Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

The only problem with the hit comedy by drag diva Charles Busch, "The Tale of The Allergist’s Wife," is that it isn’t really very funny. Not by itself, at any rate.
On Broadway it was a puff of hilarity as three major stars worked like maniacs to inject humor into the script by mugging, carrying things to extremes and generally turning drawing room sex kitch into its most farcical form. Linda Lavin, Tony Roberts and Michelle Lee are all wonderful actors and when it comes to "over the top" antics probably cannot be beaten.
At The Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y., those three stars are not available to take us to the extremes that this play needs to be really successful. Alas.

Marjorie Taub has been in mourning for a while over the loss of her psychiatrist. Her recently retired Allergist husband, Ira, cannot provide consolation and neither can her nagging, walker-ridden mother Frieda. Marjorie’s one ray of sunshine is her reading, something she shares with Mohammed, the doorman of her upper west side, Riverside Drive apartment building. Suddenly into her life comes an old high school chum, Lee, a ray of sunshine that initially brightens Marjorie’s days then begins to fade her drapes as her intentions become more and more unorthodox in this conservative Jewish home. Taking the plunge leads to disastrous results for Marjorie whose domestic life unravels even further. But she does learn one thing, to quote Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, "there’s no place like home" and Mohammed is the East. Sounds like fun? Right.
Michael Marotta, who is generally a reliable director for light comedy, has come up with a company that cannot make all of this funny. Busch has written some outrageous lines that do get laughs, but more often than not they fall on seemingly deaf ears and lie there. That, unfortunately, is the fault of the casting of this play. There are two excellent performances, one quirky one and two that die aborning. Marotta has attempted to give the play a pace, but his cast can’t keep up with him, I fear. They trip, doggedly, into their lines. They avoid the relationships the playwright has given them.
At the bottom end of the performance spectrum are the Taubs, Ira and Marjorie. Sky Vogel is Ira and he is so low key, so softly played that to not love him seems a crime. But his energy, or lack of it, his exasperation or rather lack of it, plays against the relationship he has with his wife. There are times he cannot be heard. There are times he does not react. There are even moments in the play when he disappears completely as his wife is being seduced right before his eyes by Lee. Ira is a man who must always be in the room, even when he’s gone off to work. Without him and his reactions we don’t have the comedy Busch intends. Vogel is pleasant, with a slight charm and a misplaced reality here. He loses us and he loses the play.
As his wife, the central and title character, Nancy Evans is a shrew whose personality holds us at arm’s length from the beginning to the end. She never allows us to see a different side of her difficult personality. We never know what holds Ira, what attracts Lee, what makes Frieda so punishing for her. Her Marjorie deserves little, so I will stop here and comment no further.
  As Lee, Diana Bradley brings an energy to the piece which is definitely right for her role. She has the funniest way of walking I’ve ever seen and it, alone, is worth the price of a ticket, but without the comic foils for her to play off, even that wonderful walk and Mae West like-delivery of sultry lines and actions falls short of the desired effect. It’s too bad, really, for she could make this play into the laugh-riot everyone wants. Her entrance and recognition comes off not quite real, and her reentry, which should be a revelation, merely confirmed her presence. Even her exit, which should excite and enthrall, became a flat spot. It’s too bad, because she could be terrific if she only seemed to have an impact.
Zach Lombardo is a perfect Mohammed, from his manly presence on a ladder at the beginning of the play to his almost too willing victim of seduction at the conclusion. His playing has a ring of true reality to it, although it is clearly couched in the comedy of the writing. He does it all very well and deserves the rich applause he received at the performance I attended on Friday night.
At the top of the heap is Marie Allocca who cannot do more with Frieda than she does. She makes petulance and flatulence into funny things to do. She exaggerates without going too far and she gives the character everything it deserves and needs. She is the embodiment of "a relationship that never really ended," an accusation Lee throws at her and Marjorie. She serves for her daughter as "a grim reminder of her bleak future." Allocca makes this all very funny to watch and hear and most of the belly laughs in this production come through her performance and the way in which theothers react to her.
Abe Phelps has put up a perfectly west side New York set for this play. Garish in color, yet exactly right, it does it’s best to send the players on their way to hilarity. Jonathan Knipscher’s costumes are excellent, providing Marjorie and Lee with character-defining clothes.
The only real problem is the play itself. Its needs are rampant, mostly over-the-top playing, and its been denied what it requires. Poor, little play. It tried.

THE TALE OF THE ALLERGISTS’’S WIFE runs through Sunday, July 8 at the fully air conditioned Theater Barn with performances on Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 5 PM & 8:30 PM and Sunday matinees at 2 PM. Tickets are $20.00 for all evening performances, and $18.00 for the Sunday matinee. For information and reservations, which are suggested, please call (518) 794-8989. http://www.theaterbarn.com

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Dissonance is the sound of conflict. We’re all familiar with it in some form or other. Unlike harmony, through which two or more tones are struck that complement one another, dissonance takes the same attack but places sounds with no complimentary notes together to create the sense of chaos.
Both variations are natural in the world and in music. Both are resident in this new play at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Using the opening phrases of Mozart’s C-Major Quartet, K. 465, known as the Dissonance Quartet, to strike an opening figure in the darkness we are given the key to the play that follows. Four musicians, three men and a woman, are preparing for a Carnegie Hall concert celebrating their ten harmonious years together making glorious music. Their program covers the span of the romantic quartet - Mozart to Britten, 18th century to 20th century. They are a mis-matched group. The Bradley Quartet is lead by James Bradley, first violinist, and teacher of both the second violinist and the cellist, both Americans. James is definitely the three b’s of chamber music: British, brittle and bitter. He has had an affair with Beth, the cellist, who has also had an affair with Hal, the second chair violin.
Hal is prone to contradiction in his relationship with his mentor. Tempo and style are his weapons of choice in his rehearsal relationship with James. Beth is compliant. She will play in any mode and at any pace the others set. Paul, the viola player in the quartet takes her attitude one step further. He obeys the whims of the "captain," James. He suffers the nasty viola jokes with good humor and buoys up the spirits of his co-creators of the music. The dissonance of James and Hal in their unsteady relationship is underscored here by the counterpoint of Paul and the intended harmony of Beth. This ship is foundering on the lack of human sympathy, the loss of melodic commonality.
Into the mix comes Jonny, a rock star with a passion for good music but no knowledge of what its really all about. He is being tutored by Beth who, for the first time, finds out what the love of music can lead to in a relationship that has no true basis in fact. An already volatile situation within the confines of the Bradley Quartet is brought to a new pitch, a new high note emotionally.
\With generous musical excerpts from their program, the Mozart, the Britten and especially the Borodin String Quartet No. 2 (musical fans will recognize this as the source for the song "And This is My Beloved" from Kismet) the passions of these five souls are revealed in an excellent evening of theater in the maiden voyage, theatrically, of novelist Damian Lanigan. In two hours and twenty minutes we wend our way through a week in the lives of musicians at odds with their music and the forces that surround their music-making. In many ways it is a devastating experience, and yet it is a luscious and literate comedy.
Daniel Gerroll plays James and his performance is so bitchy (another b) and beautifull rendered that long before his deepest secrets are revealed we already know him through and through. Here is a man jealous of his students, overwhelmed by the success of his work and unable to deal with the conflicts he cannot even admit exist. Gerroll gives every element of his complex personality the airing and the visibility we need to understand him. The merest gesture, grabbing his hat off the rack, for example, is an expression of his character’s emotions. He does it superbly.
Alicia Witt is a revelation as Beth. Having only seen her in a few films and one television series, her presence on the Nikos Stage at Williamstown is proof that here is an actress who can play the full gamut of parts, the entire history of emotion. While she doesn’t play her cello (none of the actors play their instruments except for the rock star), we assume she does and we believe she can do it beautifully. That is in her acting. That is in her physical relationship with her instrument. That is exquisite.
Thomas Sadoski is wonderful as Hal, giving vent to his anger, to his self-pity and his personal faith in himself as a musician. Rufus Collins makes Paul a pitifully sweet man and, in a modestly surprising turnabout, into a sweetly pitying person who could be the best friend anyone ever had.
As Jonny, Patch Darragh is the odd note. He provides a strong other voice in opposition to the quartet. He does it with so much ease and grace that he makes the world of pop music, with its instant millionaires and constant self-indulgence, seem like the place to be.
The five of them, under the wonderful guidance of director Amanda Charlton, play their peculiarly dissonant quintet-tale out with the rehearsed perfection demanded by the script. Even the blush of Schubert injected into the second act manages to point out the emotional power of what all five characters so dearly love, even more than one another, the power and the sexual ecstasy of music.
Andrew Layton’s set is wonderful, flexible, and an ideal setting for this jewel of a play. Jennifer Caprio’s costumes suit the characters well and Marcus Doshi’s costumes enhance them.
For the first full production of the Williamstown season, this is a great start to a promising summer. A complex and demanding play with a fine company performing their orchestrated tasks in perfect harmony, the work will set you wondering about the "more intimate vision" of music and musicians, and about their relationships, the next time you pop that CD into the player.
"Dissonance" plays on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through July 8. For tickets and schedules call the box office at 413-597-3400.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. Directed by Eleanor Holdridge.

When it comes to the familiar in theater, nothing seems quite so very familiar as "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." We seem to have seen it a lot; starting in grade school and ending a few years after our own deaths, there it is.
At Shakespeare and Company’s new production, during a matinee performance, a small child sitting behind me in a New York Yankees costume said to his father at the intermission, "I know the short version, but I’ve never seen this long one before." Later on, during the wedding sequence, he remarked, "Does this ever end?"
No kid, it never does.
Somehow there’s always a production of this play somewhere. When it is as interesting as this one, that’s a good thing, and you just have to get used to that idea. "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," written in 1595–96 between Romeo and Juliet and Henry IV, Part One, is here to stay.

The story, for anyone who doesn’t already know, is this. Theseus, Duke of Athens is about to marry Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Hermia, betrothed to Demetrius, loves Lysander and their friend Helena loves Demetrius. The four run off into the woods one midsummer’s eve and are there met by Oberon, King of the Fairies, and his servant Robin Goodfellow, or Puck. In trying to solve their love triangles, things become even more confused. At the same time, Oberon tries to wrest control of a changeling boy from his estranged wife, Titania. He does this by confusing her emotions, causing her to fall in love with Nick Bottom, a carpenter, who has been bewitched into the form of a donkey. In the end, this being a comedy, everything comes out the way it should be.
Coming at the mid-point in the author’s career, the play is one of the finest ever written, with dozens of famous lines, quotable ones, that come and go rapidly leaving the audience feeling satisfied that they know this piece well. It takes an inventive director to bring out something new in a production, and Holdridge does some very interesting things here, providing a greater physical comedy than most have allowed their companies. Hermia tackles Lysander in the woods. Helena drags Demetrius’ pants off of him in the Duke’s court. Bottom, performing the role of the lover Pyramus in an entertainment at the Duke’s wedding takes longer to die than any ham actor in history. Shakespeare has only given him five repetitions of the order, "die," but in Lenox he manages to turn that into a triple triple. It’s all delicious fun.
Bottom is played by Nigel Gore. His performance is key to the low comedy of the evening. He is puffed up, according to the writing, with pride in his potential. He is so sure of himself that not even his transformations surprise him nor disturb him. He is a man living his dream. As his co-star in the melodrama to come, Ryan Winkles imbues Francis Flute with a delicate nature so sweet he can pull off the drag role of Thisbe, the beloved of Pyramus with no sense of personal betrayal, but only the talent of the amateur who accepts his fate in casting. Their director, Peter Quince, is played with verve and an exasperation that causes giggles in the audience by Robert Biggs.
Theseus and Oberon, rulers of their own estates, are played by Michael Solomon. Less commanding a force than he might be, his tenor voice a shade too light for my ears, he is a visually striking king of the night and a commanding hand over his willful servant, Puck. Kevin Rich plays the latter. He is so wonderfully strident that his unencumbered masculinity is hysterically funny. More a satyr than other Pucks I’ve seen, his joy at making mistakes in following orders takes on an erotic tone. He is wonderful to watch, this wanderer of the night.
The lovers are young and talented and sometimes good, sometimes great and sometimes a bit off. Hermia, at the center of the conflict was played by Julie Webster, and her friend Helena by Christianna Nelson. Their swains were Justin Gibbs as Lysander and Craig Baldwin as Demetrius.
Tony Molina makes Tom Snout into an oaf, but that plays out well when he takes up his role in the entertainment as Wall. He was extremely funny and even a bit touching in his deep sincerity.
Molly Stuart Wright is an odd Hippolyta but a lovely Titania. That may be due, in part, to the physical concept for her roles. While the men at court are basically in Napoleonic attire, she is dressed in the Amazon costume we expect from a much earlier period. Most of the women are in Empire gowns, including Titania, but not this mortal queen. She is right out of BC. The costumes have been designed by Jessica Ford.
This dichotomy in design is part of the concept brought to the play by Holdridge. Her sense of the universality of this play is a fine one, but hard to put across with visuals that confuse an audience.
The lighting by Les Dickert is divine, mood-enhancing, graphically right. It helped to create the gorgeous stage pictures the play needed, except for the portable electic footlights. Screwing out the bulbs to dim an area didn't enhance the "dream." Kris Stone’s sets work perfectly from the ephemeral to the concrete.
Unlike the little boy behind me I didn’t wonder when the play would end. I was having too good a time with it, growing used to the oddness of the acting and production styles gradually and eventually falling victim, yet again, to the magic of Shakespeare’s vision enhanced by the work of the modern magicians this company employs to make the familiar new again.

A Midsummer Night's Dream runs on the Founders Theater stage through September 2, in repertory. Shakespeare & Company is located in Lenox, MA at 70 Kemble Street. Ticket prices range from $20 to $57. For schedules and ticket information call 413-637-3353 or go to their website: www.shakespeare.org

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Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terence McNally. Directed by Anders Cato.
Opening the mainstage season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival is an edgy, human comedy about eight gay men who gather at a country house over three holiday weekends in the summer of 1994. Two of them have AIDS. Two of them have sustained a lengthy, committed relationship. Two of them are ideal misfits. Two of them are twins. Two of them are single and without much hope of a sincere lovelife. Two of them are handicapped, although in very different ways. Two of them are dancers. Two of them...well, in this play there are always two of them, even two of them in the closet, in a manner of speaking.

McNally, in this superb play, is working through the combinations of human possibility and his exploration of these wildly varied affinities are the key to the emotional turmoil we witness, we empathize with and ultimately experience.
Stereotypical characters abound and with them come the belly laughs. Written with an almost chilling naivete this examination of a particular quadrant of humanity has become symbolic of the larger race of man. It matters less than it once did that these men are all gay, and more than half of them are in some area of show business. They represent the real world in ways that are different from the world they inhabit. They express universal sentiments about marriage, fidelity, work, the social circles that encroach on our lives, the ladder that needs to be climbed in a career, the almost unexplainable sympathy that overtakes us for the handicapped, the horror of any premature death and the difficulties between siblings who cannot come to grips with family favoritism. These are just a few of the elements that are engaged in this play. So go for the fun, if you must, but listen for the revelations, too/
Anders Cato has staged a very traditional production of this play with a cast of attractive and sensitive players who cavort, sometimes nude, in a way that provides us with a view of intimacy and freedom that can only happen among close friends. The casual aspects of the play are delicious under Cato’s watch. He works on a severely, almost dangerously difficult, raked stage consisting of four (three of them stage-wide) platforms. With the addition of a dynamic rear cyclorama, the visual aspects by Hugh Landwehr (set) and Jeff Davis (lighting) provide both the open air of this Dutchess County home and the intimate spaces of the house and the minds of the participants. Davis defines those spaces with clearly delineated day and night vistas, and he also manages to create walls, textures and subtle imagery with his sensitive colors and patterns. The two men make a fine team, another pairing in this play about pairs.
The cast feels, looks, sounds almost ideal. Romain Frugé is Gregory, the host, a choreographer reaching the physical breaking point in his dance career. His lover, a blind hunk named Bobby, is played with the grace and poise of a man who knows his place in this world by Matthew Wilkas. James Lloyd Reynolds is Arthur, the uptight half of a long-term partnership and Jonathan Fried is his partner, Perry. David Adkins plays the British Jeckyll twins, John and James, the evil and the good, a pair obviously named for the original split personality. Ricky Fromeyer is young, eager, career-oriented dancer Ramon Fornos (initials optional here obviously) and the comic-relief character who turns into the most beautifully romantic man imaginable, Buzz, is played brilliantly by Stephen DeRosa. This is a handsome ensemble. They play handsomely as well.
The tender trap of this play is the unforeseen romance of Buzz and a Jeckyll. By the time we’ve started to fall in love with these characters they have created their commitment. We know the difficulties they will encounter; those are predictable here. What we don’t know is the darkness and the treachery that comes in such an affair. McNally gives us a moment, near the end of the third act - yes a third act - where futures are explored and we learn what we don’t need to know. It is a touching sequence in which all of the participants -actors and designers and director - bare their souls before us.
"Other people are as imperfect as we are." Once it’s said, once heard, the sentiment brings in the entire audience. No one can feel apart from these eight men, no one can truly feel much different from them. That is one of the great strengths of this play.
With the exception of the consistent mis-pronunciation of "Manderley," the stately country home of Maxim DeWinter and his misfit bride in the book and film of Daphne DuMaurier’s "Rebecca" as "Mandalay" the far-eastern capital which has a much heralded road to it, the company does well by the script. Barring one bizarre error on Adkins' part when he seemingly forgot which twin he was playing, the harmony and rhythm of the author’s script emerges as a flawless piece of classical music, ballet music actually; the use of a section of Tchaikowsky’s "Swan Lake" is both hilarious and effective.
Some people may think that a gay play is inappropriate for a summer theater in this region. I urge you to see it and decide for yourself if this is just a gay play about AIDS or a universal statement about life as it is lived by almost everyone, a life lived in the company of loved ones, good friends and those odd, unavoidable relationship we can’t seem to live without anymore. Good theater is good life.

Love! Valour! Compassion! is playing at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA through July 7. Tickets range from $37-$64. Students with valid ID receive a 50% discount. The play, with two intermissions, runs 3 hours and 24 minutes. Box office: 413-298-5576 or visit www.berkshiretheatre.org

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Put three small-time Mafia-like hoods together with one horny 30 year old Italian woman and a college professor with a play that needs a backer and you have the somewhat farcical elements of the comedy "Breaking Legs," currently on stage at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon.
This is the first play of their 24th season. It is, as tradition would have it, a comedy thriller. Set in the back room of an Italian Restaurant somewhere in New England, the world that author Tom Dulack presents us is one in which a loan must be repaid in full on time or something bad happens to someone. It is a place where daughters must be made happy at any cost, but should never leave the nest, a place where an interloper who doesn’t become a member of "La Famiglia" may not even remain an interloper, may not even remain. It is Tony Sopranoville (in a pre Tony world) where Main Street is covered in marinara sauce and even the back alley is slippery with extra cheese.
It is just in this style that Michael Marotta has presented this play. There is always that edge of parody, yet just an edge.

Waitress and Manageress Angie Graziano loves Terence O’Keefe, the married professor turned playwright. Lou Graziano, her father, wants her to be happy no matter what it costs him, but if he can get something on the cheap, through a "favor," he’ll take that side road to happiness. Mike Francisco, the local godfather, wants everyone to be happy and he’ll kill for that end. This is the mixed quartet of comedic dreams. For three of these folks crisis causes a complete loss of appetite which can only be assuaged by pasta and sausages. And maybe a glass of "red."
Lisa Margolin plays Angie with a vengeance. She is brittle, loving, seductive, volatile. Her timing is terrific on both lines and the physical comedy necessary. She creates a vivid image in the perfectly trashy costumes designed for her by Lu Holden. Her hair is lacquered and so are her toenails. She is the center around which almost all of the men in the play revolve. Her "uncles" are her minstrel-show constellation with her father and her lover as end men. Her peformance alone is worth the money.
As the professor she is fortunate to have Brian Allard. His total seriousness offsets the absurdities in logic presented by the other characters. He plays the role as though it was written by Eugene O’Neill and it works, turning what would otherwise be an action farce into a situation made comic by the situation itself. He is a man trapped by need and showing that need in every gesture. It’s a wonderful performance.
The third star performance in this show is John Noble’s work as Uncle Mike. This character cannot laugh and move his mouth at the same time. He demonstrates this several times. It’s is a moment in which the lack of elasticity is the key to a two hour performance. After his work last season in "On Golden Pond" which was touching and warm, his role and his choices this time prove he is an actor to relish. His movements, his voice and his face gather us in, make us like him in spite of what we know about Mike. It’s a tour-de-force performance that is funny in spite of itself.
John Philip Cromie is fine as Lou. Aaron S. Holbritter does well as Tino, the third member of the "gang" and Zach Lombardo is perfect in his brief appearance as Frankie Salvucci.
It is a dark comedy, violent even in its passionate sexual needs. It may not please everyone, but if you suspend your belief in all things good then even breaking someone’s legs during someone else’s love scene has a comic resonance that cannot fail to entertain.

The Theater Barn is located on Route 20, just west of the town center of New Lebanon, New York. Tickets are $20, Sunday matinees are $18. For schedules and tickets call 518-794-8989 or check out their website at www.theaterbarn.com.

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Theophilus North is ultimately described as "a free man who watches time go by on other people’s clocks," in this fascinating adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s autobiographical novel. He is a man who, at age 30, cuts himself free from the bonds of family and work to explore the world and learn who and what he himself may become in that world. Idealistic, youthful, yearning for adventure, Theophilus travels the highway in his dilapidated old car, Hannah (played by Regan Thompson) all the way from central New Jersey to Newport, Rhode Island where he settles down for a year to learn what he can from the people in that seaside town.
Oddly, he learns a great deal there.

Seven actors take on 19 principal roles and a dozen more incidental ones as they tell the story of Mr. North’s coming of age. Scott Parkinson plays Theophilus and in the course of the two and a half hours it takes to complete his journey he never leaves the stage. His is a difficult role. He must be both symbol and flesh. He must be idealism and reality redefined. He must make us believe that this man can plunge into the uncomfortable moments with the same joy he takes in the romantic possibilities and the educational opportunities that present themselves. Parkinson is superb in his interpretation of this almost enigmatic character. He brings a grounded reality to every twist and turn that Wilder has given to this tale.
Regan Thompson plays his car as well as many of the women around the same age as North. They are unhappy wives, angry daughters, wealthy snobs and anxious females without any understanding of their own circumstances. As her equal, we have Brit Whittle who changes accents and appearances with ease as he plays both upper class and lower class residents of Newport in the late 1920s.
Beginning the play as North’s parents, Geddeth Smith and Margaret Daly establish themselves firmly in a scene that rings so true they are hard to handle in their next roles. But their talents supercede the strong impressions they make at the start of the play and soon they are older and wiser advisors, wealthy folks with health and heart problems, friends and foes of the progress of North and his quest for vision.
As the younger set, Megan Ferguson and Joe Delafield are no less impressive than their elders in this company. Ferguson, in particular, makes an impression as a wealthy daughter of a hard-hearted Newport father who hires North to prevent her elopement with a gym teacher. This adventure is one of the finest pieces written by Burnett and directed by Forsman. The journey by ferryboat and car is clean and clear and so well-defined that the physical acting by the trio in this sequence is going to be shockingly memorable for a long, long while.
Beowulf Boritt’s set is lovely and simple and filled with symbolic pieces that confuse the eye, but pay off mightily by the end of the play, including a relatively underutilized collection of 19 chandeliers. Theresa Squire has created costumes that clearly define characters and Daniel Baker has loaded the play with sound effects that delineate action, place and time. The lighting by Josh Bradford serves to hold the other elements in perfect balance.
The Dorset Theatre Festival has started its first season with Forsman as artistic director in the best way possible, with a play and a company that delivers a perfect entertainment, light in spirit but filled with enlightenment and illuminated with genuine talents.

Theophilus North plays at the Dorset Theater on Cheney Road in Dorset, Vt., through July 1 with performance Wednesday through Sunday. Tickets are $30-$35. Full schedule and tickets are available at 802-867-5777.

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Its time has come! "West Side Story" is 50 years old this year. The revivals in New York have failed in the past, perhaps for more than one reason: star power isn’t what this show needs is one reason and a relationship to the old struggles had lost their relevance is another.
But now, after 50 years, relevance isn’t what this show has. It doesn’t reek of nostalgia either. Instead it is finally a picture of social and racial struggles that are not a part of our audience’s memory any longer.
We have a vague recollection at best. We are seeing those times with jaded eyes, or new eyes, or younger eyes that cannot connect the conflicts between Polish immigrants in their third generations with Puerto Ricans in their first generations in a crowded New York City. We don’t have a Debbie Allen or Lisa Mordente presenting their pale lustre. We have fresh faces without history, just as the original presentation had. We have a new look at a brilliant piece of work.
"West Side Story" is back and it is just as powerful as it was 50 years ago.

Julianne Boyd has taken an enormous risk presenting a show with such historical baggage for a long run in the middle of the month of June. This is a show that has failed over and over to attract an audience. But she has done it right. She has filled her stage with terrific dancer/actor/singers. She has allowed the concept of the brilliant Robbins to rule the day. She has given the music its due and, even though the show is scaled back a bit, she has created that sense of a larger world the show requires.
One person sitting near me marveled at the music and its order in the play. This is a person who knows the show only through its movie version, the version that haunts stage productions. Many things were altered in that version, but Boyd’s presentation gives the show back its clarity. The second act "Somewhere" ballet is a case in point. The last in a long line of dream ballets, a concept that dates back to "Oklahoma" and the remarkable work of Agnes DeMille, this one presents the conflicts, hopes and dreams of Tony and Maria, the young lovers in this play, of a world where tensions are replaced by understanding. It is astounding to see it again, to see its effectiveness and to note the reactions of the audience. They are transfixed by it.
The performers in this show are outstanding. Tony, played by Chris Peluso, is a rational guy, too old to be gang member, too young and inexperienced to break away from the ‘hood. His sudden turn to love instead of hate is totally believable and his singing voice is gorgeous, a high tenor which rings of youth with the interpretive skills of a more mature soul. As his best friend Riff, Justin Bohon is the opposite of his pal. A young man who will never mature, he is the presumed leader of his gang. Bohon shows a leader who cannot lead, but only follow traditions he himself established. There is a wonderful sense of frustration in his playing. He wants to understand change, but it can not compute. All of this plays in his face and his body language. Bravo!
On the other side of the street we have Bernardo, played by Freddy Ramirez for every sexy, and therefore threatening, aspect of the character. He makes foreign into a dirty word. He is handsome and strong and as completely understandable as possible. Ramirez is stunning in the role. You want to like him, but there is a macho aspect of the character that won’t allow it. He is never sympathetic, never asking for sympathy at any rate, and his death in the Rumble is devastating because his good looks make us want to like him, make us pray he’ll change. Death cheats us of this, even in the dream ballet that follows.
The women are equal to their men. The sweetness of Maria, as played by Julie Craig, is endearing and not cloying. She is pretty without ethnic strengths. She sings well, if slightly strained at the top end of the voice. Her surrendering of her soul to that of her soulmate, Tony, seemed very true to the character. Her friend Anita, played with gusto and a sneer by Jacqueline Colmer, is just the opposite. Even when she tries to help there is a sense of disbelief in her playing. She dances up a storm and sings with strength and is a standout in this excellent, and large, cast of 25 performers.
Others in the cast who managed to stand out from their crowds were John Raterman as A-Rab, Billy Fagen as Chino, Beth Crandall as Anybodys, Kira Schmidt as Graziela, Vanessa Van Vrancken as Rosalia, Michael McGurk as Action and Matt Gibson as Diesel. Gordon Stanley is fine as Doc, but not as powerful a voice as he might have been.
The dancing is, as it must be, at the center of this production. The recreation of the movement created by Jerome Robbins is wonderful. With the long-standing prominence of the work of choreographer Bob Fosse in our minds, to return to the natural physical expressions of emotion and conflict that Robbins created is almost a revelation. Nothing is forced, nothing seems impossible or unreal or stretched out of human proportion. Every gesture, every extension, seems right.
The sets and costumes for West Side Story also have the right feeling for the time and the place. Luke Hegel-Cantarella’s set is functional and correct. Anne Kennedy’s costumes seem to belong to the people who wear them. Scott Pinkney’s lighting is very, very good, and nowhere better than in the Tonight Quintet and the Rumble itself. The pit band, conducted by Darren R. Cohen, plays the music so well that is actually sounds like a fresh, new score.
Can one shout "Bravi!" after 50 years. One can. One should. One does!

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When you go to a two-act, one-man musical and the show ends abruptly 38 minutes into the first act, you cannot review the show. What you can review is the man at the center of the performance. B.D. Wong is the star here. Wong is the victim of an unfortunate accident. He is also the hero of the evening.
During the fourth number in the play, "God Said" he was executing a difficult piece of Darren Lee’s choreography when an unsecured stage unit shifted its position. Instead of sliding effortlessly along an elongated piano bench, Wong hit the corner of the bench with his right leg and and punctured his skin and muscle. He continued with the number, finishing it brilliantly, then called for a moment to check his wound, asked for the audience to wait and limped offstage.
Ten minutes later Roger Rees, the director at Williamstown and the director of this play, announced that Wong’s wound was serious and that he was being taken to the hospital for treatment, stitches and whatever was needed.
Two days later, Sunday, the show was back on, with Wong performing 10 of the 11 roles (one part is taken by the piano player Thumbs Dubois - played by Dan Lipton).

There is a difference in the work from what was seen on Friday. He is less involved with the audience at the start of the show. He is more concerned with energy than he had been. The choreography has been changed to safeguard the leg that was injured.
Beyond those minor alterations, however, the performance is as it was: very well-defined characters in rapid-fire dialogue, songs and dances. Wong’s ability to create and maintain, through more than two hours, the dual aspects of his main character in particular is fabulous.
Eight-year-old George is possessed by a 37-year-old midget tap-dancer known as Lou, or Frog. The battle between them is the highlight of the show as George Nukin become Herringbone the Vaudeville star. George’s own sweetness is underscored by the relentless ambition and highly charged sexual nature of Lou.Even vengeance becomes a significant emotion for this dual-personality performer.
The play is sometimes shocking. Infant George become L’Enfante Terrible. It is the whole idea of child stars that comes under the musical microscope in this show. George has no real stage mother, although his father might qualify. Instead he has Lou, the drive within. Are the authors here trying to tell us something new about the phenomenon of talented children thrust upon the unsuspecting audiences? Are we to believe that more than one memorable, underage talent is really possessed by the spirit of unsuccessful adult performers who died young and angry? Perhaps.
One thing that the authors do manage to show us, is that talent will out. Wong certainly displays all of his, even in precarious poses on stage, one of them perched high above the stage floor in a final scene that is staggering to watch and hear. This is a show not to be missed, for the show itself which is fascinating and for Wong who manages to be even better than the material he is performing.

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To end their 85th season of community theater in the Berkshires, The Town Players has chosen the delectable warhorse by Gilbert and Sullivan, "The Mikado." A crowd-pleaser with more memorable tunes than "My Fair Lady," this operetta has played a significant role in the musical education and awareness of Americans than most people realize.

In 1879, in an attempt to protect their work from being pirated by unscrupulous American producers, Gilbert and Sullivan came to New York to present "The Pirates of Penzance" on the very same night it was premiered in London. They did this to protect their copyrights to their own material. When "The Mikado" became their next smash hit in England, they returned to New York surreptitiously in 1885 to again present the work themselves.
For this piece they wrote a song for Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, "I’ve got a little list" which enumerated the various types of people who should be executed. Later in the operetta, they gave the Mikado himself a song about his "object all sublime — to let the punishment fit the crime." Surely they were thinking about the constant theft of their best material by the American producers who were profiting from their activities.
In Robert Boland’s production none of this history is heavily emphasized. Instead, the "object all sublime" is visual fun. He gently pokes at traditions here. Set in Japan, the cast eschew slanty eyes and black wigs. The traditional performances methods are put aside and a more modern, physical ease is substituted. Even the male chorus gets to play in an American style as they ask us if we know who they are, these "gentlemen of Japan." We don’t. What we do know is they are our neighbors having a good time with a good-time piece.
There are some wonderful, enthusiastic and cherishable amateur performances on the stage at the Koussevitsky Arts Center at Berkshire Community College. Matt Passetto sings beautifully as the young hero, Nanki-Poo. His tenor voice is ideally suited to the role and even though he never receives a costume befitting his rank and station, he has a glorious time prancing about the stage in his oriental pajama. As his beloved, Yum-Yum (and who can hate a show where the heroine is a Yum Yum) Ann Marie Desautelle proves his equal. Her second act aria (read song) "The sun whose rays are all ablaze..." is performed with both grace and a sharpened tone that is truly beautiful.
The accidental mentor of their love, Ko-Ko, is played by Michael Woolf, complete with Japanese-style hair by Diane Oliver, and a slight snicker-snee, the smallest in recent memory. It is a joke, I am sure, of the designer, Robert Boland, signifying the character’s insignificance as a lover. When he draws it in Act Two, singing of the death of his rival, it is a clever visual analogy for the ineffectual nature of Ko-Ko. Later in the act he is forced to woo the villainess, Katisha, played and sung brilliantly by Kara Powers Demler. Only her makeup leaves something to be desired, especially when she describes herself as plain. This Katisha is a beauty.
Monica Bliss is a wonderful Pitti-Sing, particularly in the quartet "Brightly dawns our wedding day..." and Jessica A. Guzzo does a nice job as the mocking sister, Peep-Bo. Matt Barbas is a hysterically funny Pooh-Bah, the Lord High Everything Else. As the Mikado, himself, Walter Moore is almost perfection.
The sets by Robert Boland have an oriental simplicity that works nicely for this production. The two side stages could have been angled slightly to aid sight-lines, but that’s a small quibble for something as beautiful as his stage picture. The costumes by the same designer are exquisite. Thomas J. Blalock does a fine job lighting director Boland’s best stage moments.
As a fitting tribute to the 85 years of sometimes exquisite work by this community group, "The Mikado" is a lovely way to say goodbye to the season. It’s a pity that it only plays for four performances. After such a long history, for both show and company, it really should stick around for a while; the sum, after all, should be the equal of its parts.

The Mikado runs on The Robert Boland Stage at the Koussevitsky Arts Center at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield through June 17. Friday and Saturday performances at 8PM, Sunday at 2PM. Tickets are $18 ($15 for seniors, students and groups). For reservations call 413-443-9279.

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There are plays designed to make the audience sad. The writing winds around your heart as it wends its way through the complexities and difficulties of the lives of its characters.
Then there are plays that make you sad in spite of themselves. "Three Days of Rain," the current offering at the Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt., is the latter.

This play, only a decade old, has had an odd history. Written in 1995, it had its New York premiere in 1997, then played on Broadway last year as the ill-fated stage debut of film actress Julia Roberts. It was a sell-out on her name, but received only mediocre reviews. It was assumed by many that the reviews were the results of her inept performance, but now the truth is out: it’s a mediocre vehicle for three actors, and even a fine set of performances, such as we have here, can’t save the play.
Three actors play six characters. In Act One, a brother and sister meet in an unoccupied loft in lower Manhattan en route to the reading of their father’s will, a year after his death. They are joined, after the reading, by a long-time friend, the son of their father’s long-dead business partner. In the second act, the brother and sister actors play their own parents and the friend takes on the role of his dad. Act Two is set 35 years earlier and is noted as a "happier" time. Sadly, it isn’t.
The characters here are very complex and to tell much about them will take away from what is best in this play. Walker is a troubled youth and throughout the first half much is revealed about his difficult psychology; he is the son of a mother gone mad and a father who ignores him. As played by Gil Brady, he is the most compelling of all the people we meet in this play. He has charm, wit, a panoply of emotions that play out in his face, his voice, his body language. He is everything that his father, it turns out, is not and when he plays Dad, he is a totally different person. Brady’s work in these two roles is exceptional, rich and voluminous in all the darkness that both characters embody. He even, as the son, uses a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, in paraphrase, to express his belief in his worthlessness: "Not so very young, not so very merry, still going back and forth on the ferry," he says.
Sophie Garder plays Walker’s sister Nan and later their mother Lina. As Nan she is emotionally rigid, controlling and hard to like. As her mother she is flirtatious, southern, mad as a hatter and totally manipulative. The chasm between these two figures is a player’s challenge and Garder does reasonably well in both, but truly shines as the second generation. Her southern belle is a bit harder to enjoy, especially when her accent thins out. She plays the seductions well as she takes on each of the men in her life, but there is something harder for her to do and that is give us back the reality of the first act. She cannot quite bring it off, and that may be more the writing than the acting.
Pip and his father Theo are played by Avery Clark. Unlike Garder, he is a better actor in the second act than in the first. Pip is a young actor with a promising television career, a romantic figure for both Nan and Walker. He is charming but somehow phony. Theo is a volatile, angry, dynamic man who betrays himself and everyone around him with his outbursts. Here Clark is brilliant.
Peterson has drawn some remarkable portraits out of this material and forged a few indelible impressions with his direction of this crew. What he hasn’t done is given us something to walk away with that enlightens us as to why this play is being done. False clues are given out, false ideas are revealed in Walker’s interpretations of his father’s motivations. There is no happy ending at the end, as we know in advance the results of actions taken in 1960 by the older generation.

At the end, all we have is the end and we already know that the ending for the younger generation is one of frustrations and inevitable disaster. How sad. But no tears.

Three Days of Rain plays through June 24. Oldcastle Theatre Company is  located at the Bennington Center for the Arts, Vt. Rte. 9 and Gypsy Lane. Tickets and information are available at (802) 447-0564. They play a Thursday through Sunday schedule with three matinees a week.

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Sometimes you just need silly. Shakespeare & Company is providing for that need with their first production of the season, "Rough Crossing," a play by Tom Stoppard, freely adapted by from a play by Ferenc Molnar, "Play at the Castle" and P.G. Wodehouse’s "The Play’s the Thing."

Part of the same premise was used for the screenplay of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy’s "Sweethearts." Writing a play to convince one person that another has been faithful, or unfaithful, and basing that play on things overheard, or read, by the other is at the heart of all these works. In this case Stoppard has given us the unusual: a highly comic farce without the trapping of farce.
Five men and one woman are among the passengers aboard the SS Italian Castle, bound for New York where a new play by Sandor Turai and Alex Gal will begin rehearsals starring Ivor Fish and Natasha Navratalova. Fish and Natasha have been lovers in the past and are an acting team that London adores. She is now involved with the composer of this new show, Adam Adam and it is his jealousy that must be assuaged if all is to end happily. Luckily for all concerned a new ship’s steward, Dvornicheck, is on hand to deliver cognac and the odd sermonette. There’s the plot, without giving away the details. For in this play, the comedy, tragedy, human energy and all that silliness is in the details.
Director Kevin Coleman has taken great care with this show’s physical necessities. From the first entrance of Turai, played for every bizarre nuance possible by the superb Jonathan Croy (at his very best here), we are aware that we are onboard a ship, that we are going to be at sea, that we are going to be tossed about in the human storm to come.
Jason Asprey as Turai’s collaborator, Gal, is half-funny without effort and funnier still when he sets his mind to it. Gal is almost a lunatic when it comes to comestables and quite one when he is claiming to be the genius half of the team. Asprey plays him straight and dramatic and in so doing brings out the depths of humor intended for his character. In a similar style Malcom Ingram portrays the clueless actor Ivor Fish who is at his finest in the love scene he himself constructs, then reconstructs on cue. In a cast that is well suited for their roles he is the only one who might be just a tad too old, but he acts the dolt so well that it doesn’t really matter in the end. He becomes a close fit for the part he plays.
Bill Barclay as Adam Adam has the most difficult role to play, that of a man who was a matinee idol until suddenly afflicted with a speech defect: nerves prevent him from speaking on cue. Now a composer in love with the prima donna he woos her with songs he cannot sing unless prompted by Turai or, ready to sing for minutes in advance but never sure when he might begin. His comedy timing, Barclay’s that is, is delightful.
The two standout performers, with nary a glitch in their interpretations of the Stoppard versions of the Wodehouse renditions of the Molnar characters are Elizabeth Aspenlieder as Natasha and LeRoy McClain as Dvornicheck. Natasha is Russian and, with sneer, smirk, chipmunk smile and an almost perfect grasp of accent, Aspenlieder takes every risk and dangerous leap possible with the part. She is delicious in this part, like a scented vodka over the purest chocolate. Her singing leaves something to be desired, but somehow even that becomes a real property of this star of London musicals and her pitch problems become endearing.
McClain as the man without sea-legs, but with the mind of a detective, the stomach of a flotilla of garbage trucks and the wisdom of the Sphinx is perfection. He is almost constantly in motion and his dialogue is the "enth" degree of silly. His work is the key that unlocks the hilarity chest that is the writing in this work. Stoppard has truly given him all the best moments and McClain makes the most of them without ever suggesting exaggeration - a remarkable feat in this instance.
Written in 1985 and produced in New York in 1997, the play includes music by Andre Previn who seems to "get" the period of the 1930s so well that the spirit of this shipboad adventure is encapsulated in his music. Additional bits by William Perry add nicely to the performance.
The period is also nicely pictured in the costumes designed by Govane Lohbauer, the very functional set by Carl Sprague and the lighting by Les Dickert. Director Coleman’s vision for this show would be classic farce, and he neatly replaces the missing "doors" with the farcical nature of characters acting for each other. It works wonderfully for this play.
The phrase "laff riot," so commonly used to advertise off-Broadway mishaps in the 1970s, comes to mind to describe what you will get here, except that the words ring true this time. You do laugh out loud a lot and there’s nothing wrong in that. Entertainment without message is very much an entertainment.

Rough Crossing plays at the Founders’ Theatre in Lenox, Massachusetts at Shakespeare & Company’s property at 70 Kemble Street in repertoire this season through September 2. Check for dates and ticket availability at their website www.shakespeare.org or call 413-637-3353. 

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