Moline native makes nerdy debut in Geneseo
Moline Dispatch
By Claudia Loucks
Posted Online: April 11, 2012, 11:26 am
GENESEO -- Jordan Smith is making his stage debut at the Barn Theatre in a decidedly
unglamorous part -- the title role in the Richmond Hill Players' production of "The Nerd."
The 1981 Larry Shue comedy, under the direction of John VanDeWoestyne, of Geneseo, opens
tonight. Mr. Smith plays Rick Steadman, who he called a "stereotypical nerd." According to the
director's description of the play, aspiring young architect Willum Cubbert often has told his
friends about the debt he owes Rick Steadman, a fellow ex-GI whom Willum never has met, but
who saved Willum's life after he was
seriously wounded in Vietnam.
Willum is delighted when Rick shows up
unexpectedly at his apartment for a visit on
the night of his 34th birthday party. But his
delight soon fades to horror as it becomes
apparent that Rick is a hopeless "nerd" -- a
bumbling oaf with no social sense, little
intelligence and less tact.
Richmond Hill Players' production of 'The Nerd' features
John Donald O'Shea, left, Jordan Smith and Lisa
Photo: Submitted
Pence.
According to Dramatists Play Service, "one of
the funniest plays ever written, this
extraordinarily inventive, side-splitting
comedy was first presented by the
Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, then
produced in Great Britain, then went on to
Broadway."
In the story, Rick overstays his welcome, "until the normally placid Willum finds himself
contemplating violence," according to the Dramatists Play Service summary, leading to a "dire
development which, happily, is staved off by the surprising twist ending of the play."
Mr. Smith was born and raised in Moline, and he said the only acting experience he had during
his school years was as "Doc" in "Snow White" when he was a first-grader. He was in the Moline
Boys Choir from third grade through sixth grade.
"I was seeing a lot of shows with my parents, who are avid theater-goers," said Mr. Smith, who
works at Kone. "It looked like a lot of fun, and that sparked my interest to get involved."
He began by working as a soundboard operator for the Playcrafters' production of "Lend Me a
Tenor" in January 2011.
"I became more and more involved by doing different jobs until I made it on stage in 'Rehearsal
for Murder' with Playcrafters in May of last year," he said. Mr. Smith said when he learned Mr.
VanDeWoestyne was holding auditions for "The Nerd," he decided to try out.
Mr. VanDeWoestyne is "a great actor and a good guy, and it seemed as though it would be
fulfilling to work with him," he said. "Thus far, I haven't been proven wrong."
Mr. Smith played guitar in a band for a time, he said, and "when this went to the wayside, I
needed an artistic outlet to replace that. I have now come to enjoy working with the people I
perform and work with ... as well as the preparation it takes to play different roles."
Even though he has not yet directed a show, Mr. Smith said he hopes to do so. He said he has "a
lot to learn, and I'm around a lot of great people who are constantly teaching me something
new."
His future theater assignments include running sound for "Titanic Aftermath" in May at
Playcrafters in Moline. He will be producing "Moving" for Playcrafters in July, and he has been
cast as Jeffery in "The Curious Savage," to be staged by Richmond Hill Players in August.
Other members of the cast in "The Nerd" are Nathan Johnson, Lisa Pence, Suzanne Rakestraw
and Jack Sellers, all of Geneseo; Justin Raver, Kewanee; and John Donald O'Shea, Moline.
Richmond Hill's 'Nerd' draws lots of laughs
Moline Dispatch
Posted Online: April 19, 2012, 10:58 am
By Julie Jensen
GENESEO -- A full house laughed heartily during last weekend's Richmond Hill
Players production of “The Nerd” with Jordan L. Smith in the title role.
The comedy tells the tale of aspiring
architect Willum Cubbert, played by
Nathan Johnson, who owes a debt to
Rick Steadman, a fellow G.I. who
saved his life when he was wounded in
Vietnam.
Rick shows up the night of Willum's
34th birthday, shocking everybody. He
is a stereotypical nerd, with pants that
are far too short and a trail of toilet
paper streaming from his waist.
Justin Raver plays Axel Hammond,
who lives in an apartment in Willum's
building.
From left, Justin Raver, of Kewanee, Jordan Smith, of
Moline, and Nathan Johnson, of Geneseo are featured in the
Richmond Hill Players' production of 'The Nerd.'
Lisa Pence gives an animated performance as Tansy McGinnis. John Donald O'Shea
plays Warnock Waldgrave, Willum's boss, and Suzanne Rakestraw plays Celia
Waldgrave, his wife.
Jack Sellers plays Thor Waldgrave, their son, and he gives an excellent performance.
Director John VanDeWoestyne, who moves things along nicely, also designed the set.
The play will be performed tonight through Sunday at the Barn Theatre in Richmond
Hill Park.
Richmond Hill’s ‘Nerd’ is irritating, but fun
David Burke The Quad-City Times | Posted: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:46 pm
The opening night of “The Nerd” last week at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre may
have produced some of the heartiest laughs I’ve heard in the former barn.
Most of the time, deservedly so. Larry Shue’s script has been performed by many
community theaters in the past three decades and ran a year-plus on Broadway in
the late 1980s.
The plot has architect Willum (Nathan
Johnson) living in Terre Haute, Ind.,
with female friend Tansy (Lisa Pence)
and buddy Axel (Justin Raver) nearby.
He gets an unexpected visit from Rick
Steadman (Jordan L. Smith), the same
man who saved his life in the Vietnam
War. (The show is set in 1980, an
excuse to drag out old fashions and
play Blondie music.)
Contributed photo - The cast of “The Nerd” by
Richmond Hill Players includes, from left, Justin
Raver, Jordan L. Smith and Nathan Johnson.
Rick is a by-the-book nerd, with taped
glasses, greasy hair, suspenders, highrise and high-water slacks, a pocket
protector and a fingernails-on-achalkboard voice. It’s as though
director John VanDeWoestyne simply
told Smith to play “a white Urkel.”
Both intentionally and unintentionally, he wreaks havoc on Willum’s life and work,
particularly when he’s trying to please a hotel bigwig (John Donald O’Shea).
Smith’s Rick is a divisive character: You either love him for his earnestness or hate
him for causing such chaos. I laughed at him much of the time, but wondered what
would have happened if a couple of the stereotypical nerd features were eliminated
or changed. You can be a nerd and not have the curved spine, thick glasses and
nasal delivery. Trust me.
The rest of the cast also makes its mark, with Johnson’s Willum carrying much of the
load as the foil, feeling an obligation to pamper the man who saved his life. Johnson
is an appealing stage presence, but he needs to deliver his lines more naturally.
Newcomer Pence is winsome as Willum’s friend with benefits (before the term came
into play). I loved Raver’s dry, sarcastic delivery as Axel and his ability to make lines
sound spontaneous.
O’Shea does a great slow burn as boss Warnock Waldgrave and is backed ably by
Suzanne Rakestraw as his wife, Clelia, and fourth-grader Jack Sellers as his son,
Thor. (Hand it to Shue, he does come up with interesting character names.)
Richmond Hill veteran VanDeWoestyne keeps the proceedings swift and light, and he
uses the barn’s in-the-round setup to his benefit.
Catch “The Nerd” for a spring night respite that will generate more than its fair share
of laughs.
Adorkability: "The Nerd" at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre
through April 22
River Cities Reader Theatre - Reviews
WRITTEN BY THOM WHITE
MONDAY, 16 APRIL 2012 06:01
By the time the titular character entered the play,
I’d resigned myself to having to endure two more
hours of few-and-far-between laughs during
Friday’s performance of The Nerd, while also
fighting off a sleepiness fostered by the unusually
high temperature in appearing in only his third
stage role, Jordan L. Smith woke me up and held
my attention with his annoyingly nasally delivery
of playwright Larry Shue’s monologues. The best
reason to see The Nerd, it turns out, is the nerd
himself.
Justin Raver, Jordan L. Smith, and Nathan
Johnson in The Nerd
That’s not to say that Smith’s Rick Steadman – a
Vietnam veteran who moves in with the man whose life he saved during the war – is perfect.
Smith’s portrayal is 100-percent stereotypical, right down to his wardrobe: glasses with tape over
the nose-piece, suspenders, and pens poking from the pocket of his button-up-shirt.. (Thankfully,
he’s not also wearing a bow tie.) Here, Smith looks like a character from a musical about high
school students – Grease’s Eugene or Bye Bye Birdie’s Harvey Johnson, anyone? – and it could
be argued that such a caricature diminishes the play by removing all subtlety. Still, the actor
overcomes these obstacles by playing Rick as so amusingly annoying and so awkwardly
interesting, and I found it easy to like Rick for the very reasons the other characters in the play
don’t: there’s a certain charm to his overwhelming dorkiness. I hung on his every word, wondering
about the outcomes of Rick's tales of childhood,
and not knowing where these strange stories
would end.
Directed here by John VanDeWoestyne, Shue’s
comedy relies on the juxtaposition of having this
imbecile thrust into a somewhat serious
situation. When the title character decides to
drop in on Willum Cubbert, the young architect
who owes his life to Rick, Willum is in the midst
of throwing a dinner party for his boss, while
also saying goodbye to the woman he (maybe)
loves before she moves to Washington, D.C. But
Rick’s visit, and his subsequent decision to
Jack Sellers and Jordan L. Smith in The Nerd
move in, throw Willum’s life into shambles, and ultimately push the harried architect to take part in
a wickedly weird plan to get Rick to decide, for himself, that it's time to move out.
Portraying Willum, Nathan Johnson seemed determined to get his inflections and facial
expressions right during Friday’s performance. Yet while the meaning and emotion behind each
line was clear, both vocally and physically, his effort felt too calculated to be organic.
Consequently, this kept Willum from coming across as sincere, and wound up hampering the
chemistry of the cast overall, as Willum is the central character around whom the plot revolves.
There is, however, notable chemistry between Lisa Pence’s Tansy McGinnis (Willum’s potential
love interest) and Justin Raver’s Axel Hammond (Willum’s best friend), who share a scene during
which they spar in a way that’s playful rather than angry, as if the two were longtime friends
familiar enough to be friendly in their debates, rather than argumentative. And Raver has some
delightful moments in his role as a sarcastic, condescending, pretentious theatre critic who writes
his negative reviews before seeing the plays. (“Ever see anything good?” he’s asked, to which he
decidedly replies, “Nope.”) Raver is wonderful in the way he matter-of-factly walks to the window
and tosses out a deviled egg after Rick points out that “just a little while ago, these were in birds.”
And his quick, dry response to another character’s proclamation of “I can’t conceive” (as in
“understand”) with “We all wish,” is a gem of a delivery, so subtle that it could almost be missed.
John Donald O’Shea is at the top of his game
when his Warnock Walgrave (Willum’s boss) is at
his angriest, which I wish happened with more
frequency than it does; O'Shea's reaction to
Rick's game of “Shoes & Socks” is hilarious for
the unspoken motivation behind it. Suzanne
Rakestraw, as Warnock’s high-strung wife,
speaks with undertones of sad dissatisfaction in
everything, subtly shading her character with
emotions just evident enough to be perceived.
And Jack Sellers has little to do beyond scream
John Donald O'Shea, Jordan L. Smith, and
Lisa Pence in The Nerd
and hide as the Walgraves’ son (and “poster child
for Planned Parenthood”) Thor, but the young
actor certainly shows a knack for coming timing.
Despite its fine individual performances, though, there’s still a dullness to VanDeWoestyne’s
production of The Nerd, and part of the problem seems to be that every character in it seems
nicer than they should be. With the exception of Raver, who is appropriately cynical, the rest of
the cast lacks the required dislike for other characters; O’Shea plays Warnock as too friendly with
Johnson’s too-eager-to-please Willum for there to be any strain between the two, and Rakestraw,
while notably excitable, still enjoys an amiable relationship with everyone else in the room. The
only comic tension in this production is the tension created by the presence of Smith’s Rick –
which may be why the times he’s on stage are the most interesting parts of this Richmond Hill
presentation. Thankfully, after its first 20 minutes or so, Smith is on stage quite a bit.