`Cold' Feat.

Byline: FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

PLAYWRIGHT AND screenwriter Ronald Ribman started writing "Cold Storage" in 1976. He remembers the day as if it were yesterday.

"We went up (to upstate New York) on vacation," Ribman says by phone from his new home in El Dorado Hills, Calif., near Sacramento. `Rented a cabin. I set up a desk and set up my old typewriter in there, and while my wife and the two small kids went out to recreate, I was just happy as a clam.

``Cold Storage' began with a few lines. I really didn't know what it was about, where it was going, who these characters were. I just let it discover itself as I went.

`I was sitting there. I was looking out the window in the middle of the woods. I was just typing my dialogue. I was having a good time writing it. The characters began to develop, and by the end of the summer I had a play.

`I wish all my plays came that way."

The play, a comedy that will open Friday at Lane Community College, turned out to be one of Ribman's most popular pieces.

The action takes place in the roof garden of a hospital cancer ward. Mr. Parmigian, an Armenian greengrocer who has cancer, and Mr. Landau, a Jewish fine art dealer who is facing some tests, verbally spar with each other.

As director Judith "Sparky" Roberts puts it, "Parmigian has survived much. He relishes every waking moment, and he's filled with a kind of surreal inspiration. He goads Landau to unburden his `secret kabbalah,' to free himself from his past.

`This difficult encounter of two mismatched people turns into a tour de force for the actors."

Roberts has two veteran actors for the lead roles: Chris Pinto (Landau) and Patrick Torelle (Parmigian). LCC student Hailey Stephenson plays Nurse Madurga.

When "Cold Storage" made its debut in 1977, Martin Balsam and Len Cariou played the leads in both off and on Broadway. Newsweek called it "a beautifully detailed comedy, celebrating the miraculous, irreducible essence of life in the face of death."

RIBMAN HAS WRITTEN some 30 plays. His best known may be "Harry, Noon and Night." His most decorated work is probably "The Journey of the Fifth Horse," which won an Obie Award for best play off-Broadway in 1966.

The playwright also earned a Straw Hat Award for best new play for "The Poison Tree" in 1973, a Playwrights USA Award for "Buck" in 1984 and a Dramatists Guild Hull-Wariner Award for "Cold Storage" in 1977.

"Each play is so different," Ribman says. "This (`Cold Storage') is a comedy, a very funny comedy. I don't do comedies. Often my work is straight dramas. This play is the most realistic of my work."

As a television writer, Ribman earned an Emmy nomination in 1967 for his script for "The Final War of Olly Winger."

Among his screenplays are "The Most Beautiful Fish," "The Angel Levine," "Seize the Day" and "The Sunset Gang." He has several scripts in various stages of production.

Of all his work, "Cold Storage" gets the most productions, he says.

"I have seen this play a hundred times in different locations. And I have seen all kinds of people do this play. And you would be shocked if you followed the path to see how different each version is - especially when you, the writer, are not there.

`When they do their own way of doing things, it comes out their own way. The lines are mine, but the delivery, the motivation, the movement - you never know what you're going to get.

"It's very frightening sometimes, because in your mind you have the Broadway show that you did, which was as perfect as you can make it perfect.

``Then you see it being done by some amateur group in New Jersey and you usually feel like creeping under the seat.

`Where are my jokes? Where are my laughs? Where's this? Where's that? What happened? You could be William Shakespeare, and you see what they do to your `Romeo and Juliet' and you get ill."

Ribman is comfortable with Roberts' production because she and Torelle have done the play numerous times.

Roberts says they enjoy the play's "humorous and insightful approach to a serious subject" as well as "Ribman's richly imagistic language."

Ribman, 70, looks back on his creation and insists he had no idea what he was writing about when he started.

"I had the dialogue. No more than a string of words. I began writing. The dialogue seemed to fit. As it went along, the dialogue got more and more complex, and the situation developed and so on. It just created itself."

Although many writers map out every detail before they begin, Ribman prefers to improvise.

"When you're a real writer, characters begin growing. You may start off with some concept and think you're going to push them around, but they begin growing. And as words begin reacting against words, you begin going off into different directions.

`For me, doing a play or a film is a journey. It's a journey to get to the end. And not until I get to the end do I know where it was that I wanted to go from the beginning."

COLD STORAGE

WHAT: Ronald Ribman's award-winning comedy finds two men on a hospital roof, confronting life; directed by Judith "Sparky" Roberts.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Oct. 3, 5 and 10-12.

WHERE: Blue Door Theatre, Lane Community College, 4000 E. 30th Ave.

HOW MUCH: $10; $8 for seniors and students - not suitable for children under 15; 463-5202.

CAPTION(S):

Chris Pinto (left) and Patrick Torelle rehearse at LCC's Blue Door Theatre for the play ``Cold Storage,'' which concerns two men who meet in a hospital roof garden to talk about life and cancer. It is essentially a two-person play. INSIDE Two other plays opening in Eugene this week, both at Actors Cabaret of Eugene, are ``Sex: The Musical'' and ``Welcome to Torettaville.'' / 5G