Tony Estrella has spent “most of my summer” working on the script of “The Smuggler,” the one-man show that will open The Gamm Theatre’s new season. “I try to start (the rehearsal process) with as much in my brain as possible.”
Written and directed by Ronán Noone, “The Smuggler” features bartender Tim Finnegan, newly arrived in the United States from Ireland. Set in a bar, Finnegan “shares the winding path that brought him here – through heartbreak, bad decisions, and a few too many pints.” As further described on The Gamm’s website: “By turns hilarious, gripping, and shocking, ‘The Smuggler’ is a solo thriller told completely in rhymed verse that proves the best storytellers often have the most to hide.”
Noone, says Estrella, “is a wonderful playwright from the Boston area. He was a bartender there (while he was in) the playwriting program at Boston University.”
Estrella did a reading of one of Noone’s plays back then, but this is their first serious collaboration. When the artistic staff at The Gamm was talking about opening the season with “The Smuggler,” the big question was, who would act in it, and who would direct?
“That’s when Ronán said, what if I throw my hat in the ring?” said Estrella. “And then he wanted me to do it. And what a gift, to be directed by the writer of the piece, to be in the room with the man from whose heart and mind it sprang.”
The show, which opens September 17, is written entirely in rhyme. According to Noone, that wasn’t on purpose. And Estrella says it’s not traditional rhyme. “With regular rhyme, if you got the first line, you got the second line. But this one has interior rhymes, echoes. It surprises you how the rhyme scheme works.”
To Estrella, it’s like learning “a bit of choreography. The script is a score. That’s a powerful way for me to think of it.”
When we chatted, Estrella was still a week-and-a-half away from moving onto the show’s stage. “I have to have the words in my brain, and then as the bartender, I’ll be making drinks, running around. There will be a lot of activity.”
Estrella, who will be working with an Irish accent, says it will be “a little weird, being on the stage by myself. Well, not alone. There’s one main character, but he embodies 10 or 11 others too.”
The show “breaks the fourth wall,” says Estrella. “Come in and sit in the bar. I’m telling stories. And a bar is a natural place of storytelling.”
The Gamm Theatre presents “The Smuggler,” running September 17 through October 11. For tickets and information, visit www.gammtheatre.org.
