“Bouncers,” an iconic English play, is back in Boston, thanks to a couple of native Somerville artists.
The production, slated for a four-week run at the Modern Theatre, is a madcap performance of four bouncers outside a disco club in Northern England. Actors constantly switch between characters of different genders, playing everyone from soccer hooligans to sleazy DJs, showing the audience what they see on a Friday night.
The result is “very fast-paced and very funny,” says the show’s director Bill Doncaster, who grew up in Somerville. It’s “at times, really crass and at times really poetically beautiful.”
“Bouncers,” Doncaster says, has a “rich, long history in the UK,” where it is performed often at all levels of theater. But it is lesser known in the U.S., outside of a few productions in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago in the ’80s and ’90s.
Doncaster first saw the show in Chicago in 1991 when he was a year out of college hoping to become a playwright. “It was one of the more fun and interesting nights of theater I’ve ever had in my life,” he recalled. “It’s one of the few plays where I didn’t know what was coming.”
When a bombing disrupted ‘Bouncers’
This is Doncaster’s second time producing “Bouncers.”
In 2013, he staged a production at Cambridge’s iconic Cantab Lounge. The divey Central Square music venue fit the show’s setting, as well as Doncaster’s mission of reaching an audience beyond typical theater fans.
The reviews were positive and momentum was growing when the Boston Marathon bombings put the region on lockdown.
“We were doing well and the box office was surging toward closing weekend. We were close to selling out [closing weekend], but after the bombing happened, we didn’t sell a single ticket after that,” said Doncaster.
When the MBTA shut down subway service, the theater refunded a sold-out performance and on the last night they performed, half the audience didn’t show.
“What [to do] over the weekend was the last thing on anyone’s mind. It was awful,” Doncaster recalled. “We were also very shook up; we lived here too.”
But for all those reasons, Doncaster said “‘Bouncers’ felt like unfinished business.”
A comeback
When Doncaster’s original lighting designer moved to Modern Theatre, a small playhouse in Boston’s theater district, the idea of bringing back “Bouncers” started to form.
And when Doncaster received funding from Sam Seidel, former Cambridge City Councillor, the plan was set in motion.
Doncaster reached out to Joe Siriani, a cast member from the 2013 production.
“I was thrilled when he called,” says Siriani. “I thought he was kidding because it’s been a topic of conversation since we finished 13 years ago.”
Although this year’s production is in a more traditional theater, its smaller size preserves the intimacy of the performance.
Sirani plays Lucky Eric, an older bouncer who carries the weight of life’s pains and disappointments as he works alongside three younger rowdier men raring to fight.
“As I’m older, I get to see Eric through my eyes and my age,” Siriani says. “In my job [as an actor], there’s always growing older and seeing younger guys and thinking, ‘Hey, take it easy, relax, take it in before jumping in – bing, bang – here we go.”
Siriani grew up locally in Somerville, Cambridge, Arlingtown and Charlestown. He got his start acting at St. Catherine of Genoa School, now St. Theresa of the Child Jesus School, in Somerville’s Spring Hill. As a kid, he would hang out at the park near the school, where Tufts students would come by to talk about acting and theater.
“They invited us to watch improv at Tufts, to watch a show they put on,” said Siriani. “That strengthened my love for acting even more.”
Siriani went on to act in high school, at Northeastern University, and in Los Angeles for a few years, before moving to Hingham, Mass.
All his experiences have gifted him with gratitude for this phase of his career.
“[‘Bouncers’] is an intimate, tight show where I never leave the stage,” says Siriani. “You have to be present throughout.”
To work with my [fellow actors] who are right on top of it. I get goosebumps throughout the show from the interaction with these guys … I’m really lucky that I get to do it again, that I get to keep moving forward.”
Bouncers is playing at Suffolk University’s Modern Theatre Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from October 1 through 24.
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