Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, adapted by Eric Hill. Directed by Eric Hill and E. Gray Simons III. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

By J. PETER BERGMAN
For the third season in a row, the Berkshire Theatre Festival is presenting its stage edition of the Victorian classic “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. The story is told in a most straight-forward manner with special effects reduced to an aural minimum, with traditional sets and costumes and a triple-threat endeavor by Eric Hill, who adapted the book into a play, directed the show and stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, the classic meanie who hates Christmas.
Hill has grown with the role.

Last season he smiled incessantly, making the nastiest of classic lines, even “Bah, Humbug!” into a lightly comic turn. This season, however, he has given Scrooge his due and presented him as a small-minded, stingy, hard-as-brass miser who wishes to be left alone. His wish, if you know the tale at all, is not granted. His two confrontations with the ghost of his ex-partner, Jacob Marley, leave him without much solid ground on which to stand and set him on the path of self-discovery that illuminates his true, and long-hidden, nature.
Even if Hill is still making the transition to “nice guy” a bit early in the game, he is at least making it rather than showing us Scrooge’s inner man from the beginning; this is a very good thing for the play. His performance has moments that touch the heart gently, and he produces a new and improved Ebenezer at the end of the show whose humorous, rollicking sensibilities are truly enjoyable.
Jacob Marley is played with a superb intensity by E. Gray Simons III. His caterwaul of agony and remorse is chilling, and his intensity tips the hat of command to Hill’s Scrooge. Simons returns late in the play as Joe, the man who purchases the items stolen from the dead Scrooge. He plays this role with finesse and has a high old time chuckling, cajoling and flirting with his coven of thieves. Two delightful personalities presented by an excellent young master of characters.
The show, this time around, is presented as part of the BTF’s Education and Outreach Program; thus, the balance of the members of the company are not professional actors. In fact, not even Hill and Simons are credited in the program as professionals. The young company is, overall, generally delightful.
Andrew Belcher does a nice job with Bob Crachit, moving his audience to tears in the second act mourning his lost child. Joseph Labrasca is a terrific Turkey Boy in the final scene of the play. Miranda Shea makes the most of Fan, and Abigail Ziaja is a charming and poignant Mrs. Crachit. Marco Crescentini is a perfect Ignorance and fun to watch early in the show — he has memorized entire scenes and mouths the lines along with the actors on stage.
Cameron Castanguay is an exuberant Tiny Tim, Michael Brahce an equally exuberant Fred and James Russell a very happy Dick Wilkins. The three ghosts did their very different jobs very well, with Brandy Caldwell especially fine as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Rob McFadyen paraded nicely as Christmas Present and Rachael Plaine overwhelmed as Christmas Yet to Come.
Ralph Petillo as Charles Dickens and Mr. Fezziwig was an excellent presence, even if his accent seemed off-base among the stage-British of the rest of the company. He narrates well — his voice carries over the too-loud music — and Fezziwig had an energy and enthusiasm that made it just fine.
A special bravo to Natalie Paterson for her musicianship, playing her violin to inspire London’s street people, partygoers and carolers.
Carl Sprague’s forced perspective set and moving stage pieces work like a charm and are so very impressive in a production that spares little in enthusiasm but holds to a nice, neat budget in actual production costs. Aided wonderfully by Jessica Risser-Milne’s wonderful costumes, the company’s wonderful collection of props and the moody and mystical lighting of Matthew E. Adelson, this one hour and 38 minute (with intermission) production is a nice annual treat for young and old alike.

“A Christmas Carol” plays through Dec. 30 at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge. Tickets range from $20-$45 and can be purchased by calling 413-298-5536, ext. 33, or online at berkshiretheatre.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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“Jack and the Beanstalk: A Tale of Greed” by Johnna Murray and The PantoLoons. Directed by Tom Detwiler. At The Ghent Playhouse.

There are holiday traditions one cherishes and traditions one fears. I dread dry white meat turkey. I adore a fruit-inflected cranberry relish. I avoid “The Wizard of Oz” and I look forward to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I fear tryptophans if I have to drive home; I cherish the company of dear friends.
I also cherish, dread, adore, look forward to, fear but never avoid the yearly foray into the British, and Ghent Playhouse tradition of the Christmas Panto. Every year I worry about the company: Will the show be funny? Will I want the songs to be longer (or shorter)? Will the cross-dressing characters work? Will the political jokes be Democrat or Republican? This is a presidential election year and a tricky one. Will the show make me cringe or cry out a hearty bravo!? Well, the traditional days are behind me, and I can write, with a smile and a hearty ho-ho heart, of the newest achievement in this grand old genre. The PantoLoons have done it again. Happiness prevails.

The story in brief: Widow Trott sends her son Jack off to sell Bossy the cow for nothing less than five gold pieces so that they can eat and pay the mortgage. Not too bright, and overly fond of the cow I must say, Jack sells her, instead, for five magic beans to Simple Simon, an organic farmer whose daughter Jill takes a fancy to Jack. Jack’s beans grow quickly into a giant beanstalk at the top of which Jack discovers the home of the mortgage holders Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, two giants in the field. Slyer and much more clever than thought to be, Jack manages to wrangle freedom from the oppression of the subprime loan for his mother and at the same time he finds a way to spend his life with his beloved cow.
Add to this simple story parody lyrics to 16 familiar tunes — most of them — and you have the basic material of the show. One element that makes this a favorite of audiences is the often ad-libbed quips about the current events of the day, primarily political, and you have the text of what was, on opening night, a one hour and fifteen minute one-act miracle of silliness, audience participation and high lowdown comedy.
The cast is, as always, a treat. Many Ghent Playhouse regulars are assembled again, most playing characters of the opposite sex, in the most hilarious costumes Joanne Maurer has ever created for this gang. They play on a practical and magical set designed by Rick Rowsell and are gorgeously lit by Bill Camp. Paul Leyden, as Sweety Pieman, plays the downstage piano, acts, sings and dances a duet. Nothing more could be asked of him, especially in the funny hat and smock he wears.
Sally McCarthy is a personable Jack. Her careful “Equus” gestures toward Bossy, the cow, are as delightful as her singing and her flirting with both disaster in the clouds and romance on the ground. As her beloved cow, Rick Rowsell makes milking a merry mixture of mayhem and mystery. If you can’t get blood out of a stone, believe me, you can’t squeeze milk out of this brashly male bovine mammal. Equus lives in this couple’s relationship.
Paul Murphy is Dame Foxy Trott, Jack’s mom, and if you don’t recognize her forebears from her wig you will from her wink and her sexy attacks on the elk steaks you’ll hear about. Political parody presides. Murphy is at his best here. Dame Trott does just that and without a canter to distract her from her goals. Simon, her vis-a-vis, is played by Judy Staber, who originated the whole Panto movement in Columbia County. Portly, mustachioed, pontificating yet mobile, Staber’s Simon is endearing and makes a wonderful addition to her other classic characters: Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother and Rumpelstiltskin. She also leads the world in “The Cucumber Song” (the words are in the program, so there’s no excuse for sitting this out).
Cathy Lee-Vischer and Johnna Murray are Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, with just a little bow to both Margaret Hamilton and the current home-building/conversion craze. If the Jolly Green Giant is your idol, or even Mr. Clean, wait till you get a look at these two. They are funny, scary and even more to the point than Kermit the frog would be. Among their many possessions in this play are Harpie, a golden harp, played by director Detwiler, and Goldie Goose, the egg-layer, played by Joanne Maurer. Detwiler is hilarious in high heels, Marlene Dietrich gold legs, and a certain air of musical genius not seen since Liberace departed this world. Maurer is brilliant as she lays those eggs on command and chirps in a hawkish, mawkish manner.
Ron Harrington plays Jill in his best ingenue/soubrette fashion. His blonde curls and his big flirty eyes make him the perfect heroine, and his way with a clever turn-of-phrase is unique and unforgettable. He can even make a comment about a cow into something less than discreetly sexual and yet allow it to remain innocent at the same time.
Musical high points in this latest entertainment were “Up the Beanstalk” a well-known ABBA song, “Start Walkin’,” “Jack’s Lament” (an Irving Berlin you won’t forget), “Bye Bye Bush Beans,” and Jill’s solo, “A Girl Like Me.”
The Ghent Playhouse production only runs on weekends and ends its all-too-brief run on Dec. 14. Is the show for families? Absolutely, but be prepared to explain a few things about the sexual confusion that reigns supreme in the pantomime tradition. Judy Staber’s program notes will help. These shows tend to sell out, so run, do not walk, to the nearest telephone and indulge in a holiday tradition that is too good to be true.

“Jack and the Beanstalk” plays at the Ghent Playhouse Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Dec. 14. Tickets range from $8-$15. The Ghent Playhouse is located at the corner of Route 66 and Town Hall Place in Ghent, N.Y. For information or tickets, call the box office at 518-392-6264.

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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“This Wonderful Life” by Steve Murray, conceived by Mark Setlock, based on the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, based on a short story “The Greatest Gift” written by Philip Van Doren. Directed by Andrew Volkoff. At Barrington Stage Company.

In one hour and 21 minutes, a single actor plays out the full 129-minute film, “It’s a Wonderful Life” twice in the holiday offering “This Wonderful Life” currently on stage at Barrington Stage Company’s second space.
Once would have been sufficient.
I must admit that I am not the greatest fan of the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart movie. Neither was Capra, who saw it as an interim piece in his career; he never understood its surge to iconic status and I certainly don’t. It’s a nice, agreeable comedy about a man who discovers that for his entire life he has been intent on all the wrong things and has never understood his importance in his tiny, confined world. When he does he becomes a man who smiles more. End of story.

In this new stage adaptation (and there are no credits for the film or story creators in the Barrington program, but it is an adaptation and announced as such in the play’s monologue) a narrator, supposedly an actor backstage on the excellent set designed by Brian Prather and Kelly Syring, performs in less than two pages a precis of the entire film, changing characters as needed. He does a wonderful job with this quick-change version, which ends with a bow and blackout. A perfect rendition of the movie as far as I was concerned. Then, apologetically, he redoes the piece, from beginning to end, taking on more than 30 characters and replaying for us every aspect of the Capra creation.
It isn’t boring. There are moments that are actually fun, moving, effectively dramatic or comedic. But those are moments and not the full performance. Tom Beckett, as the Narrator, is clearly a talented actor. What he is not, however, is a good mimic. While Jimmy Stewart, the George Bailey of the film, is cleanly realized in body and voice, none of the other actors in the movie are represented with any respect to voice, face, attitude or style. Lionel Barrymore’s old man Potter, the villain of the film, never emerges in a recognizable form, and Barrymore has one of those quavery voices that is so easy for a good actor/mimic to play. Thomas Mitchell, who played Uncle Billy, somehow comes across as an old Irish actor — go figure. Henry Travers, the angel Clarence, has a very specific sort of pinched, clipped voice that is not even approached by Beckett.
Unlike other actors who have presented one-man shows for Barrington Stage, most directed by Volkoff, Beckett makes no pretense in his presentation of becoming the characters or the actors who played them for this show. Instead, he presents an actor of limited range who loves the movie and cannot wait to show you how well he has memorized the lines. The good lines from the movie still come across as good and effective lines. It is simply that the characters who say those words are not a part of his performance. He is almost always just this narrator, backstage somewhere, reciting the movie. I don’t know if this is the choice of the actor or the director, but it is not really the best way to go with a play like this.
We want to be transported through his enthusiasm into the world he clearly worships. We want to be as enthralled by “...Wonderful Life” as he obviously is since he can’t wait to perform it. However, we want to understand the depths of feeling coming from soft-voiced Donna Reed, the sultry elusiveness of a Gloria Grahame, the crippled mental processes of H.B. Warner’s druggist, the goofiness of George Bailey’s best friend Sam Wainwright as Frank Albertson played him. These and so many other characters in this film are what make the picture interesting. Their faces and voices are specific and Capra cast them for the qualities they brought to their roles.
These qualities are missing in the play as performed and without them we just have a memorization ego in front of us. And while it really is nice, it isn’t enough.
Jacob A. Climer’s costume is a reasonable outfit, nondescript and non-period, but is it something an actor, backstage, would be wearing? I’ve rarely seen someone dressed that way in any theater I’ve worked in or visited. Brad Berridge’s sound design works well, and there are some pre-recorded bits — called for in the script — that make some scenes playable. In one of them there is a fun bit of lighting design by Jeff Davis as two chandeliers and a “special” converse. When the Narrator comments on the lighting — “These are the special effects” — you know you’re in for a shaky evening of technical theater, but Davis does some beautiful things with color and effect. His use of night-light for the master sequence of the show — the no George Bailey period — is exquisite.
“This Wonderful Life” could have been called — as a friend of mine suggested — “This Onederful Life” and it would have been a more accurate title for a show where one actor recites the roles of so many. To be truly “wonderful” he would have had to go that extra mile and brought to life the characters as we remember them. That would have been the tour-de-force we hope for in such a presentation and it might have made me truly love the piece, rather than just respect the effort.

“This Wonderful Life” plays at BSC’s Stage II, located at 36 Linden St. in Pittsfield, through Dec. 20. Tickets range in price from $15 to $30. For schedules and reservations, call the box office at 413-236-8888 or check barringtonstageco.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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