And it’s what his mother — Tony-winner Frances Sternhagen, of “Sex and the City” and “E.R.” fame — and his five siblings continue to do.

The Carlins of New Rochelle are performers.

“Rabbit Hole,” David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, centers on Becca and Howie, a suburban couple grappling with the death of their child. Carlin is Howie; Susannah Schulman is Becca. Also featured are Lucy Martin (seen in Hudson Stage’s “Murderers”),  Theo Allyn and newcomer Brandon Gill, a recent graduate of Juilliard School.

The production, directed by Dan Foster, runs weekends through Nov. 21.

Howie is latest in a line of roles for Carlin, in a family of role-players.

Sternhagen credits Felicity Dell’Aquila, a long-ago English teacher at Rye High School, with starting the Carlin family off on its theatrical expansion.

“I guess she was like our agent,” recalls the actress.

Decades ago, Dell’Aquila invited Sternhagen and her husband — both Broadway actors — to read scenes in her Rye High School classroom.

Recalls Sternhagen: “She said: ‘Why don’t you two find something you can do with the children?’ So we found a lot of material that we could do as a family. And we called it ‘Family Affairs’ and we did it at the Emelin and at Purchase. It was with Paul, Mandy and Tony. They were our actors at the time.”

Then came Sarah, Peter and John.

“In our neighborhood in New Rochelle, Sutton Manor, we were a small family,” Carlin says. “There were (families of) eight, eight and 13 in our neighborhood, near the New Rochelle marina.”

There were six Carlin kids, each of whom has gone on to lives related to entertainment.

Paul is performing in a “Musicals Tonight” production of “Paint Your Wagon” in Manhattan.

Amanda, an L.A. actress, works with Interact Theatre Company.

Sarah teaches acting at a Massachusetts middle school and “does shows in the summer,” Sternhagen points out.

Peter — who Carlin says prided himself “on being the nonactor” working behind the scenes as a stage manager, in PR and in the box office — landed a screen role in “The Pelican Brief.” Now he’s back behind the scenes, driving a prop truck for Disney and seeking acting work.

John is a musician playing toddler birthday parties for the Kids Music Underground, “a rock star on the East Side, among 2-year-olds,” says Carlin with more than a little pride.

Carlin is gregarious, funny and easygoing; Sternhagen is soft-spoken and charming, with a glint in her eye and a story ever at the ready.

A Tony-winner for “The Good Doctor” and “The Heiress,” Sternhagen is a mother, and she’s played one on TV.

She’s perhaps best known as Bunny McDougal on “Sex and the City” and as Cliff Clavin’s mother on “Cheers.” She also played Noah Wyle’s grandmother on “E.R.”

When it’s pointed out that both she and her son understudied roles in “Mary Stuart” on Broadway — Sternhagen understudied queens Elizabeth and Mary in 1971; Tony the Earl of Leicester and several other roles in the recent revival — the actress can’t resist a jab.

“You didn’t understudy both queens,” she tells Carlin.

“But it was much more Leicester’s play,” he says without missing a beat.

Carlin & Co. have plenty to work with in “Rabbit Hole.”

“You get a sense in this play, and the way we’re rehearsing it, that it’s all family,” Carlin says. “We are not polite. We don’t want to talk about things, but the playwright is masterful in putting that situation right on the front burner so it needs to be dealt with.

“A lot of people have said: ‘Oh, that’s a sad play,’ but it’s redeeming in the various ways that people are dealing with this unthinkable tragedy. They’re not dealing with it with a capital ‘D.’ ”

It’s an emotional ride.

“It’s a toughie,” says Sternhagen, who is on the Hudson Stage board of directors and plans to attend a show.

“I remember when I saw (the Broadway production) and someone asked me how it was. I’d tell them: ‘It was painful, but, boy, it’s something you want to see.’ ”

The original Broadway production starred John Slattery and Cynthia Nixon (in a Tony-winning performance).

Sternhagen has lent her name to Hudson Stage’s board and has done readings to help raise money for the 11-year-old theater company started by Denise Bessette, Olivia Sklar and Dan Foster.

It’s because theater is what the Carlins do.

“We didn’t tell them to become actors; we didn’t tell them not to. We just let them do their thing,” Sternhagen says.

Their thing became the family thing.

“My dad used to say that having kids in the theater is like a never-ending Music Night at Trinity School,” Carlin says of Tom Carlin, who died in 1991.

Sternhagen laughs at the memory.

“We had a clarinet player, a trumpet player, another trumpet player and another trumpet player,” she says, adding with a giggle: “I was just glad Tony switched from the violin.”

Sternhagen was in one episode of “The Closer” this year but isn’t working on anything at the moment.

Besides the family of actors with performances to see, and grandchildren to pamper, Sternhagen has other reminders of an actor’s life.

“A little while ago, I got a check for 28 cents for work I did on ‘Cheers,’ ” she says.

What: “Rabbit Hole”
When: Weekends, Nov. 6 through 21. 8 p.m. Nov. 6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21; 3 p.m. Nov. 8, 15 and 21. A post-performance Q&A on Nov. 15.
Where: Woodward Hall Theatre, Pace University, 235 Elm Road, Briarcliff Manor
Tickets: $30, $25 for seniors and students, $20 for Pace staff and students. One free ticket for every 10 purchased at the group rate.
Ticket call: 212-868-4444
Ticket web: www.smarttix.com
Hudson Stage: 914-271-2811
Web: www.hudsonstage.com

Photo by Carucha L. Meuse / The Journal News: Frances Sternhagen, a Tony-winner and longtime board member at Hudson Stage and her son, Tony Carlin, talk about “Rabbit Hole” at Studio 353 in Manhattan. “Rabbit Hole” opens this weekend.

Today, the WPPAC and the Westchester Philharmonic announced a series of chamber concerts at the City Center mall venue next to the multiplex.

The concerts will be Sunday matinees and feature musicians from the orchestra, which has Itzhak Perlman as its artistic director.

On Dec. 6, a brass quintet — Wayne duMaine and Sycil Mathai on trumpet and Lawrence DiBello on horn, Michael Seltzer on trombone, and Ray Stewart on tuba — will perform works that the announcement says will range “from baroque to pops to holiday favorites.”

On Feb 28, the Philharmonic’s string quartet — concertmaster Robert Chausow and Michael Roth on violins; Jessica Troy on viola; and Eugene Moye on cello — will play Mendelssohn and Haydn.

On March 28,  Philharmonic percussionist Jim Saporito, pianist Ken Ascher and bassist Dick Sarpola play from The Great American Songbook and jazz originals from their new CD.

All concerts begin at 2 p.m. and WPPAC is exploring a brunch-menu arrangements with local restaurants. Single ticket are $35.  Discounts are available. Call 914-328-1600 or visit www.wppac.com.

Greg Jbara, the actor, understands the impulse to move, to dance, to sing. He has it and he builds on it, continuing rehearsals long after taking home the Tony Award last June for best performance by a featured actor in a musical.

Jbara brought that impulse — and that Tony award — with him to Scarsdale High School last week to meet with a group of students with whom he shares a life experience: Like the Tony-winner, the cast of Scarsdale’s upcoming “Beauty and the Beast” knows what it’s like to be directed by Adrienne Meyer.

Meyer taught a young Jbara at Wayne Memorial High School in Michigan in the ’70s and here she was, 30 years later, getting a visit from her Tony-winning former student.

For the better part of three hours, Jbara talked shop with the student actors, covering diverse topics.

• On auditions. (Always go in knowing every line, he told the students, because there will be other actors who will know every line.)

• On taking his wife up on the stage to accept his Tony. (“I had no agenda, other than honoring my wife, because I wouldn’t have seen her the rest of the night. So she went everywhere with me right after I won the award. I got to spend the night with her and share the experience with her.”)

• On being a New York actor with an L.A. family. (He relies heavily on his laptop — fitted with iChat and Skype — to read to his boys and watch them go to sleep each night.)

• On networking. (“The friends you make when you’re starting out are the people who are going to help you down the road.”)

• On his big break. (“Getting into Juilliard. I wouldn’t have had the courage to come to New York without it.”)

Jbara said that when he conducts master classes at programs like Scarsdale’s, he sees himself back in school in Michigan.

“I see how fortunate these kids are to have someone like Adrienne, creating this opportunity, because all over the place the arts are gone. The funding is gone. I feel so fortunate to have grown up in a time when people were having babies and people were willing to pay the taxes to support arts in the public schools. It doesn’t exist anymore.”

School sports are important, Jbara said, but so are other arts-related skills, such as being in the choir, the band or building sets for a play.

“I get excited when I see there are still places where kids can go to school and have life experiences in the arts and figure out who they are.

“When those programs don’t exist, I can’t imagine the missed opportunities for young people,” he said.

“Our men’s chorus had 65 members — and half of them were the football team,” he says. “There was a passion and appreciation for the arts.”

After chatting with the students, Jbara watched as Meyer put them through their paces, with musical numbers “Be Our Guest,” “Kill the Beast,” “If I Can’t Love Her,” “Home,” and the title song. The musical runs Nov. 20, 21 and 22.

The actor stood in the aisle, arms behind his back, taking it all in and applauding after each number.

When it was over, Jbara sounded impressed. And Meyer beamed.

“I can’t believe you guys still have three weeks,” he told the cast. “You are amazing singers. I’m blown away.”

He complimented them on their diction and offered a bit of staging advice, suggesting that actors face the audience even though they’re talking to someone else on stage.

“We know you’re talking to each other because you’re both up there,” he told them.

At Juilliard, when actors would visit to talk with classes, Jbara would ask them why they act.

Some would give high-falutin’ answers — to change the world or some such reason — but Kevin Kline’s answer was refreshingly honest, Jbara said.

“He said, ‘Come on, if I didn’t like the sound of applause and the fact that everybody’s looking at me, I don’t know that I’d be in this business,’” Jbara recalled with a laugh.

Jbara said he is looking forward to a three-month break from “Billy Elliot” when he can be an L.A. father again and reconnect with his family without an Internet connection as the conduit.

In February, he’ll be on the big screen, in the film “Remember Me,” in which he plays Lena Olin’s husband and Robert Pattinson’s stepfather. The film, he predicted, will mark the emergence of a new star, the child actress Ruby Jerins, whom he compared to a young Dakota Fanning.

Jbara told the students to appreciate their moment.

“After working in the business,” he told them, “I still miss the professionalism of our productions in high school.”

The students peppered Jbara with questions.

About smoking on stage: (He smokes herbal cigarettes and inhales only six times per performance.)

About working with the Billy Elliot boys: (“They constantly raise the bar — and we can’t swear backstage.”)

About preparing to audition: (“The work of acting is the job of auditioning.”)

About nerves: (“I’d only get nervous if I wasn’t prepared, so I made sure to be prepared.”)

“I feel lucky to have seen you,” Jbara told the clearly pleased teens. “I’m sad I won’t be able to see you guys do this because I’ll be doing my show.”

Yes, that show. With the man who comes to understand why a boy would feel the need to dance.

If you go
What: “Beauty and the Beast”
When: Nov. 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 22 at 2 p.m.
Where: Scarsdale High School, 1057 Post Road, Scarsdale.
Tickets: $20, $10 for students and seniors. Available from cast members or at the door.

Photo by Carucha Meuse/The Journal News: Broadway star Greg Jbara chats with the cast of “Beauty and the Beast” at Scarsdale High School. At Jbara’s right is Scarsdale teacher Adrienne Meyer, who taught Jbara in Michigan in the 1970’s.

“SEEKING TALENT FOR JANUARY SHOWCASE

How often have you thought,  I was perfect for that role.  I hate auditions!
I have a monologue I’ve always wanted to do.  I’m just dying to sing a solo.
There’s this scene I’d do in a heartbeat.  I’m a dancing fool without a stage.

Well, here’s your chance to get your act together and perform it.  Fort Hill Players is seeking performers for their annual showcase production: FROM THE WINGS, to take place Jan. 29 & 30, 2010, at Rochambeau School Theater in White Plains.  Short monologues, one acts, poetry, scenes, etc. (readings or fully produced) Original works are welcome, as are singers, dancers, musicians, and possibly variety acts.

Send a description of your piece to: FHP@FortHillPlayers.com.   Deadline:  Nov.30, 2009.  Questions, Info: 914-946-5143 or FortHillPlayers.com

Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors and $8 for children. With pre-purchase only, buy 5 and get the 6th one FREE!

The box office and performances are at Palisades Presbyterian Church is at 117 Washington Spring Road, Palisades. Details at www.childrensshakespeare.org.

But Antrim Playhouse director Randy Accardi says they are all branches of the same tree planted by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula.”

This weekend, just in time for Halloween, Antrim opens a three-weekend run of “Dracula” at the playhouse in Wesley Hills, in a faithful adaptation of Stoker by Steven Dietz.

Douglas J. Aguirre, a retired NYPD officer from Middletown, N.Y., plays the title role. To get into role – which presents Dracula growing younger as he tastes new blood – Aguirre has let his fingernails grow long. When he is old, he strokes his fingernails absentmindedly; when he is young, the nails are weapons.

Accardi has directed some of Antrim’s most successful musicals of late – “West Side Story” and last season’s “Miss Saigon” – but never a drama.

He brings a choreographer’s eye and his extensive personal library of horror music to “Dracula”, which is entirely underscored.

“At first, I think the actors were distracted by it – we had music playing at every rehearsal – but they’ve come around, Accardi says. “It’s not going to be overpowering.”

The underscoring has meant the cast of 18 actors learning to pace their speeches and movements to match the music.

This Dracula bites on the beat.

There will be fog effects – much of it is set in London -?authentic Victorian costumes and plenty of now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t moments.

Producer Jim Guarasci, a fixture at Antrim for years, remembered there was a trap door in the stage that had long been painted over. It has been restored to use.

The director has also chosen to re-create moments that were only mentioned in the script, including a scene in which Dracula attacks the crew of the ship that is taking him to London.

It’s pretty spooky stuff, the director says, not suited to children younger than 13 or so.

“It’s going to be over the top,” Accardi says.

Antrim Playhouse presents “Dracula” through Nov. 15. Fridays and Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2. $20, with seniors and students paying $18. (Discounts don’t apply Saturday nights.) Antrim Playhouse is at 15 Spook Rock Road, Wesley Hills. 845-354-9503. www.antrimplayhouse.com.

‘Moonlight and Magnolias’: Actors Conservatory Theatre presents Ron Hutchinson’s new comedy, “Moonlight and Magnolias,” about rewriting the screenplay for “Gone with the Wind,” Oct. 30, 31 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. $18, $15 for seniors. Arlene Wendt directs the show, at 20 Buckingham Road in Yonkers. 914-391-6558. www.actshows.org.

‘Rose’: Martin Sherman’s one-woman show, “Rose,” inspired by the playwright’s grandmother, is at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls. From a Ukrainian village to modern-day America, Rose’s journey is comic, tragic and epic. Through Nov. 1. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8; Sundays at 4. Single tickets are $30 for Thursdays and Fridays, $32 for Saturdays and Sundays. The Schoolhouse Theater is at 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls. 914-277-8477. www.schoolhousetheater.org. (Read the review here: tinyurl.com/yjkypmw)

‘Art’: Hand-to-Mouth Players present Yasmina Reza’s “Art,” Oct. 30 and 31 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. $15, $12 for seniors. Hand-to-Mouth performs at Trinity-Boscobel United Methodist Church auditorium, 275 Church St, Buchanan. 914-734-4336. www.htmplayers.com.

‘The Secret Garden’: Philipstown Depot Theatre presents “The Secret Garden,” a musical staging of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, directed by Nancy Swann. Through Nov. 15. $20, $15. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. On Halloween, the curtain is at 2 and there is no 8 p.m. performance. 10 Garrison’s Landing, Garrison. 845-424-3900. www.philipstowndepottheatre.org.

Douglas Aguirre of Middletown, N.Y., plays the title character in Antrim Playhouse’s production of “Dracula” in Wesley Hills. (Angela Gaul/The Journal News)

Follow the season

Follow the fall theater season, including audition notices, reviews and show coverage, on Peter D. Kramer’s “In the Wings” blog at theater.lohudblogs.com. Follow Peter on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterkramer

Fanny’s in; Barbra’s not.

In decades writing about theater for Playbill magazine and in nearly a dozen books, Robert Viagas has interviewed many stars.

The founder of Playbill.com and host of Playbill Radio, the Mamaroneck resident has had a seat on the aisle to every Broadway show for years, seeing those stars firsthand.

So when Applause Books wanted a book about stars of Broadway musicals, Viagas was their man.

The result is “I’m the Greatest Star” (Applause, $29.99).

In it, Viagas captures the careers and personal stories of a who’s who of Broadway: from Bert Williams – whom Viagas calls “the first true musical comedy star in the modern sense” – to Kristin Chenoweth, of “Wicked” fame, who once told Playbill that people “seem surprised that I actually have a brain and a master’s degree.”

In between are dozens of stories – careers, really – recreated in painstaking detail.

Viagas undertook the book knowing that the fans of anyone he left out would howl at the omission, so he devised a formula – an actual mathematical formula – to answer the question: “What makes a star?”

The degree of stardom, he reasons, is a function of the difficulty of the roles each star attempted, the ease with which those roles were handled, the overall quality of the work, their ability to put their personal mark on a performance and – here’s the sticky part – the number of times they had a starring role or a star turn in a featured role.

That last variable kept Barbra Streisand – who, in “Funny Girl” sang the song “I’m the Greatest Star” that gives the book its title – off the list.

(Fanny Brice, whom Streisand played in “Funny Girl,” made the list.)

Viagas also looked for a personal triumph, either over a troubled childhood or other barriers to success.

Zero Mostel survived the McCarthy blacklist and came back to star on Broadway and in Hollywood. But those lean times changed him, Viagas writes.

Viagas started with a list of 250 stars – right off the top of his Broadway-history-jammed head.

Then he “ran them through the formula” and came down to about 50. Editors asked him to whittle it down and he delivered chapters on 39 stars, 40 if you count brother and sister Fred and Adele Astaire separately, as Viagas does.

For two years, Viagas did what he calls “old-fashioned reporter work,” digging through his personal Broadway library, yellowed newspaper clippings, and archives at Playbill and at Lincoln Center’s performing-arts branch of the New York Public Library.

He leafed through folders of musty photos to find just the right one to accompany each essay.

And he read plenty of biographies, autobiographies and press clippings, from which he drew perspective on some of the earlier stars about whom less is known.

“It was like writing 40 books,” he says with a laugh. “But as hard as it was, it was also a delight to research some of these things.

Viagas, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of performers and performances, dug up a film performance of Danny Kaye’s “Melody in 4-F” – a comic pantomime-gospel-scat-singing tour de force Kaye included in Cole Porter’s “Let’s Face It!” on Broadway. In the piece, Kaye enacts the process of getting drafted, inducted and trained for combat and then inadvertently saving his unit and getting a medal.

“If you see the performance, your hair will stand on end,” he says. “It’s spectacular. At the end of that number on Broadway, people would leap to their feet.”

All of that legwork to find that single performance on film resulted in one long paragraph in the Danny Kaye chapter in the readable 425-page book.

Variety, a paper written for show business insiders, was a great resource, he says, because articles gave detailed descriptions of, say, vaudeville acts, because booking agents would consult Variety to see if an act was worth booking.

Nothing of the Astaires’ vaudeville career was recorded, but Variety gave readers – and generations later, Viagas – a glimpse of how the team found fame before Adele married Lord Cavendish and Fred went off to Hollywood.

He sums up each of the stars succinctly.

“I have a philosophy that really is behind everything I write: The theater does not happen on the stage. Theater happens in the audience. What happens on the stage is designed to evoke a response in the audience. So what I’ve tried to do is to re-create what it must have been like to be in the audience watching these people.”

There are names you might know: George M. Cohan, Fanny Brice, Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor.

There are names you might not know: Burlesque star Buddy Clark, who drew glasses on his face and was a whiz with a cigar; William Gaxton, a leading man to whom Merman first sang “You’re the Top.

And Marilyn Miller, the original blonde bombshell whose rendition of “Look for the Silver Lining” in the show, “Sally,” left people weeping.

Viagas begins to tear up himself recalling how Miller, a young widow whose husband had died in a car accident, performed the anthem of hope in the wake of World War I. In the second verse, he says, Miller looked out into the audience and turned her optimistic view to them.

“Here she was, having endured this personal tragedy, and she was trying to cheer them up,” he says, clearly moved. “It was the kind of a connection between a star and an audience that rarely happens.”

There was a time, Viagas says, when Broadway was as high as you could get in show business. Some of the Broadway stars made a transition to Hollywood; others did not.

The most successful early Broadway stars are not remembered today because they were doing so well on stage that they didn’t have to go and do movies.

Then there was Eddie Cantor, who did Broadway, radio, movies and television.

“Eddie Cantor did everything,” Viagas says. “I’m sure Eddie Cantor would be tweeting today.”

Photo by Tania Savayan/The Journal News: Robert Viagas of Playbill, who has written a book, “I’m the Greatest Star,” in Times Square.

SORRY, LIZA
Sorry, Liza with a Z, but you just missed the cut.
Liza Minnelli – a Tony-winner last year – didn’t make it into Robert Viagas’ list of 40 stars for “I’m the Greatest Star.”
She was No. 41.
“She had three starring roles. She qualified, but her heart was never really in the stage. ‘The Rink’ was not a memorable show. ‘The Act’ was not a memorable show. She subbed for Gwen Verdon in ‘Chicago’ on a moment’s notice, which would have been a great story to write about. But as far as her starring shows were concerned, she never was Charity, she never had her ‘Music Man’ or ‘Dolly’ or ‘Mame.’”

On Wednesday, Kitt and fellow Tony-winner Brian Yorkey will premiere a new song — “Something I Can’t See — which they wrote with input from the show’s Twitter followers. Of the more than 850,000 followers on Twitter, Kitt and Yorkey sifted through more than 4,000 suggestions posted 140 characters at a time and eventually settled on “Something I Can’t See,” which  will be performed by cast members Louis Hobson (Dr. Madden) and Aaron Tveit (Gabe) at 92Y Tribeca (200 Hudson Street) on Wednesday, October 28 at 7:00pm.

The one-night-only event will include a panel discussion featuring Kitt, Yorkey, director Michael Greif and producer David Stone.

Tickets and information are available at www.92YTribeca.org.

Next to Normal sought ideas from the Twitter followers on all aspects of the new song, from which characters are performing it and where it takes place in the musical’s storyline, to song structure and lyric suggestions.

The song will not be incorporated into the Tony-winning musical.

Fans around the world are encouraged to follow the event live via the show’s Twitter (www.Twitter.com/n2nbroadway) or by searching #n2nevent on Twitter.

“I don’t remember,” she says. “Perhaps I imagined it.”

She might have lived through a pogrom in her tiny shtetl in Ukraine. Or it might just be a memory borrowed from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

She might have survived a brutal crackdown in the Warsaw Ghetto. Then again, who knows?

“I don’t remember the ghetto,” she says, having just recounted a story from that place.

Memories are tricky.

Still, some memories can’t be turned off so easily, and those memories clearly haunt Rose.

Based in part on the experiences of the playwright’s grandmother, “‘Rose” tracks a life of pain and determination, from Ukraine to Warsaw to Palestine and Germany. And on to America.

Each leg of the journey leads to another place where Rose doesn’t feel she fits in.

“I don’t belong,” she says again and again.

Here, after 80 years, Rose is sitting shiva, the Jewish ritual of mourning. She sits on a low, hard, wooden bench throughout.

She sits and talks, remembers and chooses not to remember.

Annie McGreevey — seen on Broadway in “Sweet Charity” and “Company” — plays Rose in a performance that has flashes of humor, rage, horror and humanity.

(“Rose” came to Broadway in 2000, starring Olympia Dukakis.)

Director Jamie Winnick’s staging allows McGreevey to rise only rarely, making for a static stage picture. McGreevey is equally tied down by the story, which peaks at the end of Act 1 and goes downhill from there.

Other one-person plays have had little stage movement — “The Year of Magical Thinking” comes to mind — but Joan Didion’s writing was more compelling and artful than Sherman’s. In paying tribute to his grandmother, Sherman seems to find it a challenge to leave anything out.

The first act is full of dramatic and horrifying episodes and closes with a scene that director Winnick makes cinematic and effective, unlike anything preceding it or following it. (David Pentz’s lights add greatly.)

After the wild ride of act one, the second act seems like a long denouement, more talk than action, as Rose continues to search for her place in the world.

For more than two hours, in a feat of memorization and characterization that is to be commended, McGreevey breathes life into a character who — despite a wretched past — scoffs at talk of “the future.”

She talks emotionally about her harrowing journey on the Exodus 1947, a refugee-laden ship bound for Palestine that was denied access to the Holy Land by British forces. Eventually, the passengers were put on another ship and returned to Germany.

But, as with McGreevey’s accent, which seemed to come and go, Sherman’s story wears thin. A plot twist near the end of Act 2 — set in a gift shop in Arizona — seems to stretch disbelief beyond all willing suspension.

The Schoolhouse production values are first-rate.

Ken Larson’s Miami Beach set is painted a dusty rose with a band of aqua as an accent. The shapes are geometric, with two cylindrical walls flanking a large archway. The only furniture to speak of is that much-used bench from which Rose rarely budges.

When memories are triggered, Pentz’s lights signal the change. When Rose recounts one particularly gripping experience, she begins just on the edge of a channel of light and then plunges herself into the harsh light and we see her in full.

Memories are tricky.

Rose is a memorable character well-performed — by an actress with a remarkable memory — in a less-than-memorable play.

Next at the Schoolhouse: David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Kimberly Akimbo” in March.

What: “Rose”

When: Weekends through Nov. 1. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays.

Where: Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls.

Tickets: $30 for Thursdays and Fridays; $32 on Saturdays and Sundays. Discounts for subscribers.

Call: 914-277-8477

Web: www.schoolhousetheater.org.

Photo by Ron Marotta: Annie McGreevey stars in “Rose,” Martin Sherman’s play about his Ukrainian-born mother and her journey to America. The show runs through Nov. 1 at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls.