Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

"Hello, Dolly!" Book by Michael Stewart, songs by Jerry Herman, based on "The Matchmaker" by Thornton Wilder. Directed by Doug Hodge. At the MacHaydn Theatre.

In my time, I have seen the following women play Dolly Gallagher Levi: Carol Channing, Mary Martin, Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable, Martha Raye, Betty Hutton, Pearl Bailey, Shirley Booth, Ethel Merman, Bibi Osterwald, Barbra Streisand and Fang's wife Phyllis Diller (the less said of this the better). I always thought that Mae West would have been ideal in the role, but, alas, she never played it. Now, in Chatham, N.Y., we have Monica Wemitt in the part at the MacHaydn Theatre. It has been said of Wemitt that she not only stood by for Miss Channing in the role during the 1995-96 revival (she was playing Ernestina, the blind date for Horace Vandergelder), but actually took it on when Carol C. was indisposed.
Wemitt is very much up to the role with her acting as Dolly Levi. She is less well-suited to it vocally. Wemitt has an odd "break" in her voice where she goes from chest voice to head voice, and this score rocks her back and forth across that line once too often. She recovers quickly from the change, but there is no smooth transition and she goes out of tune a bit. However, this only happens in her first number, and "Motherhood." The break adds years to her age, false ones I'm sure, but they are noticeable.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 3:27 PM | Permalink

"One Two Three" by Ferenc Molnar, adapted by Morwyn Brebner. Directed by Eric Peterson. At Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt.

It is Molnar month in the Berkshire region. His play "Liliom" has been running at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield under its more musical title "Carousel." Now add to that his one-act farce "One Two Three," which has taken the stage at the Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt. No two plays could be more different from one another.
"Carousel" unfolds its magical-realism story slowly and carefully, covering 16 years in an ill-fated relationship. "One Two Three" performs is entire hysterical yarn in real-time, one hour and 10 minutes. As directed by Eric Peterson, this is a delight not to be missed.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 3:21 PM | Permalink

"Carousel." Music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the play "Liliom" by Ferenc Molnar. Directed by Julianne Boyd.

Early in the musical "Carousel," the romantic leading man -- Billy Bigelow -- explains his theory of handling a woman. "I'll give her a slap on the jaw," he says. It's said as a somewhat charming antidote to the curious sweetness of Julie Jordan, the young woman he is talking to about his affairs. It is meant to surprise her and any other person listening including the hundreds in the unseen audience. It is also meant to be forgotten.
In this new production at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, it's a statement that never quite goes away. We are reminded of it midway through the first act when he actually does slap Julie, a gesture that is instantly blown out of proportion by friends and neighbors, gossips who elevate the angry gesture into wife-beating. Later it has a different resonance when their daughter is slapped in the same way out of the same level of frustration. It is an act that defines Billy more than any other.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:14 PM | Permalink

"St. Nicholas" by Conor McPherson. Directed by Carl Forsman. At Dorset Theatre Festival.

When a theater critic comes to grips with his inner monster and discovers the world around him is inhabited with other monsters -- in this case vampires -- he apprentices himself to them. He enters service, as they say in the British Isles, and finds a new way to interface the public with his own personal demons.
That's the story told by the narrator of this Irish fairy tale. He is a critic who claims to have no critical facility, no means of interpreting what he sees, no basis for his opinions; he only has his opinions. In reality, he has means, basis and the critical where-with-all to do his job brilliantly.
Embodied on the stage of the Dorset Playhouse by actor Jack Gilpin, this nameless critic has a voice that intones his memories of the in-and-out-of-this-world experience with all the dolor of a self-critical man out of touch with his own reality in the world. Gilpin's long, square-jawed face works to his advantage in this piece. Its serious demeanor gives a peculiar status to the tale he tells. He never creates any other characters but only talks of them, in the way a critic would. Not an imitator but a reteller of the story he witnessed and participated in, he just gives us the facts without drawing us into a world of dialogues.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:35 PM | Permalink

"Golda's Balcony" by William Gibson. Directed by Daniel Gidron. At Shakespeare & Company.

Annette Miller frightens me. Seven years ago, she took on the role of Golda Meir and I thought her performance perfect. Now, as part of the Diva Series at Shakespeare & Company, here is Annette Miller once again, reprising Golda Meir and making her 10 times more human, 50 times more intimidating and altogether far too real. There is something superhuman in that ability to re-create something and do it even better. Here is no Carol Channing act with exactly the same gestures, inflections and rhythms. Here is life breathing on an enlarged soapbox.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:45 PM | Permalink

"Freud's Last Session" by Mark St. Germain. Directed by Tyler Marchant. At Barrington Stage Company.

If playwright Mark St. Germain's play is on target; if C.S. Lewis did spend an hour with Sigmund Freud and they did clash over basic ideologies; if one fine mind met another fine mind in the days when a new world war was disrupting everything for everyone in Europe, then it is probable that the play "Freud's Last Session," now on stage at Barrington Stage Company's second space, is an accurate realization of the outcome of that meeting.
I, for one, believe it highly possible. The concept of such a meeting comes from a scholarly tome by Dr. Armand Nicholi Jr. titled "The Question of God." Surely no two men in the mid-20th century had more specific and sane concepts of the existence of God.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:30 PM | Permalink

"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics by Tim Rice. Directed and choreographed by Kelly Shook. At the Mac-Haydn Theatre.

I read the book and I know that happy endings aren't always so happy. In the case of this classic Biblical tale, a family is happily reunited and take up their place near the favorite son who has become a powerful force in ancient Egypt. Four hundred years later the family, now grown to more than a million souls, is still in Egypt, enslaved and abused, their first-born sons slain, their lives a hell-on-earth as they struggle to survive the cruel tyrannies of the descendants of the Pharaoh who graciously took them in and gave them grain and dwellings.
But that's history and the Mac-Haydn Theatre is presenting a joyful musical about a young boy sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers. The boy survives his own slavery and imprisonment to become a seer and a prophet and wealthy man in a foreign land where, during a famine, he is able to bring his family under his own protective wing. In this show all of this and more is accomplished to a tuneful, pastiche score embracing styles from hully-gully disco to calypso to French apache and 1960's rock.

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Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:11 PM | Permalink