Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

“The Mysteries of Harris Burdick,” book by Joe Calarco, lyrics by Nathan Tysen, music by Chris Miller, based on the book by Chris van Allsburg. Directed by Joe Calarco, at Barrington Stage Company.

Six characters in search of a story — a father and mother, a sister and brother, a husband and wife — children, a giant, a sea captain, two caterpillars, a harp — all the elements of a modern fairy tale with classic roots. “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” are deeper than they seem and the biggest of the unknown qualities here is “Who is Harris Burdick?”
Is he a real person long since gone missing? Is he a myth created to sell picture books? Is he, somehow or other, the man in the musical, at its center and in charge of its conclusion? How close to the truth, if there is a mystery at all here, have the creators of Barrington Stage Company’s latest musical theater lab project come to that truth? There are some mysteries we cannot easily solve.
Through July 5, local audiences will be debating the solutions as this show plays out its sometimes less than subtle theories before them.

The trio of writers involved in this project has worked up a perfectly delightful theory about the mysterious pen-and-ink drawings, accompanied by titles and a single sentence or phrase, that have graced coffee tables and nurseries alike for nearly 20 years. They have opened a book of their own, and in a nearly completely sung show they trot that theory of theirs out for all to see. I think it works fine until they fall back on the classic fairytale concept to justify the harp. At that point, the nearly sublime becomes the clearly ridiculous.
Archie Smith, a 12-year old kid, goes missing, and his parents spend more than two years dealing with his disappearance. His father, Harris, creates wonderfully fanciful drawings in which his own son, neighbor’s kids and his own half-demented wife appear. Then he creates stories that reflect the pictures and through them he tries to conceive a tale of adventure and misadventure in which his missing son is the hero. It’s a wonderful conceit — a father coping with such a loss through fiction and art. However, when magic beans and Jack, the Giant Killer enter the story, it turns into something almost too silly to bear.
The pictures themselves could take the imagination in so many untried directions that to use something so trivial seems strange and unreasonable. This is made even more unacceptable when you hear the show, hear the music and the fine lyrics written by Nathan Tysen. There is an almost seamless blend of sounds in the piano and the six voices in this production. It lulls and engages the mind and the heart. Even six-part singing — each with a different melody and lyric — has a grace and a charm here that is hard to beat, even the best-known compositions of other princes of the theater such as Stephen Sondheim and William Finn. These young men have their forebears on the rails with this score. To waste all that on a variant of the Grimm Brothers is dirty, rotten shame.
There are such good performances in this show that it almost doesn’t matter what the material has to offer. Romain Fruge plays the father/artist/author and his quiet, underplayed scenes are so very gentle that you want to reach out and touch this man, hold him, pat him gently on the shoulder and offer him comfort. It is a beautifully crafted performance. To watch him tolerate, understand and bring solace to his wife, played with fervor and strength by Catherine Porter, is quite worth the price of a ticket. Her zeal in her belief that her son will return to her is exhausting.
The neighbors, a brother and sister, are played for every bizarre possibility by Lucia Spina and Ben Roseberry. If every musical needs quirky characters, then this one is well rewarded with these two and with their performances. Roseberry also plays the missing Archie, and does so quite winningly. Spina takes on one of the fairytale persona and is so startlingly different that she actually amazes.
Husband and wife, parents of Archie’s girlfriend, are brought to life by Mitchell Jarvis and Nicole Van Giesen. He is handsome, fervent, sometimes frightening and sometimes endearing. His overprotective dad is quite the compulsive character, and his dynamic bird, piloted by Archie, is lovely. Van Giesen plays both wife and daughter, adult and child, with equal grace.
Calarco, the author, turns into Calarco, the director, and he knows exactly how to move his people about, change their ages and their characteristics and how to handle the odd but workable set given to him by the company. He doesn’t draw thin furrows with a subtle substance. Instead, he works in broad strokes and long, fluid lines. He moves his one-act show along with pace and clarity.
Musical director Vadim Feichtner handles the score well from the piano. Elizabeth Flauto’s period costumes are perfect for the late 1950s/early 1960s, and the unusual Brian Prather set, with its three picture frames and its side pipes, add immeasurably to the enjoyment of this new musical.
I feel certain that more work needs to be done to make this show the excellent stage piece it should be. Right now, it hovers between genius and fairytale, adult and kiddie show. It has yet to find its form and metier, but when it does it should be unstoppable.

“The Mysteries of Harris Burdick” plays at Barrington Stage Company’s Stage II, at the VFW Hall, 36 Linden St., in Pittsfield. Tickets are $25-$30. For reservations or information, call the box office at 413-236-8888.

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“The Grass is Greener” by Hugh and Margaret Williams, directed by Eric Peterson. At Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt.

On a glamorous set designed by Carl Sprague, Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt, is presenting a 1950s British romantic comedy, “The Grass is Greener,” which concerns the somewhat egregious behavior of a Texas millionaire who invades the private quarters of an upperclass British couple whose house, not home, is open for tour groups. Once inside the couples living quarters he verbally makes love to the wife, woos her away from her husband for a week and attempts to destroy their marriage. He also fights a pistol duel with the Lord of the manor and flirts with this other gentleman’s part-time mistress, giving her the same mink coat she originally gave to the Lord’s Lady.
If that’s your idea of comedy, you definitely will have a ball at the Oldcastle Theatre, located in the Bennington Center for the Arts, in this play which runs through July 6.

The most charming element of this show is that wonderful set. It’s a place you will want to live. Clearly almost everyone in this show wants to live there. Victor and Hilary, their butler Sellars and their friend Hattie all seem to adore the space. Charles, from the United States, is not quite as enamored. What he likes is the lady of the manor. It’s not hard to understand why he likes her. She is blonde, bouncy and very nice to be with, especially as portrayed by Melissa Hurst. In a role created by Celia Johnson and then by Rachel Gurney during the original London run of the play at the St. Martins’ Theater in 1959, and later by Deborah Kerr in the 1960 film, Hurst is all business, bustle and flirtatious mannerisms. She has an adorable smile, and it’s hard to take your eyes off her when she speaks or moves. As the center of attention, the place the script would have her possess, she is right on the money. Or the mark, for this couple need money. She raises and markets mushrooms and he puts his house on the tourist market several times a week.
Part of the charm that the Texan provides, it would seem, is the cash. Not that Greg Skura, the actor who plays Charles, needs cash to be attractive. He pulls of the American dash and splash sort of charm with great ease and ability. Even when he makes verbal faux-pas in his conversation with Hilary he has a certain definite appeal for her and for the audience. It is easy, in Skura’s hands, to see why the sophisticated ladies of the play find him so attractive, and yes, his oil-money millions is a part of that package. There is also a virility that seems to flow from him to whomever he is addressing.
It even affects Lord Victor Rhyall himself, played here by Oldcastle favorite Bill Tatum. Played in the movie by Cary Grant, this role’s soft-sell sophistication is hard to grapple from the script in which Victor is portrayed as grumpy, facetious and boringly traditional, a man whose position allows him a mistress now and then but no tolerance for other men who desire the same. Grant could pull off this sort of thing, but Tatum is just annoying most of the time in his double-standard machinations. What should be genuinely funny in the second act comes across as more pathetic than delightful. It’s a pity, because he has ample talent and ample opportunity to provide ample light-hearted sympathy. I think the script is against him, and I’m not sure that anyone involved knows how to extract that humor from the situation.
As Hattie, the would-be mistress of almost any man with power, money or position, Yvonne Perry is almost the equal of the film’s Jean Simmons. She makes the most of her moments, and her costumes, by Patti Brundage, are the best of the show. Perry has a voice like satin and a style that is pure period and absolutely right for the character. And she gets the mink and, frankly, deserves it.
The fifth wheel, or fly in the ointment, is the butler who wants to be a novelist and is willing to give back some of his salary because there isn’t enough work to occupy his time. Clearly on the British stage, this character would be a laugh-riot, but here he is merely hard to grasp, impossible to sympathize with in his completely disinterested manner. Played by Richard Howe in a glum, oh-so-miserable way, he is neither funny nor pleasant, and his lengthy first act scenes feel interminable.
Peterson has put excellent comic business in the hands of his actors, but he is hampered by a script that, had it been written by an author with a sense of humor, would have been deliciously funny. Instead there is an awkward staginess about the proceedings that is firmly seated in the writing and not the production.
If you have doubts about the lack of true humor in the piece, see the play, then watch the movie. Even with four perfect players (Robert Mitchum is the American) the piece is dogged by that peculiar lack of talent to create lightness and frivolity in a what should be a sexual romp but is only a period perception of a long-standing British stage tradition, the romantic drawing room comedy. Oh, for Wilde, Coward, Ayckborn, or even Spike Milligan.

“The Grass is Greener” plays at the Oldcastle Theatre Company stage at the Bennington Center for the Arts on Gypsy Lane in Bennington, Vt., through July 6. For tickets and/or information, call 802-447-0564.

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“A Chorus Line,” book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban. Directed and choreographed by Kevin Hill. At the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y.

"Kiss today goodbye," sings Diana Morales late in the second act of "A Chorus Line," the third musical I know of devoted to the busy, working professionals who back up the stars on stage on Broadway (the other two are Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Me and Juliet" from 1953 and Hugh Martin’s "Look Ma, I’m Dancin’" from 1948).
Her song is a response to a question asked during the day-long audition for eight spots in a new show that 27 dancers are still trying out for at the beginning of the show. The question is, "What do you do when you can’t dance any longer?" The question is phrased when one of the aspiring youngsters collapses on a weak ankle and has to be sent to a nearby hospital.
These are two of the four highly emotional moments in the second act of the show now on stage at the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y., that never fail to choke up the audience. The young man, Paul, just has come through a cathartic monologue in which he reveals his history and his agony to a stranger. Tears. Then his accident while dancing brilliantly. Tears. Then her song. Tears. Finally the moment of truth with the final picks by the director. More tears. And that last one is the happy time.

These moments never fail and the current production, fortunately, has bright and beautiful people to suffer through the satisfactions and the losses.
Directed and choreographed by Kevin Hill, a survivor of other productions of this show, the work of Michael Bennett, who conceived the show and originally staged it in 1975, is lovingly recreated and enhanced in the limited circular space of the summer theater. The large and obvious mikes, however, do not satisfactorily bring all of the dialogue and lyrics to all the theater’s ears, and that is a problem. A need for crisp sound to let everyone hear the words of this dance-show is an urgent need. There are passions and secrets revealed at every turnout and plie and we don’t want to miss a single one if we can help it.
Hill does his best to let the relationships play to every seat in the house, but working in the round is tricky, especially when you need to make long straight lines every now and then. How he has managed to keep the dance rehearsal routines going on such a space is a miracle to behold.
His cast helps enormously. Colin Pritchard, whose character Mike soloed "I Can Do That," set the tone for the evening; he winningly sung and danced. Karla Shook’s Maggie was sympathetic and still strong. Robert Teasdale performed well, but his singing partner Tara Tagliaferro didn’t make herself understood, which was a pity as it strangled their duet.
Katy O’Donnell made Sheila into exactly what the authors intended and then some while Jackey Good, as Val, sent up the body beautiful perfectly in her second act song, a highlight actually, "Dance Ten, Looks Three." Kellie L. Shook in the pivotal part of Cassie, an almost made it ex-hoofer trying to return to the chorus line, gives an excellent, if cold, performance. The fire that made Donna McKechnie a sensation was sadly missing her performance, but her physicalization of the qualities that took her out of the line in the first place was chilling as the show began to draw to its conclusion.
Zach, the director, was played with too much compassion and fairness by Tony Rivera. When he turned, later in act two, into the taskmaster he should always be, the change was almost too abrupt and never took him far enough to cause the pain his part should always inflict. It’s a pity because he exhibited the ability to take this role into a whole different realm, the place it should have been.
Juan Torres-Falcon was an excellent, sensitive Paul and Lauren Palmieri made the most of Morales. Her performance was definitely stellar even when she had to sing the first chorus of "What I Did For Love" out of light while the Shook sisters stood upstage of her in glorious illumination. Other than that mistake, Andrew Gmoser’s lighting was effective. The costumes here were not the usual imitation Broadway run, but were a bit more personal for the most part, not including Sheila’s, Val’s and Greg’s. They were "styled" by Jimm Halliday.
This show has a winning streak, even in the worst of productions, and this current viewing is nowhere near the bottom of the list. Through the talents of its players and the work of a fine director, this is an excellent foray into the vastly under-appreciated world of the creation of a musical. Ensemble at its solo best.

“A Chorus Line” plays at the Mac-Haydn Theatre on Route 203 in Chatham, N.Y., through June 29. For ticket information, call 518-392-9292 or visit machaydntheatre.org.

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“Candida” by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Anders Cato, at Berkshire Theatre Festival.

The fifth full-length play written by George Bernard Shaw, and his second "pleasant" play, opens the main stage season at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in the capable hands of director Anders Cato. Cato has given us his visions of Shaw in the past with productions of “Heartbreak House” (very successful) and “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” (not so successful) and now he has provided June’s theater-goers with a remarkably agile and swiftly played Candida featuring a superb cast of players in a setting that proves that British homes, particularly in the poorer sections of London, are never comfortable even if they are large.

British homes, particularly in the poorer sections of London, are never comfortable even if they are large.
On Hugh Landwehr’s attractive, Victorian set more people squeeze around chairs and tables and desks to get somewhere else than you can imagine. While the center of the stage remains a large open playing area, Mr. Burgess, Mr. Marchbanks, Candida Morell, her husband, the Rev. James and even skinny Miss Garnett are required to circle furniture placed too close to walls, too close to exterior sets and too close to other furniture to make their passage reasonably easy. It is almost too tempting to shout out, at some point, "move the damned chair." However, that is something we cannot and must not do. No matter how much we’d like to help these people with their simpler problems.
Shaw has given them something else to contend with, something deeper, more emotional and near-tragic in this comedy of errors. Being very good people the Morells have picked out of the gutter a young man with an aristocratic background the demeanor of an angry and disappointed six year old and brought him into their home and their lives. This young man, all of eighteen, has fallen in love with his hostess, the very married mother of two, Candida Morell. Marchbanks, for that is his name, is a poet and a discreet charmer and he woos the lady of the house with his words, with his infantilism, with his appeal. She is oddly torn between him and her own husband, a charismatic and handsome man whose only real fault is his goodness...and his own knowledge of his goodness.
Candida is a woman. She likes the wooing. She likes the playfulness and she pulls off a few neat tricks on her two chums, husband and suitor. In the third act (the second in this production) she is brought to the brink where decisions that will affect all three lives are in her hands. She is the wisest of women and the most impulsive. She gets what she wants - after all this is a comedy and not a tragedy.
Shaw is at his best here, inflicting his Socialist ideals on his audience from the mouths of fine and righteous people. He also knows how to throw in a "zinger" every now and then and get the laughs. He is ably assisted here by a cast of very fine players.
Finn Wittrock is the young, ambitiously lusty and over-the-top emotional teenager, Eugene Marchbanks. He has all of the charm down pat and all of the fear and reactions through fear and lust than any man can bring to this role are also his to use. His dark hair and moody face paired with the awkward thrusts he allows his body to make in reaction to things said, hands offered, affection delivered, is a combination to die for. This role is well-made, almost tailor-made for him.
David Schramm, whose BTF career is much longer than the program provides (he was here in 1982 in "Palace of Amateurs") wrings the most out of Mr. Burgess, Candida’s father. Here is an actor who can make the rapid-fire transitions Shaw insists upon, from harumphing to hee-hawing, without batting an eyelash. As Rev. Alexander Mill, the highly typical, moon-faced curate, the company has provided the excellent Jeremiah Wiggins. He handles his role with ease and finesse and even when Mill feels awkward it is because Wiggins knows how to play the written word.
As Prossy, or Miss Proserpine Garnett, Morell’s secretary, Samantha Soule gives the part all it deserves. Her third act scene is almost hilarious, but she knows how to play it down a step so that while funny, she is also highly sympathetic.
Michel Gill (a k a Michael Gill, Michel R. Gill and Michel S. Gill) and Jayne Atkinson are the Morells. They are also Mr and Mrs. Gill, it turns out, and they do have chemistry on stage together which is probably a good thing for their own marriage. He is tall, somewhat stilted in his speech and mannerisms, but wonderfully exuberant in character while expressing his love for his wife and for his passions in religion, socialism and social conduct. He takes Morell to the far reaches of human experience, sometimes lost in flights of fancy. It easy to see why, in Gill’s hands, the Rev. James is loved by everyone else in this play as well as by the crowds he goes off to address while in the middle of a personal crisis.
The many loving looks Atkinson throws Gill’s way can easily be attributed to their characters rather than to the Gills themselves, although there were moments when it was hard to be certain. Her Candida is everything Shaw describes and a bit more. She is tall, imposing and through her stature a trifle overbearing. With a shorter actress in the lead the commanding moments Candida has been given take on a more humorous tone. Here, the woman and the role provide a double harness of strength and stature. She has a wonderful voice and her eyes sparkle brightly enough to be seen, I suspect, in the balcony. Her smile is that of a woman of common-clay, but her gestures are pure gentry, gentility to the fingertips.
The costumes are intriguing. Olivera Gajic has made some curious choices in the designs of Marchbanks jacket, in Candida’s three costumes and in Morell’s smoking jacket. They’re not wrong, but they draw attention from the actors inside them. Dan Kotlowitz’s lighting is lovely and Landwehr’s set is fascinating, even if the furniture is placed wrong. Scott Killian creates a lovely atmosphere with his music.
Anders Cato and Shaw remain an interesting couple. Cato seems to grasp the quickening pace of Shaw’s drama and the alert quirks of his comedy. He makes nice pictures with his people and he has clearly given them much to consider in refining their roles. A director can really do no more than that. The final product is a quick and easy comedy of manners and mistakes that runs just a minute over two hours, which is a brisk pace for any British drawing room comedy of the turn of the last century.
A hearty welcome to “Candida” and her crew, real and imagined, to the Berkshire summer. The show opened during the solstice and there’s no where to go but sideways now. Around the furniture and around the morals in Shaw’s best early comedy. A must see.

“Candida” plays on the main stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge through July 5. Performances are Monday through Saturday at 8 p.m., matinees on Thursday and Saturday at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $46-$80. For information and reservations call 413-298-5576 or visit berkshiretheatre.org.

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“Beyond Therapy” by Christopher Durang. Directed by Alex Timbers. At the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Imagine, if you can, the blind date from hell, then magnify it by unlucky 13, divide it by five and send the result to a gestalt therapist for help. There you have the premise of Christopher Durang’s 1981 comic melodrama “Beyond Therapy.”
Then imagine it on the Williamstown Theater’s Nikos Stage 27 years later, directed by a talent with an eye for crazy humor, and played by a cast of serious actors cutting loose on the whole gestalt concept. The result is what you’ll find opening the 2008 season at the northern edge of Berkshire County.

The story, in brief: Bruce, an active bisexual, under the guidance of his therapist, Mrs. Wallace — who cannot remember simple words or even her patient’s identity — places a personals ad for a woman. He meets Prudence, a total failure at human relationships who has been having an affair with her therapist, Dr. Framingham, as a result of that ad. The two of them do not exactly hit it off. Everything he does or says offends her; everything she does or says turns him into a waterworks manufacturer. End of story. Or is it?
Something keeps bringing these two hapless individuals together, and neither Bruce’s live-in boyfriend Bob, nor Bob’s “Auntie Mame” mama, can affect this bizarre romance. But there’s always someone waiting in the wings, or at the table, and this play has a waiter all its own.
Set in New York City in the therapy-driven 1980s, this production is blessed with a company that acts the lines Durang wrote and interprets them in a serious enough fashion to let each absurdity shine through with clarity.
Darren Goldstein is a most sincere actor giving a most sincere performance. He wants Prudence, and us, to believe every word he says and he tells it like it is ... or like it could be ... or should be ... or might be if he ever acted on his own convictions. Goldstein is a killer when it comes to the deeper, buried humor in this play. As Bruce he is the most convincing amor anyone could wish for, until someone asks him a real question. Goldstein is seemingly instinctively funny. There is no visible effort in his work here and he provides a refreshing lack of technique through is excellent reading of the role.
As his paramour in spite of herself, Katie Finneran takes the hysteria out of hysterical. She is funny to begin with and funnier when she loses control of herself. Her Prudence is anything but. She is a woman with a mission to find a mission and her mission is built on sandstone at best. The more she loses control of her thin-lipped smile, the more endearingly silly she becomes. The actress here disappears into the role and her beauty slips away with her performance. The more desirable she is for Bruce, the less desirable she is for us. Finneran does this wonderfully, without a slip in her work, and when she becomes open to impulse her inner beauty swamps the stage with heat.
Bob, the third angle in this triad relationship, as played by Matt McGrath is almost too good. He does ‘80s “gay” with a vengeance, never offensive and never wrong, either. His fussiness and his fuming are right in line with the period of the play. He is huffy. He is infuriating. He is completely unattractive and totally appealing. McGrath makes more of the character than the playwright would allow, I think, but his portrayal lends credence to the storyline.
Darrell Hammond is Prudence’s paramour-therapist, Dr. Stuart Framingham. Even Stuart’s suit shrieks mania. His sense of lovemaking is highlighted by Hammond’s physical screams of rage. If there is a character to despise in this play, Framingham is that character. Hammond gives us plenty of opportunity to hiss and boo if we want, and with this impossible dreamer, that is what we want.
Bryce Pinkham is Andrew, yet another demi-psychotic patient whose appearance, late in the show, hammers a final nail into the coffin of analysis.
Kate Burton, always a welcome dramatic figure in this region, plays the one voice of reason, Mrs. Charlotte Wallace, a psychotherapist with an affection for her Snoopy Dog doll, a difficulty with certain words — such as “secretary,” which invariably comes out as “dirigible” — and a filing cabinet that is beyond therapy. Burton’s comic timing is impeccable. Her delivery of malaprop lines accompanied by some of the classiest physical comedy on the stage today makes her performance one of her most memorable. Forget Hedda Gabler and Miss Moffatt and even Alzheimerish Dr. Gray on television, Burton was created for the sort of deeply centered light comedy roles such as this one. Her role is a supporting one, yet she supports herself right into the spotlight center stage here. As good as the rest of her companions are, and they are all wonderful, hers is the performance people will talk about. She is worth the price of the ticket, and if Durang rewrote the play as a monologue, the work would be hers and hers alone and still be just as funny and adorable.
Timbers has done a wonderful job of weaving all these elements together in a brisk hour-and-45-minute evening (including intermission). He has a knack for comic timing and simultaneous character development. I never saw an awkward stage picture or an underplayed gesture here. There were no gaps, no extraneous frills, no awkward silences. There was a perfection in the work that is a hallmark of a director who can be in charge and still let his actors do what they do best.
Walt Spangler’s efficient turntable set was well lit by Jeff Croiter and Emily Rebholz’s costumes evoked the period beautifully, particularly in the outfits she put onto the two therapists.
With “Beyond Therapy” the Williamstown Theatre Festival is off to a wonderful start in its 54th season. Now they have a criteria which they must be capable of matching and bettering. Good luck to them. It’s not going to be easy.

Beyond Therapy plays through June 22 at the Nikos Stage in the ‘62 Center for Theatre and Dance, located at 1000 Main Street in Williamstown. Tickets are $35-$37. Call 413-597-3400 or visit wtfestival.org.

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“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” book by Rachel Sheinkin, Music and Lyrics by William Finn, Concept by Rebecca Feldman, with additional material by Jay Reiss. Directed by Jeremy Dobrish. At Barrington Stage Company, Pittsfield.

Being the fat kid whose parents have brought him up with the illusion that one day he will be handsome — no, very handsome — is more than merely difficult. It’s an impossible situation that requires compensation. For William Barfee, adding an accent to his name and being the best speller in the world provides exactly that.
Sadly, that turns out to be just not adequate in the real world of the competitive spelling bee, a national rage that has spawned this musical at Barrington Stage Company, and at least three movies over the past five or six years.
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” began its life in a workshop collective, then moved to Barrington Stage when that company was still located in Sheffield. There it was developed into the stage show which successfully moved to New York City and won Tony Award recognition. Now the company that moved it from obscurity to prominence is presenting the show on its new main stage in Pittsfield. It’s been a long, pugnacious trip, but it’s here and Berkshire audiences can finally get a look at their “baby” musical.
What they’ll see is a funny show, one of the funniest in recent memory.

It is also musical in that odd way that contemporary musicals have taken. The songs don’t stand out, don’t jump out, waiting to be sung in the lobby by delighted audiences. The songs, instead, illuminate the interior motives of their characters and create a richer, well-ingrained photograph of the personality on stage. For example, a boy named Leaf Coneybear sings “I’m Not Smart” but clearly he is because he recognizes his own level, his own inadequacies. Another boy, Chip, confesses in a song “My Unfortunate Erection” that his puberty has taken the edge off his previous intent, winning the competition. These are not your Rodgers and Hammerstein ballads, your Lorenz Hart sophisticates, your Cole Porter brilliantined young men. Not even Stephen Sondheim would saddle a character with the “Prayer of the Comfort Counselor” and end this plaintive threnody with the words, “Goodbye whomever.”
In other words, this is a not-so sophisticated, not-so clever, not-so moving, not-so adult musical comedy, with an emphasis on the comedy, about kids and the adults who spur them onward to national prominence in a field that has no resonance in their futures. Like “beauty queen," or “homecoming queen,” the winner of the spelling bee lives in a very temporary glory and those who fall by the wayside can still live productive, useful lives after the houselights come up.
The show falls midway between musical reality and deadly parody. The authors have created a wonderland of things we can recall from childhood and to make this more poignant four members of the audience join the company at each performance and take their places among the competitors. That just makes things more delightful and increases the dramatic edge of this curious show.
The current production sports some wonderful talents. Miguel Cervantes is Chip and after his expulsion from the Bee he returns as a vendor of candies and later as Jesus who doesn’t think that spelling bees deserve all this much attention. Cervantes is a dynamo and does a wonderful job in his roles. Clifton Guterman takes Leaf, a Great Barrington native, to glorious heights as he extols his own inadequacies, parading his curiously 1960s dogma learned through his home-schooling experience. Demond Green, fondly remembered from his appearance here last season in “Funked Up Fairy Tales,” plays Mitch, the parolee doing public service as the comfort counselor. He is hilarious.
Emy Baysic is a perfect Marcy Park, the perfectionist who rebels from that manifesto and finds glory in failure. Molly Ephraim as Olive Ostrovsky, an outsider who may not be qualified to compete, is charming.
As the adults on stage, Sally Wilfert plays Rona Lisa Peretti — a former winner of the Bee — and Michael Mastro plays vice principal Douglas Panch, once suspended for losing it with a student. Their relationships with the children are endlessly fascinating, and Panch delivers his most outrageous lines with complete control while Wilfert improvises many of hers with panache and a completely natural style.
Eric Petersen plays William Barfee, the misfit who makes the most out of mis-fitting. He dances and sings and spells with his “Magic Foot” and completely captures our imaginations and our hearts. In this he is amply confounded by the Logainne Schwarzengrubenierre of actress Hannah DelMonte. She lisps and politically surprises the audience over and over as she brings her grammar school political agenda to the forefront, especially confronting her two Dads while dealing with her absentee mother.
In fact, the parent factor plays a major role in this show. Olive’s mother is in an Ashram in India and her father never appears at the competition, finally balking at paying the $25 entry fee. William’s two mothers are in the house, but not together. Leaf’s entire family has come to watch him fail, their belief in his possibilities since he is not smart. Altogether this show says as much about family dynamics as it does about youthful competition and the need to breed to succeed.
Under Jeremy Dobrish’s direction, this all moves smoothly and sweetly to its inevitable conclusion. Dan Knechtges provides wonderful, exuberant dances and the band, led by Brian Usifer plays their hearts out, sometimes overpowering the powerful singers on stage, all of whom are miked.
The physical production matches the vision of the authors and director, with a wonderful set by Beowulf Boritt, perfect costumes by Jennifer Caprio, effective and focused lighting by Jeff Davis and bright, if unbalanced, sound by Michael Eisenberg.
This is not the best musical ever, but it is one of the funniest, sweetest, silliest and most pleasurable musicals I’ve seen in a long life of musical watching. The fact that it also has, and sends, a message about the way we treat our children is thickening gravy in a stewpot with fabulous ingredients.

“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” plays at Barrington Stage Company on Union Street in Pittsfield through July 12. Tickets are $36-$56. Call 413-236-8888 or visit barringtonstageco.org.

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“How the Other Half Loves” by Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Michael Marotta. At The Theater Barn, New Lebanon, N.Y.

I remember Alan Ayckbourn’s first hit play, “How the Other Half Loves,” as being funny. Of course, that was 1971, when just about everything was funny. I remember laughing a lot, though, at Phil Silvers and Sandy Dennis, Richard Mulligan, Bernice Massi and Tom Aldredge.
In this new production at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, though, I only laughed a little bit. Almost nothing was funny, and it wasn’t the people involved, I’m sure, who made this so.

Perhaps it stems from the amazing breadth of local farces — “The Ladies Man” at Shakespeare & Company with so many doors and windows and other exits, “Beyond Therapy” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival with its constantly changing face of humanity and the magical turntable, and now “How the Other Half Loves,” with its two doors and two archways, its interlinking single set representing two apartments. The elements are there in the Ayckbourn play, but the writing isn’t as clean and humorous as it might be, the plot is too contrived and the people are too unpleasant to be as funny as they might be.
Two of the characters have had an affair, a one-night fling, and another character suspects the truth. A fourth has no clue, but has a sense of something changed in the general atmosphere. Two others, innocents in it all, become caught up in the plot and add the elements of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. A long first act sets this all up and then, in the second act the laughs start. At one hour and 20 minutes into a two hour show, it is a bit late for the humor to enter the play.
In the long tradition of this theater, the opening show is usually a farce, more often than not a British sex comedy. Purposefully, this play has been chosen. It falls short of expectation even under the masterful hand of director Michael Marotta, who moves his company with perfection through the dual purpose furniture and in spite of a wonderful, talented cast who never miss a moment or slip an accent. In fact, the result of imposing such wonderful people on such a strange set and odd play is that the show becomes more a melodrama with laughs than a laugh-riot with tensions.
As the Fosters, Fiona and Frank, we have Kathleen Carey and John Philip Cromie. Cromie excels at the distracted, corporate idiot whose lack of insight causes many of the problems the characters have to deal with in the course of the five days of the play’s duration. Carey plays the coy wife who can confuse her husband with a perfectly placed phrase, and she plays this to perfection. She never emphasizes what she does but merely does it with ease and leaves chaos in her wake. Both actors are perfectly cast and play with crisp perfection.
As the Phillips, Theresa and Bob, we have Amanda McCallum and Brian Allard. She is sharp as a tack and McCallum makes her points with a barbed attack. He is clever and slick and Allard is almost too slippery as he maneuvers his way around his wife, and the other two women in the play.
Then we have the Featherstones, Mary and William. This couple are the phobias waiting to attack the brain trust. She cannot speak in company without great effort and when she tries to overcome her tribulations she merely causes more confusion and more misunderstandings. He is a man not given to impulsive behavior who loses it, simply said. This couple are the comedy, pure and simple. Mary is played superbly by Jenna Doolittle and William is easily her match in the hands of actor Harry Vaughn.
Marotta, as noted, moves his company between the apartments brilliantly. In the second scene of the first act, he also moves the Featherstones between two dinner parties set on consecutive nights and we never lose track of where they are or what they are suffering at the hands of their hosts. If there was ever a farcical setup — without a single slamming door — it is this one that Ayckbourn uses to challenge his directors and actors. This company, under Marotta’s tight and decisive direction, makes the most of this. Oddly, it just isn’t as funny as one would expect.
As usual in these affairs, the team of Abe and Allen Phelps (set design and lighting design respectively) provides perfect settings for the goings on. Michelle Blanchard has provided excellent 1960s costumes. Technically, it is all in place for fun and laughter. As one character says late in the second act, “Apologize: It’s easier that way.” I repeat the lesson. This show somehow doesn’t deliver on its promise. I think it is the playwright who needs to apologize — or to just keep writing the much better plays that followed this one.
Which he did.
As for my memory of the comedy I anticipated seeing this time around, I apologize to myself. It’s a good lesson for a critic to not anticipate having today what he already consumed yesterday.

“How the Other Half Loves” plays at the Theater Barn on Route 20 in New Lebanon, N.Y., through June 22. Tickets are $20-$22 and can be purchased through the box office. Call 518-794-8989.

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“The Ladies Man” by Charles Morey, freely adapted and translated from Georges Feydeau’s Tailleur pour Dames. Directed by Kevin G. Coleman. At Shakespeare & Company.
 
To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim: “When you’re a farce, you’re a farce all the way ...” The latest Shakespeare & Company offering in the farcical line is one that uses all of the elements of good comic theater, including the necessary five doors (added here are two side entrances and a window), the manic mother-in-law, wicked servants, a sexually frustrated pair of women and a man who is the victim of all of their imaginative lusts and furies.
Feydeau was the master of the form. Playwright Charles Morey has adapted two classic farces by the French master, creating a play that is hysterical from the moment the lights come up and leads to a frenzied can-can in which the remarkable Annette Miller kicks up her high heels along with the other three women in the show, proving once and for all that there is little she cannot do with style and aplomb.

Kevin Coleman, a director who has a knack for these things, makes the most of his opportunities here. He utilizes the five doors with flair. He moves his cast in and out of them with a gracefulness that will certainly translate itself into enormous comic proportions as the company plays with their instant entrances, timing them to ridiculous perfection. At the opening night performance most of this was in place, but a few tweaks — something that Elizabeth Aspenlieder’s character likes to inflict on her men — will bring that sought-for result.
Aspenlieder is certainly hitting her stride in these comedies. She has a delicious set of contrasts to work with. She has the sweet, baby-face beauty that allows her to play romantic moments and the physical freedom to become the aggressive, man-hungry she-animal. She knows how to combine these things into a seamless characterization of a woman who wants what she wants and will get it no matter what she has to do to achieve that success. From her first entrance she is funny. Here is a woman who wants to have an affair, but always brings her husband along for the dangerous psychological state that provides. Somehow, Aspenlieder makes that rationale seem logical.
Jonathan Croy as Dr. Hercule Molineaux is her intended victim. He deadpans brilliantly. His face never betrays his feelings, unless he wants us to see them. This works to the advantage of his character, especially when he speaks of his wife and her pet name for him. Here we see the inner man and the hidden reaction that has accidentally set in motion all of the bizarre elements of the plot. Croy knows how to catch a flying, spread-eagled woman and how to engage a strong, willful man. He gets to use all of his considerable skills and talents in this role.
His friend, patient and confidante who incidentally sends the players to what may be the best disguised brothel in Paris, is played by Michael F. Toomey. As Bassinet, he lisps and plays dress-up and carries forward his need to disclose secrets with a delectable joy. Dave Demke plays Etienne, the servant with his own secrets, in as broadly comic a style as possible, remarkably “three stooges-esque” in fact. One of his best performances to date, in this part he takes over the stage on occasion, no matter who else is there.
Walton Wilson plays a Prussian whose jealousy — he insists he will catch his wife “in fragrant delight” — and violent intent knows no bounds until he drinks a “French drink” and becomes as confused as the rest of the participants, including the maid, Marie, played nicely by Caley Milliken. Her final appearance brings about miracle cures and muddled secrets.
Julie Webster is fine as the “straight man” the others play off. She is the wife of Dr. Molineaux, and it is her certainty that her new husband is already cheating on her that really gets the plot going, especially when she brings her mother into the picture. That mother is the character played by Annette Miller. And Miller is the comic linchpin of this production. A gorgon, referred to as Medusa, she has been given spectacular entrances, a costume that kills, designed by Govane Lohbauer, and music and lights that make her sudden appearances both thrilling and silly simultaneously.
In the second act, there is confusion about everyone’s identity, but hers is the topper. Being fitted for a riding outfit, she becomes alternately a Queen, a dominatrix, a procurer and a Madame, all while simply maintaining her identity as the mother of a betrayed young wife. There is nothing funnier than this sequence.
Carl Sprague’s ingeniously clever set makes changes as much fun to watch as the play itself. Les Dickert’s lighting is fine, if a bit dark at moments, and Michael Pfeiffer has made sound as much a character as any on stage.
The three acts of this play have been transformed into just two acts; the running time is just about two and a half hours, but the time does really fly by when you’re having this much fun.

“The Ladies Man” plays in repertory at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox through Aug. 31. Tickets range from $15 to $60. For the schedule and reservations, call the box office at 413-637-3353 or go to boxoffice@shakespeare.org.

J. Peter Bergman sleeps in Pittsfield, but spends his days with poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in Austerlitz. For more of his reviews, check out advocateweekly.com or his own Web site, berkshirebrightfocus.com.

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