superior here. And Jack Utrata returns to the Schoolhouse after his performance in The Dog in The Dressing Room last June.

The Color of Light is Mr. Kornbluth’s first play. He has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and New York Magazine and a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times and Esquire. His books include Pre-Pop Warhol and The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken.

The Schoolhouse Theatre, founded by Lee Pope in 1983, is Westchester’s oldest non-profit Actor’s Equity theatre. The theatre, dedicated to producing new plays, has seen no less than seven of its shows moved to Off-Broadway. They have produced works by Jules Feiffer and Tina Howe. It’s current Artistic Director, Bram Lewis founded and ran The Phoenix Theatre in Purchase where he worked with Alan Arkin, Ellen Burstyn, Horton Foote, Julie Harris, Jason Robards, Frances Sternhagen, Horton Foote and Elain Stritch among others.

The Color of Light runs through April 28.

(Photos by)  Doug Abdelnour,  Bedford Photo-Graphic, Inc. ©2019

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