Anthony Marino has been familiar with playwright John Patrick Shanley’s work since before he was a theater performance major at Wagner College. He performed a scene from “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” in acting class, read plays from the collection “13 By Shanley,” and admires works such as “Italian American Reconciliation.”
But when Marino, co-founder and artistic director of BrooklynONE Productions (bkONE), decided to stage a Shanley play as part of its 20th season, he looked beyond “Danny …” and Doubt, selecting “Savage in Limbo.”
“This is an early John Patrick Shanley work. Each character, I think, is a piece of a young John Patrick Shanley,” Marino said. “It’s pieces of himself and people he grew up with, an exploration of who these people are and who they might become.”
The BrooklynONE Productions cast includes Meg Felling, Raye Levine-Spielberg, Tiffany Rexach, Francis Shanley — John Patrick Shanley’s son — and Marino, who also directs.
“As a New Yorker, he speaks to us. He’s like our Billy Joel,” Marino said of Shanley. “You love him because he’s from here and he speaks in a voice you recognize. It’s familiar, and he elevates it.”
This is a season of Shanley (although every season is) with “The Pushover,” a new play, at The Chain Theatre; “Savage in Limbo”; and a three-show run of “Danny …” at the Center for Theatre Research beginning April 10.
“April is the month of Shanley,” Marino said. “You can see a world premiere, one of his most iconic shows, or come here and see one of his deep cuts.”
Francis Shanley, the playwright’s son, said being part of the cast adds a different dimension.
“It doesn’t feel like I’m in a play by my father until it comes up,” he told Brooklyn Paper. “The words are written so well they disappear into a moment in bar far away from my father and yet so close to home for me, my fellow actors and the audience as well.”
A borough bond
Shanley, who won a Writers Guild Lifetime Achievement Award early in his career, is a kind of bard of the Bronx, where he grew up, and Brooklyn, where he has lived for more than a decade.
“It’s filled with people from every nationality and language and every kind of entertainment,” Shanley said recently of New York City. “If you like people, you like New York. If you don’t like people, go to a mountain.”
While he often sets plays in the Bronx, he has a long history in Brooklyn, where he has lived in Williamsburg for a decade after about five years in Brooklyn Heights.
“I’ve lived in several places in Brooklyn,” he said recently. “The first apartment I ever had was in Park Slope when I got out of the Marine Corps. It was $280 a month for a floor in a brownstone. I was very nervous about how I was going to come up with that kind of money.”
Marino, who grew up in Dyker Heights and now lives in Staten Island, began staging shows at St. John’s Church of the Generals in Bay Ridge. The church closed around 2013, leaving the group without a space.
“We were getting kicked out. We had no home. We had produced a Shakespeare festival in Owl’s Head Park in the summer,” Marino said. “We did that and pop-up events around Brooklyn.”
In 2009, they presented “Heavens of Hell,” by Evan Storey, Off-Broadway at the Times Square Arts Center. In 2022, after St. Marks Comics moved to Industry City, they began helping with podcasting before staging outdoor Shakespeare and a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” simulcast there.
“We started doing pop-up shows all around Industry City. Eventually a spot opened up,” Marino said. “We were able to negotiate a deal that could help us have a home and be a performance hub at Industry City.”
They began presenting work in their own space at Industry City in 2023, at the Tom Kane Theatre, named after the group’s co-founder who died in 2011.
“We moved in and painted it black,” Marino said. “I had leftover gear, some lighting and sound, from the church. It’s a black box theater.”
“Savage in Limbo” appealed to Marino on every level, but especially as a lesser-produced script by a major playwright.
“I wanted to go further back in his catalogue,” Marino added. “I liked the title ‘Savage in Limbo.’ I said, let me check this out again. I read it. It’s perfect.”
The New York Daily News has called the play, which premiered in 1985, “conceived with sharp insight into the lives of losers, conveyed with a frisky and often hilarious wit.” The Washington Post described it as a “knockout” that “fuses powerful yet fragile characters” with “fiery dialogue” to capture a “multidimensional chorus” of 1980s New York City.
“It’s an opportunity to take a work and dig deep into it,” Marino said. “It’s wonderfully existential play.”
“Savage in Limbo” follows a group of friends in a Bronx dive bar, restless and trapped, searching for meaning, identity and a way forward.
“We’ve been having a great time digging into these characters, exploring these characters,” Marino said. “You take those moments and the dialogue and make them real.”
That connection extends beyond the stage, with Francis set to join his father for a talkback after the May 2 show.
“Having Francis Shanley step into his father’s work makes the whole thing even more special,” Marino said. “We would joke around. What does your dad mean by this? He would joke around and say, ‘I don’t know, it’s just my dad.’”
Francis said acting felt natural after a life surrounded by actors, rehearsals and opening nights.
“I’ve been around actors and in a theater since I was very young,” he said. “I grew up in that creative process and then disappeared from it until now.”
He owns a welding, fabrication and landmark restoration business that completed all the steel work for bkONE.
“Suddenly it became something else,” he added.
“I believe subconsciously I have always kept my ears and eyes open to that transaction I believe all actors chase,” he said. “The feeling of being free, the feeling of being a beast who is in complete control.”
Marino said the group operates as a nonprofit, renting out its venue, hosting corporate events and parties, and serving as Industry City’s audiovisual vendor.
“I think in the age of AI, as AI takes over Hollywood and entertainment, what people are going to come back to is live theater,” he said. “We can build real relationships and emotional experiences in person.”
“Savage in Limbo” runs April 23–26 and April 30–May 3 at the Tom Kane Theater, 1 35th St., Industry City, Building 5. Tickets cost $30 and are available at bkone.org/tix.
