Play of the Week for March 21, 2008Some Men Need Help

SOME MEN NEED HELP
by John Ford Noonan

Your wife walked out on you, so you drink. But to think about it, she walked out on you because you drink. If you could stop drinking, she’d come back. But you can’t and she won’t; now you’re face down on the kitchen floor dead drunk! CURTAIN UP!

The door bursts open and an ex-Mafioso neighbor, whom you’ve never met, enters hell-bent “to dry you out” and turn your life upside down in order to save the neighborhood (after all it’s Connecticut) and his own marriage. Thus begins John Ford Noonan’s oddball comedy SOME MEN NEED HELP.

This subject matter is not often the fodder for hilarious situations and physical comedy, but Noonan achieves that in this two-hander. The result is an entertaining battle/love fest with two intriguing and honestly real characters.

Hudley T. Singleton, III is a handsome, sexy and youthful businessman who sometimes forgets he’s married. Gaetano Altobelli is a once-athletic Italian-American man in his mid-late forties, the husband of an unhappy wife and the father of an “out of control” teenager whose motives for sobering up Hudley are as screwball as the turn of events themselves.

The rise, fall, and resurrection of their relationship are more than mere male bonding. As they rap, rant, and rage they eventually discover that they both need each other – desperately. They’re just a coupla white guys sitting around laughing, fighting, and caring.

Scenes/Monologues: Great scenework for men in mid-thirties to mid-forties.

Recommended by: William Martin

Some Men Need Help by John Ford Noonan
Samuel French
Acting Edition: $7.50

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