Arts & Ide
Coming Of Age
tiris
Km
Deborah Grimberg's "Cycling Past the Matterhorn"
is a comedy of family dynamics.
13
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Special to the Jewish News
p
laywright Deborah Grimberg
was born in Singapore, raised
in London, spent 18 months
on an Israeli kibbutz and several years
in Australia, and backpacked through
Eastern Europe and Asia.
So it's no coincidence that the char-
acters of her latest play, Cycling Past
the Matterhorn, find self-knowledge
while having an adventure far from
home.
A comedy of family dynamics,
Cycling is the next offering of the
University of Detroit Mercy's Theatre
Company. It will be performed Nov.
18-Dec. 5 at the Marygrove College
campus, under the direction of David
Regal.
The play, which debuted at the
Arena Theatre in Santa Barbara in
2000 and was featured at New York's
International Fringe Festival in 2003,
is not pure comedy, said its 34-year-
old author.
"We are all guilty of going through
life missing opportunities," Grimberg
said.
In Cycling, an eccentric British
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mother (whom Grimberg insists is
not based on her own British mother)
travels to Switzerland and, quite liter-
ally, bicycles past the Matterhorn.
"Although she's losing her sight, her
world suddenly opens up," Grimberg
said. "She begins to 'see' more, in a
liberating sense.
"Her daughter, who's in her 20s,
considers herself a psychic. She feels
she can 'see' everything, and her
mother can't. Actually, it's the other
way around."
Yolanda Fleischer, co-chair of the
U-D Mercy theater department, read
Cycling Past the Matterhorn on the
recommendation of former student
Kenneth Jones. A writer for Playbill
Online, Jones saw the play in its 2003
New York production.
The Theatre Company produces
several new plays every year, Fleischer
said. "I look for plays that have an
urgent voice behind them," she said.
"I consider this a coming of age
piece, for both the lead characters,"
Fleischer said. "I wish I could have
acted in it."
Grimberg put her traveling days
behind her after moving to the
United States and living in Seattle,
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"Cycling Past the Matterhorn": A coming-of-age story for mother and daughter.