Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

"Shirley Valentine" by Willy Russell. Directed by Jenna Ware. At Shakespeare & Company.

Shirley Valentine has a desire that overwhelms her. She wants to be treated with respect by her husband, Joe, a man she knows she must have loved once. She has taken to talking to a wall in her kitchen, getting more respect from that source than from Joe or either of her children. More respect than she gets from her neighbor or even her good friend Jane, a feminist. Jane has offered her an alternative to the daily grind, a two-week vacation on a Greek island. Shirley wants to accept, but fears the consequences.
On stage at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Tina Packer is bringing Shirley Valentine to life in a brief run that has a reprise in September. On stage, Packer is Shirley. There's no two ways about it. She truly is this woman, this character, this person who needs that respect.

This is a one-woman play. She talks to the audience as though they were really there, much as she talks to the invisible wall and later to a rock on the Greek sandy beach she inhabits exactly in the way she inhabits her own kitchen back home in the midlands of Great Britain. Shirley Valentine has created a world of people who are willing to listen to her, and this in a world bounded by the four walls of her kitchen, the four walls of her bedroom, and the market where she buys the things she needs to insulate the enclosed spaces where she exists. We get the feeling that if she ever stopped talking she would instantly disintegrate, fall apart where she stood and disappear.
The play, ultimately, is about the liberation of her spirit which allows her body to continue on its inevitable path to late middle-age, a path that also brings her illumination and release. She finds that she can take charge of those elements that have formerly threatened to defeat her. And the play is a comedy with a lot of hearty, human laughter.
To say that Packer was born to play Shirley isn't saying much. She looks the way Shirley speaks and she moves the way Shirley thinks. Her voice is what you would expect from the character. This is a play that Packer could perform anywhere, and probably should, for as good as previous Ms. Valentines have been, none have seemed so honestly right in the role. At the end of the standing ovation for her performance, she stopped the applause to make a deeply honest plea for support for this company to complete a challenge grant. To say that Shirley would never do such a thing is to ignore the similarities in the souls of Shirley and Tina. They really are one and the same and the plea's genuineness was like a coda to the experience. A national tour of this play would clearly solve money problems for this company.
There aren't many opportunities this season to see Tina Packer as Shirley Valentine playing Tina Packer. Don't miss them.

"Shirley Valentine" plays through May 31 and again on September 11. For tickets, call the box office at 413-637-3353 or shakespeare.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:36 PM | Permalink

"High Society," book by Arthur Kopit. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter with additional lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, based on the play "The Philadelphia Story" by Phillip Barry and the motion picture "High Society" by Barry and John Patrick. Directed by Doug Hodge. At Mac-Haydn Theatre.

Understand before you go that there's a lot of corned beef hash in the Mac-Haydn Theatre's production of "High Society," their season opener in their theater-in-the-round in Chatham, N.Y. First things first: Forget about the MGM movie with Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Celeste Holm and gorgeous costumes and sets. Just forget about it. Next: Forget about the jazz score that Cole Porter wrote late in his career in 1956. Finally: Forget about the funny lines that peppered the humorous situations in the original play that screenwriter John Patrick kept in the musical film adaptation that sparked this stage show.
Add into the mix the dialogue and new book written by the author of "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Momma's Locked You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad" and "Indians." Throw in 12 Porter songs from the period spanning his entire American career -- 1928-1953 -- without regard to their sound, consistently sophisticated but not consistent with his 1956 work. Alter some lyrics to suit situations with word groupings that defy the afore-mentioned sophistication. What have you got? "High Society," the show as produced at our local summer showcase.

On top of this find actors who can almost make you believe that they believe what they're saying, doing and singing. There is no one who can make me buy Tracy Lord singing "Ridin' High" as her entrance tune. There is no way that Mother Lord can possibly sing "Throwing a Ball Tonight," even helped out by her two daughters and the always merry Uncle Willie. The author, Kopit, manages to take one of the beautiful Porter songs, "You're Sensational," and convert it into a drunken soporific. And finally, when Tracy gives in to her urges with "It's All Right With Me," there is little left of Phillip Barry's character, no hint of Katherine Hepburn or Grace Kelly or Tracy Lord herself. "Just One Of Those Things" as sung by Dexter in the second act does make some emotional sense; at least, and it's very sweetly sung by Jeffrey Furano.
Director Doug Hodge and his choreographer Kelly Shook keep the energetic chorus dancing as much as possible, and that helps a lot. The dance movements mix a lot of 1930s and 1940s steps and gestures together, which is mystifying as to the period of the piece: the musical film was definitely mired in the 1950s. Outside of "Oyster Bay" as a general description of locale, we don't know whether we're in the film's Newport, somewhere on the Connecticut shore or halfway out on Long Island. I'd pull for the latter based on the New York twang in the speaking voice of actress Crystal Mosser, who plays this show's version of Tracy. We're certainly nowhere near Philly.
Mosser, and the rest of the cast, make the second act a very pleasant, if confusing, experience, but none of them can save the first act, which rambles from style to style without even an apology. She is somewhat uncomfortable in some of her clothing, dances poorly and sings without much distinction. Her acting also leaves a lot to be desired. At least she's pretty, but that's not enough for Tracy. There is no hauteur about her. She's just a girl, and that's not enough.
As her three swains, Chris Cooke as Mike seems to be the real deal. At least he's mostly believable throughout the show. Jeffrey Funaro as her former husband Dexter does well, but he never seems to be the odds-on favorite, and Jason Whitfield with a telegraphed vocal delivery that smacks of poor acting training is the fiance George. Put these three in the ring with or without boxing gloves and the clear winner is Cooke. Put them in an elegant soiree and Funaro might come out on top. Whitfield would have to seek some other form of combat.
Heather Dudenbostel plays Liz Imbrie, the Spy Magazine photographer with an unlikely ungainliness. Shirley Booth originated the role on Broadway and even she, with her nasal, Irish twang, must have come off with more grace and desirability that Dudenbostel manages.
John Saunders is fun as Uncle Willie. His progressive drunkenness is excellently performed, and his songs are better delivered than most here. His back-to-back 1930 tunes "Say It With Gin" and "I'm Getting Myself Ready For You" make a nice addition to the second act.
Meg Dooley does all right with Mrs. Lord, rewritten into someone not very interesting in this script, and the same can be said for Tom Hagen as her husband. The brightest star, really, is the girl who played Dinah Lord on opening night, Kaitlin Pearson (she alternates with Sara Bobok). She has a wonderful sense of character, delivers her lines with verve and control and should be a model for everyone else in the company in terms of making the best out of a depleted situation unsupported by the musical miniature of a synthesizer where full orchestrations would at least give the show back that lushness that says "money," a commodity around which this play was originally based.
In this show, thank God for the dancers/singers who surround the major players constantly. They kick the temperature of the show up a few notches every time they appear. I call that making the best out of a bad situation. "And if you come to call, we'll have a ball, 'cause they're sensational, that's all."

"High Society" plays at the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y., through June 7. For schedules and ticket information, call the box office at 518-392-9292.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:31 PM | Permalink

"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare. Directed by Jonathan Croy. At Shakespeare & Company.

Jonathan Croy has had ample opportunity over the past several seasons at Shakespeare and Company to prove he is a master of the farcical form. His excellent sense of timing, his physical and vocal confusion, his facial expressions that say five times more than his spoken lines would allow are proof of this mastery. He has applied some of that creative genius for comedy to his production of "Romeo and Juliet" currently running at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on the Shakespeare and Company campus in Lenox.
What? You say? A farcical "Romeo and Juliet?" How crass! How intolerable!! How now, I say to you, now how! Croy's production, which has toured New England, is a wonder. The timing and magical character switches, as seven actors play 19 roles, keep an audience as wide awake as it keeps the actors hopping.

There is a danger in plays such as this one. We've seen it all before. Whether one of the film versions, or another stage production -- professional or high school -- we have pretty much seen this before. We can speak the speeches alongside the actors or quote the lines in the bathtub. At the pace Croy has set his clever cast, however, it's hard to even murmur a "But soft! What light by yonder window breaks..." without missing the same-voiced response "It is the east and Juliet is the sun" because the boy Romeo is already long beyond that point in the script.
This energy is dynamic rather than funny, human instead of comical. The anger, lust and joy are brought to bear in a brisk, light way, just as they might happen in real life rather than on a classical stage. Juliet is not yet 14. Romeo is older but still a child in his romantic affiliations, skipping from a lover who taunts him to one who has not yet the capacity to tease. Friends, families, servants all achieve their aims quickly and to the point. Even Juliet's faithful Nurse fall under the quixotic spell of the pace of old Verona, where the scene is laid.
Alyssa Hughlett is a bright, tomboyish Juliet whose aggressive nature is well-suited to the impulses brought about by her first love. She sees Romeo, wants him and gets him. Even her great loss, her cousin Tybalt, cannot dispel her passion for her new illicit husband.
Benjamin Brinton is a Romeo who on the surface would not necessarily inspire passion. He is a tall drink of water who should suffer under the thumb of a manipulative young woman. When he falls in lust for Juliet, just as she does for him, he becomes a man, a person with convictions. His remarkable transition during the garden/balcony scene is perfect, especially at this lust-engendered pace.
Daniel Kurtz is a fine Tybalt, a pushy Paris, a pubescent Prince Escalus. Sean Kazarian is a perfect Mercutio, a fine and brutal Capulet, a funny Sampson. Kelley Johnston does well, especially as Balthasar and Kaitlin J. Henderson is a wonderful Lady Capulet, a dynamic Benvolio and a hysterically funny Sister Joan (formerly Friar John).
Paul D'Agostino is simply amazing. Starting out as Gregory, one of the funny servants in the opening scene, he quickly undertakes the role of Nurse, which he handles brilliantly. Before the first half of the play has ended he has also morphed into Friar Lawrence. At one point, a decidedly theatrical and farcical one, he transforms from one to the other in full view of the audience and no one cares. He is just that good.
Govane Lohbauer's costumes are beautiful and the simple set by Ian P. Guzzione with Kiki Smith and Janet Kalas works to the advantage of the play and its pacing. Greg Solomon creates some very pretty pictures with his moody lighting. The fight choreography is by Jonathan Croy and it has a magic all its own.
This production doesn't stick around very long, so see it while you can. The show runs two hours, exactly, with one intermission and the second act is not played at the same frenzied pace as the first, so you do stop laughing and can let the tragedy unfold naturally. Croy has managed the balance perfectly and this production with young players who all seem to have illuminated futures before them brings you to the place you wanted to be when you first thought of buying a ticket. So buy one. Forsooth.

"Romeo and Juliet" plays at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox through June 7. For schedules and tickets, call the box office at 413-637-3353 or visit shakespeare.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:09 PM | Permalink

"Faith Healer" by Brian Friel. Directed by Eric Hill. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Brian Friel's play about a man born to be a faith healer, currently on the Unicorn Stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, and that man's journey toward the understanding of his particular peculiar trade is a very dark work, a deep and sensitive piece in which three different people explore the faith healer's unsure lifelong trek. Frank Hardy's chosen path is not so much a religious one as it is a show business effort with a single highpoint: the incidental, and accidental, healing of 10 people at one performance.
Along with Frank on his adventure are Grace, his wife or his mistress depending on who is telling the story, and Teddy, a Cockney personal manager who has given up on his whippet who plays the bagpipes and a woman who can communicate with 120 pigeons to work day and night with the faith healer.
Teddy's monologue opens the second act and is the longest of the four monologues that comprise the text of the show. This is something you need to know before you go: There are four scenes, each a monologue by one character. There are no scenes, no interactions, but simply the storytelling aspects of solo lives, solo voices. Teddy's is just under an hour.
Fortunately for Berkshire Theatre Festival audiences, Teddy is played by David Adkins, who could probably read the Manhattan Telephone Directory to great effect.

Adkins transforms himself as only a great actor can do from a handsome and personable fellow into the itchy, aging, male hag that is Teddy. He oozes across the stage, dances, creeps, gesticulates and makes marvelous airs seem like so much rubbish. His Cockney accent never slips away, but occasionally it takes on new colors and nuances that hint at a time when this man may have had pretensions. His version of the story of Frank and Grace to be examined brings to light very credible facts that have escaped both Frank and Grace in their own versions.
Adkins cannot help but be unctuous in this role. It is how Friel wrote the character. What Adkins does, presumably under the guidance of director Eric Hill, is to make Teddy sympathetic rather than pathetic. In spite of ourselves we like this man. He has been accused, before his appearance, of many things and many more have been inferred. When we finally meet him, we are not prepared for the multi-faceted man Adkins and Hill bring to life.
Keira Naughton is a wonderful Grace, for the most part. She has no accent that places her in any single part of the British Isles. She is not Scots, nor Irish, not Mayfair, nor East End, nor Welsh. She is a very middle-American woman caught in a British role. In spite of that, and it is quickly forgotten or overlooked, she has gotten through the tough skin of the character into the fatty heart of her.
Where Adkins drinks beer after beer in his scene Naughton, in the 45 minute monologue that concludes Act One, consumes liquor in a tumbler, one drink after another. These two characters remember all the same things about Frank Hardy but they remember them differently. Where Adkins is overwrought, Naughton is overwhelmed; when he is cute, she is amazing. Her performance builds to small climaxes, then retreats into rancor, anger, bitterness and finally euphoria as she brings her memories again to a highpoint of dramatic ugliness.
Colin Lane is Frank, or Francis, Hardy, the faith healer, a man without faith in much of anything including his own unique abilities. He is an angular man, both physically and vocally and his character's emotional levels require angularity. He ambles as his mind rambles back and forth through his life. He holds center stage even when he leaves it for a time. His voice occasionally leaves the building, which is unfortunate for the audience (particularly sitting house right-director take note). Now and then there is something said that is just not clear. But when he becomes engrossed in his story, Frank Hardy is alive and definitely kicking.
How wonderful it would be to have these three characters in a scene together, especially with three such dynamic actors in these roles. Friel has not given them the chance to show, rather than tell, the story of their complicated relationship and a particular moment in time when confrontations were all these three can commit to is told and retold and to have seen it would have been just the thing the play needs to be a play.
Here is the difficulty. No amount of talent, and I include all three actors, the director and the excellent design team for the play (Chesapeake Westveer, sets; Charles Schoonmaker, costumes; Dan Kotlowitz, lights), can give us what we want when the playwright has chosen to refuse us the opportunity to see how his characters really behaved with one another.
Each character has a perspective on the incidents and the fact. No two agree. This Irish Rashomon technique is key to this work, as it was with other Friel pieces like "Molly Sweeney."
Here, however, the emotions are at such a high point in the story being told that to never experience it with the participants only weakens the effect.
What is left is fascinating, a bit frightening at times, and certainly worth knowing. For Frank, his work is "a craft without an apprenticeship," and what we hear about his work would certainly prove the point that learning your trade under the guidance of a master makes a world of difference in a career. This play, which opens the Berkshire Theatre Festival season -- and plays through July 4 -- is a hard play to take, but an undertaking worthwhile.

"Faith Healer" plays at the Unicorn Theatre at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge through July 4. Ticket prices range from $19.50 to $44. For schedule and ticket availability, call 413-298-5576 or visit berkshiretheatre.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:07 PM | Permalink

"Enchanted April" by Matthew Barber based on the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. Directed by Tom Detwiler. At Ghent Playhouse.

Lady Caroline Bramble is bored with the frivolous life of a high-level, small-time London socialite. She is thrilled to join the two somewhat dowdy ladies who have rented a small castle in northern Italy, thrilled because there will be no men in the picture and no need for pretense among the all-female household. She is a "modern," a British Julie Andrews if you remember the film "Thoroughly Modern Millie" (the very British Andrews is supposed to be from the American Midwest). She is jaded and yet she is somewhat in love with a man making his way through literary London, a man who turns out to be married and to someone she knows.
In Tom Detwiler's production of "Enchanted April" currently playing at Ghent Playhouse in Ghent, N.Y., Lady Caroline pulls off the realization of this love triangle with aplomb and grace and no signs at all of remorse, anger or trepidation. That is the hallmark of this production.

The story is straightforward. Lotty Wilton is unhappy in her marriage to a stuffy middle-class man and longs for some personal happiness, an enchantment with life. She finds a soul mate in Rose Arnott, whose successful husband is leading a double life under a pseudonym. She has some personal regrets that she has not come to grips with as of yet. The two women lease a castle in Italy for a month and then find two more women to share the expenses. In Italy, things change for all four women when men enter their daily lives again in this privileged location. That's it.
Shakespeare & Company in Lenox did this play a while back. While it was fun and had some amusing moments, it was a serious and seemingly lengthy piece in which emotional tensions were extreme and the acting was superb. You cried as much as you did anything else during the show, and Diane Prusha emerged, finally, as a true star of the realm.
This current production, which ends the Ghent Playhouse season, is a different matter. Under Detwiler's watchful eye and simple direction, the play is light and humorous with genuine heartfelt laughter. The scenes fly by while Mary Ellen Nelligar, in the same role Prusha took, emerges here as a new local star. The differences and the similarities are truly amazing and must, in part, be the result of Detwiler's understanding of the characters in this play.
Nelligar is the narrative voice, and much of what she tells us in the opening monologue we see played out later in the play. She is not the first such voice in the season: We had first-person remembrances recently in "Dancing at Lughnasa," "The Boys Next Door" and the panto. There was even a bit of it in "Clue: the Musical."
Without a doubt - even if it was accidental, which I doubt - the season has been about memory and the narrative sensibility. Nelligar handles her memory chats with understanding and simplicity. Her love scenes with her husband and her new best friends are charming and well played with that peculiar reality that defines the human race. Nothing mechanical or false ever intrudes on her work.
Stephanie Tanaka is a beautiful Lady Caroline. She also wears some of the most beautiful clothing provided by costume designer Joanne Maurer. This has been a beautiful season for costumes and sets, and Maurer has been a major contributor to the wonderful appearance of the season. Likewise, the work of Bill Camp, who designed the sets for this play, is really first rate. Tanaka's gentle qualities are emphasized by her appearance and her surroundings. We can truly feel the pain in her life as she mopes beautifully in the courtyard of the castle. It is difficult not to fall in love with her.
Rose Arnott is played with a dry crispness by Kathy Wohlfield, whose voice, face and manner suggest an older woman than the play calls for, but when her true back story is finally revealed, that seems to be just the right touch for Rose. Her husband is played by the unlikely Tracy Trimm, who manages, as he generally does, to make the casting utterly believable. Here is a very middle-aged man playing the lover's role and here, also, is a successful attempt at doing so. Trimm can be silly, or he can be marvelous. In this play, we can hear his anxiety over a marriage gone sour; we experience his pain when we encounter it.
Ted Phelps is the other husband in the plot, and his transition in Act 2 from an opinionated, stuffy, over-eager attorney into charming swain is beautifully delivered. Jonathan Slocum, in a debut role as the man who owns the castle, paints pictures and falls in love, a bit, with every war-widow in town, strikes a nearly perfect tone for his character. He has a winning stage presence and can make canoodling with an older woman seem like just the thing to do.
As one of the canoodled women, Wendy Power Spielmann practically steals away the play as Costanza, the Italian maid-of-all-work. She is consistently funny and yet warm and supportive when necessary. Every exit, and nearly every entrance she makes, gets a laugh. Joan Coombs is Mrs. Graves, the fourth woman shareholder at the castle. Hers is the hardest part, in some ways, as she must be understandably disagreeable, easy to hate and yet sympathetic. Coombs pulls off this nearly impossible trifecta. Her Mrs. Graves emerges as a character you will not easily forget.
As a season closer, May's "Enchanted April" is easy to take and just the sort of show to interest newcomers to the area, as well as long-term residents, to a theater company that always gives more than 100 percent in its productions. If accents are inconsistent, if sometimes a hat gets left on stage for far too long - it doesn't really matter. This show climbs up to about 135 percent. It is not to be missed.

"Enchanted April" plays at the Ghent Playhouse through May 31. Tickets are $12-$15. Call the box office at 518-392-6264 or visit ghentplayhouse.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.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:21 PM | Permalink