BY SANDI CARPELLO
Staff Writer
M. Lennon Perricone NORTH BRUNSWICK — Up until three years ago, M. Lennon Perricone had never even been to the theater.
But in a dramatic turn of events, the 46-year-old North Brunswick resident and high school dropout is now establishing himself as one of the most ambitious playwrights in the state’s community theater scene.
Since 2001, Perricone has written and staged 19 original plays in non-equity theaters across the state and country. In 2002, he was selected as one of 10 finalists in the prestigious Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans, and in 2004, he was named the permanent playwright in residence at Monmouth County’s Eatontown Playhouse.
He even relinquished his longtime job as an advertising executive in exchange for a nine-to-five job that would allow him to dedicate more time to his craft.
“I started playwriting on a dare,” said Perricone.
After many unsuccessful years of trying to pursue a career as a fiction writer, he was ready to give up on a writing career.
“Then a friend of mine challenged me to write a play,” he said. “I knew nothing about the theater. I never read any plays. … I didn’t even know what the fourth wall was.”
His latest work, “The Redemption of Fawler Mulrae,” opens March 4 at the Eatontown Playhouse, Route 35. The one-act tragedy tells the story of Fawler Mulrae, a juvenile delinquent turned successful businessman who returns to visit the reform school that housed him as a youth.
In the play, the protagonist has hopes of bringing the new generation of troubled and violent youth to salvation. However, as he comes face to face with the young men, he questions whether it is possible to convert a youth who has committed an unprovoked act of violence.
Although the play is a fictional account, Perricone said he shares characteristics with the play’s protagonist. As an abused child growing up in Brooklyn, Perricone spent his childhood in a Catholic reformatory school. Perricone also said that he and the protagonist share the same ZIP code.
“Fawler Mulrae would only live in an ethnically mixed community like North Brunswick,” Perricone said. “He wouldn’t be comfortable in a homogenous place.”
The one-act play, which has seven local actors, minimal sets and a dark, somber tone, is characteristic of Perricone’s work. As a playwright, Perricone said he often prefers tragedy to comedies and musicals and hopes his original work will change the face of local theater.
“We don’t have enough tragedy in plays,” he said. “Tragedy endures.”
“The Redemption of Fawler Mulrae” is directed by Deb Schwartz and will run at the Eatontown Playhouse from March 4-26.
Tickets are $20 and include coffee and dessert. For more information visit www.mlennonperricone.com or call (732) 888-0339.