LI playwrights shine on Manhattan stages

Long Island playwrights are on a roll.

Frank Tangredi of West Babylon is enjoying his first major Manhattan production as Abingdon Theatre Company presents his "Lifeline" through April 1.

Jack Canfora of East Northport is anticipating his next move after the well-received premiere last month of "Poetic License" at 59E59 Theaters.

One of Canfora's playwright heroes, Richard Greenberg, who grew up in East Meadow, is writing the book for the musical "Far From Heaven," premiering next season at Playwrights Horizons.

Keeping his day job

For Tangredi, by day an editor for Pearson educational publishing, says his premiere at an established New York theater is "a big step." At 57, Tangredi says he's "both more and less patient" about his career. "I know what it's taken to get here, but I have less time to see my plays become successful."

"Lifeline" is the story of a do-gooder who rents his basement apartment to a troubled young man only to find that his issues can't be healed by a friendly game of poker and a six-pack.

"I'd put Long Island actors up against anybody," Tangredi says. "But the luxury we have with an Equity [union] production is time. Out here [on the island], people usually have day jobs to worry about."

Tangredi also had an entry in the 2008 New York International Theater Fringe Festival. He's received three other play readings at Abingdon. His play "Pastoral" was scheduled for California's Pasadena Playhouse, starring Angela Bassett, but the theater folded before opening night. Producers still hold an option.

Tangredi's "Brother and His Keepers" was staged by BroadHollow Theatre, where he frequently appeared as an actor. But Tangredi may be best known on Long Island as author of four plays in Theatre Three's annual Festival of One-Act Plays.

Taking 'License'

Canfora, 43, an English teacher at Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK High School, says he hopes his "Poetic License," the story of a poet laureate whose daughter's boyfriend harbors an agenda, will make the leap to a larger venue for an open-ended run. "There's a possible path to Broadway," Canfora says, "depending on who we get to star in it."

Meanwhile, his play "Jericho," set in that Long Island community, debuts April 6 in Sarasota, Fla. And Harris Yulin is directing Canfora's latest play, "Fellow Travelers," about the relationship among Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe and Elia Kazan (no starting date yet).

Canfora says Long Island's proximity to the "theater center of the world" makes stagecraft "part of the cultural discussion here."

Tangredi agrees, adding, "there's a theatergoing habit here and a theater-making habit."

Getting the 'habit'

That "habit" was part of Greenberg's growing-up experience -- East Meadow High, class of '76. His father, Leon, was a film executive. Greenberg recalls his mother, Shirley, commenting whenever his room got messy, "It looks like the Collyer brothers in here." He didn't know who the Collyers were, later learning that they died amid the hoarded detritus of their Manhattan home. Later, he wrote a play about them, "The Dazzle." At the time, he said that eccentrics appeal to him "because they obey the dictates of their personalities rather than the dictates of society or law."

Greenberg, 53, is best known for his Tony-winning "Take Me Out," about a gay baseball player. As a kid, Greenberg says, he played "only when they made me -- badly, horribly -- in gym." But that didn't stop him from becoming a Yankees fan.

Greenberg's book for "Far From Heaven," based on Todd Haynes' movie about a '50s suburban housewife whose husband struggles with repressed homosexuality while she becomes involved with a black man, is written with composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, who collaborated on "Grey Gardens," set in East Hampton.

WHAT "Lifeline," by Frank Tangredi

WHEN | WHERE 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through April 1, Abingdon Theatre Company's Dorothy Strelsin Theatre, 312 W. 36th St., Manhattan

INFO $25; abingdontheatre.org, 212-868-2055