Theater company crosses Potomac, arrives in Chelsea

Alex Draper as Bela Veracek in the opening scene of “No End of Blame,” the Potomac Theatre Project’s first show at its new home, Atlantic Stage 2.

By JERRY TALLMER

You might think of Bela Veracek as Candide with a bellyache.

Candide believes (or says he does anyway) that everything’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds. He holds to this asininity as he moves from country to country, era to era, evil to evil.

Bela Veracek believes that everything’s for the worst in this worst of all possible worlds. He really does, and so does Howard Barker, the British playwright who created him and who, in “No End of Blame,” has Bela, the gifted, savage political cartoonist — a sort of pre-World War II Gerald Scarfe — flee from one fascistic/communistic/democratic hypocrisy to another — 1918 Hungary, 1925 Moscow, 1940 Britain.

Wherever he goes he, Bela, for all his much-in-demand talent, rather rapidly finds himself squashed under the censorship thumb of the very powerhouses, the big shots — Winston Churchill, for instance — who so enthusiastically hailed his arrival in the first place.

Here is his creed:

I am a cartoonist. I believe the cartoon to be the lowest form of art. I also believe it to be the most important form of art. I decided in my 24th year I would rather be important than great … The cartoon is a weapon in the struggle of peoples. It is a liberating instrument. It is brief like life. It is not about me. It is about us. Important art is about us. Great art is about me. I am not interested in me. I do not like me … When the cartoon lies it shows at once. When the painting lies it can deceive for centuries … The cartoon changes the world. The painting changes the artist. I long to change the world.

Richard Romagnoli and Alex Draper may not long to change the world, or even to change the world of theater, but they have put their combined strengths for 21 years into the hard-working, idealistic Potomac Theatre Project that now at long last transfers its focus from Washington, D.C., to New York City with Romagnoli directing and Draper starring as Bela in “No End of Blame” at Atlantic Stage 2 on West 16th Street.

“I’ve been working 21 years with this guy next to me,” Romagnoli said over coffee here last week, straightfaced, not looking at Draper, “and we still don’t see eye-to-eye on anything.”

They’ve seen eye-to-eye on many things, not just the birth and welfare of the Potomac Theatre Project, since Romagnoli and his wife Clare Faraone were teachers at Middlebury College, Vermont — with Draper a graduate student there — in the early 1980s.

“I’d seen the Barker play when the Manhattan Theater Club did it in New York, and when I asked the class at Middlebury what should we do,” says Romagnoli, “they all said: ‘No End of Blame.’ ”

When, later, the same play was done by PTP in Washington, Draper was adjudged too young to be Bela, so he was cast as Bela’s much-put-upon second banana, Grigor Gabor. Then and now, incidentally, the projected cartoons were and are by Gerald Scarfe (Bela’s) and Clare Shenstone (Grigor’s).

Richard Romagnoli spent the first six years of his life in and around New York City’s West 96th Street, and the rest of his boyhood in Miami Beach. His mother was a pianist. His Bronx-born father “changed his name” — to something less Italian — “and became a runner on Wall Street.”

Richard met Clare Faraone at Catholic University. They got dissertation research grants to go to London, she to dig into Stoppard, he into Michel St, Denis and the Young Vic. Back home, they started and ran a New York Theater Studio in the Ansonia on West 73rd Street, and then in 1987 launched PTP in Washington as a link back to Middlebury.

Indeed, Romagnoli looks on the current move to New York as, in part, a “reconnection” with former Middlebury students who are now “established Equity artists.”

Alex Draper, the son of State Department career officer Fraser Draper, was born in Naples, Italy, and grew up in South Africa, Ethiopia, and France. His mother, actress Howell Draper, “started theater companies wherever we were.” Alex and his wife Lorraine are the parents of a 5-year-old and a 15-month-old.

Has Alex Draper ever known anybody as misanthropic yet as touched by brilliance as Bela Veracek?

The question brought him up short.

At length, he said: “One guy. A cartoonist for an Australian paper. But for this one major thing, his alcoholism, he’d be very much like Bela. When he was sober, he was impossible not to hire. When he was drunk, he was impossible not to fire.”

I guessed at the name, and I was right. I knew the guy too.

Richard Romagnoli spoke up. “Bela reminds me a little of Leonard Melfi,” he said. Brilliant, wonderful, sloppy, loving, Beat Generation Leonard Melfi, playwright.

I knew him also. He was a lot nicer than Bela Veracek, if you want to know. He was a little like Candide, in what is not the best of all possible worlds.

NO END OF BLAME. By Howard Barker, Directed by Richard Romagnoli. In repertory with three short plays by Anthony Minghella. A Potomac Theater Project presentation through July 14 at Atlantic Stage 2, 330 West 16th Street, (800) 838-3006 or brownpapertickets.com.