ENTERTAINMENT

atinst

songs as a teen-ager for her
family's amusement.
Ms. Stein zipped through
Penn State in three years
and earned two degrees —
one in liberal arts, the other
in theater. Shortly thereaf-
ter, she started acting at the
Montgomery Playhouse,
where she met her actor-
husband, Dominic Ambrosi.
Mr. Ambrosi currently
teaches 7th grade science in

SHERWOOD KOHN

Special to the Jewish News

ale Stein is that anom-
aly in the theater, a shy
actress.
Not retiring, mind you,
because it would be next to
impossible to play five char-
acters onstage every night
as Ms. Stein does at the Bal-
timore Theatre Project, with
any degree of modesty.
But shy. Shy about blow-
ing her own horn, about re-
vealing her age, about ex-
posing her personality to the
public.
Except that she does all of
those things in her one-
woman stage piece, A Fresh
of Breath Air, through the
characters she has created —
Fifi Mouloir, Alexander Ver-
tu, Shane, Lenny and Nina
Navarre.
Fifi, who acts as continui-
ty for the gently satirical
show, is the ditzy French
proprietress of the Oui Cafe.
The other characters, in-
cluding an imaginary dog
(addressed, with accompa-
nying head-scratching mo-
tions, as "dug-eh"), are
regulars who wander in and
out of it. There's a compul-
sive architect, an aspiring
singer with a plastic brain, a
sleazy musician and a has-
been movie actress who is
also a lush.

The title of the show is de-
rived from one of actress
Nina Navarre's lines, a
phrase following the inges-
tion of too many martini ol-
ives and their surrounding
fluid.
"The characters are pieces
of me or projections of what
I would be like," said the pe-
tite, blue-eyed, blonde ac-
tress. "They are separate
from a standup identity.
They are much more theater-
oriented. Which one am I?
I'm none of them."
And yet...
Dale Stein was born in
Bellefont, Pa. and brought
up in West Long Branch,
N.J. Her grandfather on
her mother's side, whom
she never met, was a Bos-
ton vaudeville song and
dance man who went by the
name of "Doc" Burns. Her
other grandfather was a
cantor in Russia.
When she was young, her
family moved to Bethesda,
where she was graduated
from Walter Johnson High
School. She started writing

•

A has-been movie
actress, an up-tight
architect, a sleazy
musician, an
aspiring singer with
a plastic brain and
the proprietress of
the Oui Cafe are all
creations of
Dale Stein.

the Montgomery County
school system and serves as
Ms. Stein's manager. He is
also listed in the program for
Fresh of Breath Air as
"schmoozer."
"He's good at that," said
Ms. Stein. "He's also a good
chef. He learned to cook af-
ter we got married because I
can't. Actually, I cook main-
tenance meals. I can make a
mean brisket. My mother
said, 'I'm passing it on to
you' — the chicken soup and
brisket recipes — I thought
that was the ultimate act of
faith."

Ms. Stein's first role was
as a maid in the British
farce, See How They Run,
"and I started to do a lot of
work in Washington's New
Playwrights' Theatre," she
said. "I began singing and
developing my own material
at the Singers' Studio in
Georgetown.

"I played the piano and
sang original songs. Then I
thought people would like
the ballads broken up. But
I'm not a good joke teller, so
I did characters. Characters
and songs. Then the charac-
ters took over."
They weren't ready to
emerge fully, however, and
Ms. Stein worked at various
clubs for the next five years,
including the Village Gate in
New York and the Cellar
Door in Washington, where
she warmed up the audience
for one-liner maestro Henny
Youngman.

Meanwhile, she worked in
the movies and television,
where she had a small part
in Prime Risk, with Keenan
Wynn and some bit parts in
other films, and appeared
several times on Maryland
Public Television's "Crabs"
comedy program.
Last November, she did a
spot on Garrison Keillor's
"American Radio Compa-
ny" show.
"It was just a thrill," she
said. "I sang two of my
songs, 'The Turnpike Song'
and 'Secretary's Heaven' as
a character called Laveta.
"I like to think of my work
as social comment, rather
than character comedy,"
said Ms. Stein. "It gives me
an outlet to communicate
ideas and values."
A Fresh of Breath Air was
nominated for Helen Hayes
awards in the categories of
Best New Play and Out-
standing Lead Actress. And
Ms. Stein is taking the show
on the road.

But after a year of her cur-
rent five characters, she is
ready to move on. She is also
working on another show, a
multi-character piece.
Will there be any Jewish
content in the new show?
Not specifically, said Ms.
Stein, but in general.
"The kind of humor one
grows up with in a Jewish
household can't help but
resonate into one's work,"
she said. "I think it's in-
evitable."

ARTR P NITPRTA INI NAP NI

Dale Stein's comic characters are
vehicles for social comment in "A Fresh
of Breath Air" at the Theatre Project.