A slew of classic characters from the pens of Shakespeare, Coward and Wilson and more will tread the boards of the Red Bank stage this season. 

By TOM CHESEK

“I feel like I’m having a dream,” the playwright and performance artist Lisa Kron said as she faced a capacity crowd at Two River Theater Monday night.

“In high school, we, the theater people, were like the outcasts,” she said. “This is the pep rally we never had.”

The occasion for the spirited assembly was the annual new-season announcement  by Two River Theater Company — one of the most highly anticipated such events in New Jersey stage circles, and one presided over by John Dias, now in his second season as TRTC’s artistic director.

As introduced by the nationally renowned producer and some celebrated associates, the 2012-2013 schedule builds upon the successful template established in the current 2011-2012 season — a season that climaxes with the production of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s My Wonderful Day, going up in previews on May 15.

Utilizing both the mainstage Rechnitz auditorium and the “black box” Marion Huber space at TRTC’s branded Bridge Avenue arts center, the new slate of eight shows mixes classics of the English language with new American voices; intimate solos with exquisite ensembles, and new faces with a whole lot of returning favorites — with words from the likes of Noel Coward, August Wilson and a guy by the name of Shakespeare.

Veterans of Broadway and the Two River Theater, Michael Cumpsty and Chuck Cooper return to the Red Bank stage in 2013.

Joining Dias on stage were a couple of people new to Two River — Kron (whose Broadway production Well was developed with Dias and director Leigh Silverman), and composer-bandleader Ethan Lipton — as well as a pair of Tony-lauded talents who should be familiar not just to Broadway habitues, but to regular observers of the Red Bank scene.

Presently appearing in End of the Rainbow on Broadway (a show for which he’s received a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor), Michael Cumpsty previewed his involvement with next year’s Present Laughter as a project that “will bring me back to Red Bank, which is where I want to be. I fell in love with this theater, and with the family at the theater.”

An Obie winner for Hamlet and, with Dias, a resident of Middletown, Cumpsty (who starred for TRTC in 2011′s Much Ado About Nothing, and shared the stage with Alec Baldwin for a fundraiser last November) got laughs for suggesting that his role in the Coward comedy — “an aging matinee idol, who throws everyone around him into a vortex of neurosis” — was brought to him as being “kind of like (my) life.”

Making a big splash with Monday night’s audience was Chuck Cooper, the actor and singer who starred this year in both the “chamber musical” In This House and the Red Bank run of August Wilson’s Jitney. The winner of the 1997 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (as Memphis, in The Life) will be portraying a different character by the name of Memphis, when he reunites with noted director Ruben Santiago-Hudson and the words of August Wilson for Two Trains Running. Referring to the late African American playwright as “the American Bard” — and calling up the concept of the “blood memory” that unites people of diverse backgrounds — the actor observed that “just like Shakespeare, it takes about a minute to get Wilson’s poetry. You lean into it and you get it. Come to this play and you will remember.”

A high point of the evening was Cooper’s performance of a song from next season’s “family show” presentation, A Wind in the Willows Christmas. The “Americanized” adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s beloved animal characters was composed by the In This House songwriting partnership of Mike Reid and Sarah Schlesinger, although  there are, unfortunately, no plans to suit up Cooper as Mr. Toad when the show makes its bow in December.

The 2012-2013 season, for which subscriptions will soon be made available, is as follows:

TOP DOG/ UNDERDOG (September 8-30, 2012). In 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for this tale of two brothers, a game of Three Card Monte, and the shared past that can’t be escaped. On the tenth anniversary of this theatrical milestone, Dias and TRTC managing director Michael Hurst return to the play that they helped develop in its premiere at NYC’s Public Theater, with the playwright herself as director.

NO PLACE TO GO (October 6 – November 4, 2012). The quirky, retro-rocketing music of Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra is front and center for this “irreverent, deeply compassionate musical ode to America’s work force,” a lament for a longtime employee whose company has announced that it’s moving to another planet. TRTC Associate Artist Leigh Silverman (who directed Lisa Kron in Well) takes the helm for this premiere inside the Marion Huber Theater.

HENRY V (October 20 – November 11, 2012). William Shakespeare’s supercharged history of a gung-ho young king and the costs of living in a perpetual state of war — the play that gave us the rousing exhortation “Once more unto the breach” — is staged by Michael Sexton of The Shakespeare Society, with a cast featuring “some of New York’s most accomplished young Shakespearean actors.”

A WIND IN THE WILLOWS CHRISTMAS (December 8-30, 2012). In TRTC’s annual holiday presentation for family audiences, Grammy winning Nashville songsmith and recording artist (plus ex-NFL defensive tackle) Mike Reid reteams with Sarah Schlesinger for a new take on the adventures of Mr. Toad, Mr. Badger, Mole and company, while director Amanda Dehnert makes a long-awaited Red Bank debut.

PRESENT LAUGHTER (February 16 – March 10, 2013). Two River Theater Company visits the works of Noel Coward for the third time (following Blithe Spirit and Private Lives) with this witty and sophisticated “valentine to the theater,” in which Cumpsty stars as the debonair leading man Gary Essendine. A director will be announced later this year.

THE ELECTRIC BABY (April 6 – May 5, 2013). For their next world premiere project inside the Marion Huber space, the TRTC team welcomes playwright Stephanie Zadravec for this adult drama about the way we form families — a story in which “a group of lost souls are brought together by accident, and form unlikely connections that will change all of their lives.” May Adrales (In This House) directs.

2.5 MINUTE RIDE (April 20 – May 12, 2013). Performing this monologue piece for the first time in about ten years, author and storyteller Lisa Kron spins a moving and funny autobiographical story that centers on her relationship with her Holocaust survivor father — an Obie-nominated whirlwind tour that careens from concentration camp to amusement park rollercoaster ride. Mark Brokaw (Broadway’s The Lyons) directs.

August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING (June 1-23, 2013). Continuing their exploration of Wilson’s epic “Pittsburgh Cycle” that began with this season’s Jitney (and bringing back Chuck Cooper as well as Tony winning actor, director and “first generation Wilsonian” Ruben Santiago-Hudson), TRTC advances into Summer’s heat with this ensemble drama set in the riot-scarred urban landscape of the 1960s; a crucial component of a project that Dias calls “one of the greatest chronicles of a people and a time…one of the greatest works of art ever.”

Take it here for individual tickets to the upcoming production of My Wonderful Day, as well as an “Intimate Evening With…” series of star-quality music concerts at Two River Theater. Check in for updates on other summertime events at Bridge Ave, including the second annual Crossing Borders festival, Joe Muccioli’s Summer Jazz Series and the BOLERO Red Bank dance project — about all of which more to come in the paperless pages of redbankgreen.

By JOHN T. WARD

It’s months away, but an enduring store vacancy in downtown Red Bank is set to end, redbankgreen has learned.

Hair stylist Salon Concrete has signed to take over half the space at the 5,600-square foot 123-127 Broad Street, salon owner Christine Zilinski confirms.

Meanwhile, there’s also some churn underway at Salon Concrete’s current home, 15 Broad, from which upscale children’s clothier Lavish Kids recently pulled out.

The street-level store below Salon Concrete recently departed 15 Broad Street, but the space is close to getting a new tenant, officials say.  (Click to enlarge)

Zilinski said she plans to relocate her salon from the 1,100-square-foot second-story space it has occupied for five years to the new address in September. The move is to accommodate a recent staff expansion and to return the business to a street-level presence it had in its early days on Monmouth Street, she said.

“Mainly we’re moving because we don’t have enough chairs,” she said. But she calls the middle Broad Street location “a highly visible space” that she believes will boost her new-client numbers significantly, given the presence of Sicilia Cafe and the the Red Bank Catholic/St. James complex across the street.

The one-story building, adjacent to the upmarket haberdashery Garmany, was the longtime home of Surray Luggage, which moved to the opposite side of Broad almost four years ago.

Landlord Caram Company plans to put on a new facade, Zilinski said.

“Which is great, because that building’s been an eyesore for a long time,” said Red Bank RiverCenter executive director Nancy Adams. With Salon Concrete, Caram “got a good, solid tenant,” she said.

An official at David Cronheim Company, which manages the property, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Meanwhile, Salon Concrete has a vacant shop beneath its present location, but possibly not for long. Lavish Kids recently moved out to take its business online, a sign posted in the window says.

But “I hear there’s a lease about to be signed,” Adams tells Churn.

The landlord, identified in property records as Providence D’Arpa, could not be reached for comment.

Not exactly hush-hush: indie pop singer and songwriter Aimee Mann is spotlighted in a Friday evening solo concert at Two River Theater, the first in a new projected series produced by MusicWorks Entertainment.

By TOM CHESEK

Viewers of IFC Channel’s Portlandia will recognize her as “Aimee Mann,” a singer-songwriter forced to accept housecleaning gigs by day — and Big Lebowski fanatics might recall her cutting off a toe as part of a failed extortion scheme.

The happy truth, however, is that Aimee Mann has never had to quit her night job — a music career that’s allowed her to transition from one-hit-wonder frontwoman of 1980s band Til Tuesday (“Voices Carry“) to an Oscar and Grammy nominated artist with some 30 years worth of indie cred.

When the LA-based Mann takes the stage of Red Bank’s Two River Theater this Friday night, she’ll be spotlighted in a stripped-down, songs-and-stories format that marks her debut on the greater Green — as well as the premiere of an all-new series that’s being brought to town by a familiar name on the area artscape.

Billed as An Intimate Evening with Aimee Mann, the 8pm show is the first event hosted at Two River for MusicWorks Entertainment, a new concert promotion and production company co-founded by Rusty Young, until recently the chief executive officer of the Count Basie Theatre Foundation.

During Young’s tenure at the Basie, the Monmouth Street theater’s “fundraising and friendraising” arm presented several Intimate Evening events at the neighboring Bridge Avenue performing arts center, culminating in a sold-out solo stand by Judy Collins last August. As the MusicWorks managing partner explains, the Mann concert is being positioned as the inaugural entry in a projected series of 30 or more such events to be featured at Two River and other appropriately scaled venues throughout the region.

While the concert’s not officially billed as a fundraiser, Young reports that a portion of proceeds will be donated to the borough based nonprofit Lunch Break and its ongoing efforts to feed the hungry in the Red Bank community.

Tickets, priced at $49 and $59, are still available from the Two River online box office, with a limited number of $89 premium seating availabilities offered as well. Check the MusicWorks website for anticipated updates regarding upcoming events in 2012.

By JOHN T. WARD

In this, our 60th Retail Churn report: a Red Bank flower shop changes hands, and so does a bike-workout facility.

But while the flower store is staying put under a new name, the bike gym seems to be on the move…

At 5 East Front Street, between Sciortino Tailors and Bienvenue restaurant, Tina Bulwin is spiffing up what had been the Front Street Florist. She plans to reopen on Friday, September 30 under a new name: Flowers on Front.

Bulwin, of Bayville, bought the business recently from Rob DeBellis, she tells redbankgreen. She’s been in the flower trade for 38 years, and managed a couple of flower shops in Ocean County, but this is her first venture as an owner.

“It’s a great opportunity and the price was right,” she says.

She tells us she specializes in European displays. Not sure what that means, but we’re all for it.

Meanwhile, indoor cyclery Hammer House appears to have cleared out of space it occupied for less than nine months at 80 Broad Street, where there’s a for-rent sign in the window.

An email making the rounds tells clients that HammerHouse has a new owner – Kathy Conover, as opposed to original owner Jamie Greenleaf.

The email mentions only the original Colts Neck location. A message on the company’s answering machine refers to a new Red Bank location, with more info on the website, but no such information was immediately apparent, and no one from the company could be reached for comment Friday afternoon.

Touted as the biggest firemen’s fair in New Jersey, the event boasts feel-good qualities galore: brimming bowls of clam chowder, bird’s-eye views from atop a Ferris wheel, dizzying rides and a much-anticipated “super 50-50″ drawing. Upwards of 10,000 visitors are expected.

The fair runs from 6 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights. It’s closed on Sunday, and wraps up Saturday, September 3.

A slideshow of photos from last year’s fair is here. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)

Citing last year’s success, downtown Red Bank restaurants will reprise Food & Wine Walk this summer, beginning Sunday.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

As if last weekend’s Riverfest wasn’t enough to show off Red Bank restaurants, downtown promoter RiverCenter is cueing up a post-park foodfest of its own — an entrée into summer, if you will — reinstating a biannual tradition sprung last spring that brought the crowds into and sent them all about downtown Red Bank.

So, if you haven’t fully digested the lobster, filets and burgers of last week, RiverCenter’s got a suggestion: walk it off. And grab a glass of vino while you’re at it.

Beginning Sunday, the downtown promotion agency re-establishes a wildly popular wend through the borough’s streets with the Red Bank Food and Wine Walk, a moveable sampling of just about everything Red Bank’s bistros, coffee shops and watering holes have to offer.

It goes like this: show up in Red Bank around 4 p.m., throw down $25 for a wristband and, well, that’s it. From there you’re on to laying out your own map, popping into participating businesses and making Costco-like pit stops for bites and swigs from Red Bank’s finest.

And it happens twice a month — every second and fourth Sunday —through the absolute dog days of August.

Here’s a list of participants, provided by RiverCenter. Asterisks denote locations where wristbands will be sold:

Blue Water Seafood (9 Broad St)
The Bistro at Red Bank (14 Broad St)
The Cheese Cave (14 Monmouth St)
*Danny’s Grill and Wine Bar (11 Bridge Ave)
*The Downtown (10 W Front St)
Front Street Trattoria (31 W Front St)
Gaetano’s (10 Wallace St)
La Pastaria (30 Linden Pl)
*Jamian’s Food & Drink (79 Monmouth St)
*The Melting Pot (2 Bridge Ave, The Galleria)
Monticello (69 Broad St)
New Corner (22 E. Front St)
*Pazzo (141 W. Front St)
*red (3 Broad St)
Readie’s Fine Foods (18 Monmouth St)
Smoothie King (65 Broad St)
Sugarush (37 E Front St)
*Teak (64 Monmouth St)
*Taste (2 Bridge Ave, The Galleria)
Temple (91 Broad St)
Yummy Yummy Good Stuff at Funk and Standard (40 Broad St)
Zebu Forno (20 Broad St)

For more info, call RiverCenter at 732.842.4244, or check out its spiffy new website, onlyoneredbank.com.

[See corrections at the bottom of this article]

Construction of an addition to the upscale Atrium at Navesink Harbor senior-citizens residence in Red Bank is expected to start next week with nearly all 60 units spoken for, according to officials at Springpoint Senior Living.

Long before the build-out is complete, however, an eyesore lot at the fork of West Front Street and Riverside Avenue will be transformed into a green-trimmed parking area for use by Atrium residents – and attended by valets, says company chief financial administrative officer Chuck Mooney.

An architect’s rendering of the six-story addition, at right above, as seen from Riverside Avenue.

The triangular one-acre lot, which was once home to a car dealership and won approval in 2005 as the site of an office building that never saw the light of day, will serve as a staging area for construction of the six-story addition to the existing 12-story Atrium on Riverside Avenue. Work should be completed in December 2012, Mooney says.

But just 30 or so days after the $35 million addition starts, backhoes will also tear into the cracked asphalt lot across the street, Mooney tells redbankgreen. The resulting 98-car, secure-access lot will be reserved for Atrium residents and their guests, whose cars are to be parked and retrieved by valets following specified traffic patterns dictated by the borough zoning board to mitigate traffic impacts.

The valet service is just one of many perks at the Atrium, a  continuing care retirement community that offers gourmet meals, onsite banking, pontoon-boat river cruises and in-apartment healthcare. Residents pay entry fees of $350,000 to $1 million, plus monthly service fees of up to $4,500 to live there.

Springpoint has already spent more than $15 million renovating the formerly drab senior’s residence it acquired for $7 million from the American Baptist Estate in 2005, when it was known as Navesink House.

In spite of the tough economy, particularly for real estate, the addition is virutally sold out, Mooney says. Eleven of the planned units have been reserved by singles and couples who already live at the Atrium, he says, and all 60 units are under contract, though a contract-attrition rate of 15 to 18 percent in the industry means that a waiting list of buyers will certainly be tapped, he says.

The sellout, he says, is proof of demand for active lifestyles by today’s seniors.

“The typical model is 50 acres in a country setting,” Mooney says of retirement communities. “Now, the residents want to be more integrated into the local community, to stay with the same doctors they already see, to go to the same restaurants.”

The Atrium, which is Springpoint’s only urban facility, draws its residents from within a five-mile radius, whereas similar projects typically draw from 15 to 25 miles out, Mooney says.

[Correction and clarification: Mooney's title is "chief administrative officer," not chief financial officer. We apologize for the error.

Regarding the fees cited above, those came from information provided to redbankgreen in 2009. Mooney tells us that the entry fees have since been adjusted downward, so that they now range from $200,800 to $949,000, and that monthly service fees begin at $3,500. "The majority of the apartments have monthly service fees significantly below $4,500," Mooney says.]

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

Busy last week prepping for the rapture?

Whatever you missed is all here, below, waiting for you.

On Thursday morning, a then-unconfirmed report of a missing person sent residents of River Street in Red Bank peering from their porches and wandering the streets asking why authorities were gathered at the end of the street and a helicopter was flying above the upper Navesink River. A day later, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it was investigating the whereabouts of a 26-year-old Bank Street woman, who they believe was last seen with her estranged husband. Anyone with info is asked to call the office at 1.800.533.7443.

The BBC, in a report on the American economic recovery, dropped in on Rumson, where Rumson Market Place co-owner Jerry St. Cyr talks about dealing with rising food and gas prices.

A two-car crash in Little Silver late Sunday sent six people to area hospitals.

Middletown police charged an already-incarcerated man for a 2008 gas station burglary. And Wednesday, members of the MTPD, along with public officials, held their annual “tough talk” on drugs and alcohol to a SRO Middletown Arts Center.

The Red Bank council, after complaints from downtown tenants catching wafts of engine exhaust, plans to direct police to enforce a state anti-idling law, specifically directed at delivery trucks.

Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna chats with residents about the state constitution, his favorite borough employees and the New York Times, part of his Saturday series of meetings, which continue through June.

Not long after a push by residents against a 342-unit development at the Avaya property in Lincroft got underway, the area was hit with plans for another large housing project in the area. The township, after years of litigation, settled a suit by Bamm Hollow Country Club, allowing a plan to build nearly 200 units on the golf course’s property.

In other development news, a plan to build a Hampton Inn hotel at the north entry to Red Bank cleared its first hurdle in gaining approval.

The Oceanic Bridge, which connects Rumson and Middletown, lost power Tuesday afternoon. By Tuesday night it was back in working order.

Also in Rumson, just two days after police reported 18 car break-ins, “good detective work” led to the arrest of three individuals who were charged with burglary and theft.

We had an update on downtown (and a couple West Side) businesses midweek, in a recurring feature, Retail Churn.

The Kaboom Committee is still looking for money to support the Independence Day fireworks, and asks that visitors click on Liberty Mutual’s website for a quiz to help it win a $10,000 grant.

Jacques Brel director Daniel Ostling gave redbankgreen a few minutes for an interview to talk about the show at Two River Theater Company.

Most of the events highlighted in our occasional Done Good feature have come and gone, but there’s one left you can still catch. The Pilgrim Baptist Church will hold a golf outing at 8 this morning to support the church and Lunch Break.

Fair Haven held its second annual town-wide yard and sidewalk sale Saturday. Read more about that today.

Coming soon: hit show Top Chef announced it plans to make a stop at Marine Park in Red Bank this week to tape three installments.

Got an extra couple bucks? You might consider donating it to Red Bank Middle School, whose students and teachers are in the middle of an online appeal to take a field trip to museums in New York City.

Last, we’ve got a photo set from last weekend’s triathlon in Red Bank, and a photo we’d like you to guess the location of.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

It’s time to polish momma’s apple, locavores.

Red Bank’s ever-popular, always-growing open-air emporium, the Red Bank Farmers’ Market, returns to the blacktop of The Galleria on Mother’s Day for its 12th season of dishing out homegrown fruits, vegetables and miscellaneous wares.

“All our main guys are coming back,” said George Sourlis, owner of the hosting site of the market, The Galleria.

That means upwards of 35 of your favorite purveyors of locally-grown bites, from fresh vegetables and fruits to oils and breads, plus a list of trinkets and assorted goods crafted from some of the most talented artisans in the area, said Megan Prenderville, of Frame To Please, which returns for its eighth year to the market.

“The vendors are all artisans. They make their crafts and I think that’s a lot different than just having a retail space,” Prenderville said. “It’s really wonderful when you’re able to speak directly with the person that produced the food for you. And they’re all really talented.”

Also making a return to the borough’s breezy bazaar is Adam Sobel’s Cinnamon Snail organic and vegan mobile kitchen.

“Hell yeah,” he said, when asked if he’d come back for a fifth year.

Sobel, who’s still pushing to get space to park and sell his wildly popular dishes on a borough street, has continued in the off-season to push his product on the streets of New York City and Hoboken, and this past year, he said, “has been record-breaking. We’ve had some extremely busy days.”

“I’m sure it’s going to be great in Red Bank. I can’t wait to get back and serve the community,” said Sobel, of Chestnut Street. “I’ve been looking forward to this all winter.”

The Cinnamon Snail will be there every Sunday through the market’s season, except the second Sunday of each month, when cohort and longtime downtown retailer Patti Siciliano of Funk and Standard will set up a spot to sell Sobel’s creations, along with her recently-launched Yummy Yummy Good Stuff stuff.

Not in the plans this year is The Galleria’s construction of a parking deck, Sourlis said. The plans, which have hit another delay, could get moving in the next few months, but Sourlis assured redbankgreen that when construction does start, the market will remain in some capacity. But that’s highly unlikely this season, he said.

“The market will never be affected,” he said. “We would make alternate plans.”

Sourlis also said he and and his team are planning some special additions to this year’s market, but they’re still in the works so he’s keeping it under wraps.

But for now, he said, “We’re looking forward to Sunday, and hopefully the weather will cooperate.”

Weatherbot says it likely will. The forecast says it’ll be partly sunny with a 30-percent chance of showers, and highs in the upper 60s.

The market runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday through mid-November.