Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

"The Prisoner of Second Avenue" by Neil Simon. Directed by Warner Shook. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Edna Edison is the epitome of the wifely wife, an at-your-service type who only wants her husband to rest, be happy and healthy, and not worry so much. "Name it, I'll do it," is her credo. Mel Edison, her husband, is a fidgety, nervous, overly intense man who can't be calm when there are things bothering him. Those things include noise, smells, sounds, food, attitude and more attitude. This couple lives in a 14th floor apartment on Second Avenue in the 80s in New York City in the early 1970s. Obviously Mel will never get any rest, and Edna will live out her days unable to please her husband.
Around these two perfectly mismatched people, Neil Simon fashioned his 1971 hit comedy, "The Prisoner of Second Avenue." The economic times are hard -- sound familiar? -- with jobs threatened, strikes in place and robbers gaining ground in the world of less-than-obvious professions from which to choose. Mel and Edna are hit by the misfortunes that befall folks in the big city. How they deal with those unfortunate situations is at the core of this play, one of the few outright comedies playing in the Berkshires this summer.

Thankfully, the play was written by Neil Simon and not by William Inge. Where Inge would be dirty and down in it, Simon is funny and humanly touching. Inge would have driven Mel into an early grave and Edna to the streets for quick cash transactions in alleyways. Simon gives Mel a nervous breakdown and paranoia while Edna becomes the uneasy breadwinner who can suffer a tantrum when needed and still come out ahead of her hapless husband. Where Inge would have been relentlessly grim, Simon is relentlessly funny. God bless Neil Simon.
In the new production at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, funny is the order of the night. From the ninth line in the first scene, this play is on track with laughter. That Mel and Edna's situation is not funny cannot be denied, but being who they are, and noting who is playing them, this couple faces adversity with unique splendor.
Stephen DeRosa is Mel, and his take on the character seems to be uniquely his own. He never brings to mind Jack Lemmon (the movie Mel) or Peter Falk (the first Broadway Mel, later replaced by Art Carney, Gabriel Dell and Hector Elizondo). Every energetic thrust or withdrawal is DeRosa's own. This actor takes on this character, face to face, and comes out the superlative Mel, an unequaled variation on the human race's principal antagonist. At one point in the second act, Mel intimidates his milquetoast wife, and in DeRosa's wonderful way, Mel takes much more time than he should need to subjugate the woman. Each moment, each attack, each illogical bit of logic is funnier in DeRosa's take on it than I ever remember it being before.
DeRosa's Edna is played superbly by Veanne Cox. I recall seeing Lee Grant and then Barbara Barrie in the role way back when, and no two women could have been more radically different than those two -- until Cox came on the radar screen this time around. She has struck a happy medium between the two: sweet and sincere where Grant had an edge of sarcasm, echoed in the film by Ann Bancroft, strong and resilient where Barrie seemed to fade into insecurity. She has a tendency to talk down to her husband, and Cox makes those moments elusive and fun by infecting it with that gentle emptiness or vacuousness that she affects for this role. When Edna comes into her own in Act 2, then loses it into an entirely different and new mood, she is the comic equal of her husband as Cox makes the most of this sequences. Bancroft, Phyllis Newman and Grant made their Ednas into a very New York Jewish house frau. Cox removes her from that, even as her character shuttles home midday with a lunch casserole for her ailing husband.
In fact, that characteristic Jewish sense is all but missing in the first act and the opening scene of Act 2. The play has a more universal feeling to it, I think. Then in the middle of the second act, enter Mel's three sisters. There is no question left as to accent, capabilities or ethnic orientation. We are in a Jewish household.
The sisters are played by Alice Playten (the adoring one with memory lapses); she is the one who dotes on the baby that Mel once was. Denny Dillon is Jessie, the tearful but strong one. She has a generous heart but a self-protecting head. Jeanne Paulson plays Pauline, the sister who wants to be thought of as kind, but isn't kind and shows it. Their older brother, Harry, an organized sort of person, is played by Julian Gamble.
Gamble and the Girls are absolutely right for their roles. The sisters are consistently oddball and funny. Brother Harry is a man for all seasons; he is ready to come up with a deal that will help Mel and ultimately not hurt himself doing it. If this were my family, I'd opt out of it, just as Mel has seemingly done, keeping them informed but usually not involved.
Laurie Churba Kohn has done a neat job with the period costumes. It's hard to remember men's clothing, but she has brought it all back with Mel's awful suit. Mary Louise Geiger adds a perfect touch with lighting in this play, giving us the inside and outside lights of New York City, as they shed a cool, almost cold, glare onto the proceedings. Scott Bradley's realistic set completely ignores audience sightlines, actually keeping one half of the audience from discovering if there is a hallway in the apartment and the other half from understanding what the stage right wall looks like when it breaks.
Warner Shook has a nice understanding of the play's qualities, and he makes manifest each of them through the talents of his cast. His American Gothic relationship to madness and revenge is just what Simon asked for in the script, but there is already something different from the order of the day as he moves inexorably forward toward that absurd picture that, while immediately recognizable, never felt forced or diagnosed.
Onward to the ultimate fix, a Simon comedy about life in summer played during summer in a season when the ultimate fix of seasonal recognition may just never come this summer. This play may be as close as we can get, especially when the snow comes falling down.

"The Prisoner of Second Avenue" plays at the Berkshire Theatre Festival through Aug. 8. The theater is located on Main Street in Stockbridge, although the parking lot is accessible also from Route 7. For information and tickets, call 413-298-5576 or visit berkshiretheatre.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:07 PM | Permalink

"Almost, Maine," by John Cariani. Directed by Eric Peterson. At Oldcastle Theatre Company.

Sometimes it's like visiting an old friend. Sometimes it's like seeing an old lover with whom things ended on a sour note. Sometimes it's just a momentary lull in a relationship. That's what it's like seeing a play that has become a staple in a short time, a play that never has a bad production, a play like "Almost, Maine." This play is about all of the above. Watching it is almost like being there, almost like being a part of it.
The current production by the Oldcastle Theatre company in Bennington, Vt., is the third one I've seen in two and a half years. The first was at the Theatre Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y., and the last one at the Chester Theater in Chester. The play, I have to say, is always the same. No production has been able to alter the sweetness of the sensibilities here; no director has removed the sting of love-lost, nor the thrill of first discovery.

There are, as there always have been, nine stories of lovers meeting, parting, reuniting, discovering one another. For each new audience, wherever this show plays, there is the same adventure, the same road to revelations. Set on a single winter night in the northern district of the state of Maine, a town that hasn't incorporated yet (mostly because they're just too busy doing next to nothing) undergoes a transformation of love. Pete and Ginette discover that the world can bring them closer by separating them for a time. East and Sandrine find the northern lights liberating, freeing them from past mistakes in love. Randy and Phil make a marvelous declaration that literally and figuratively leaves them weak in the knees. Hope and Dan learn what reality does to true love when fear of commitment rears its ugly head, and Phil and Rhonda uncover lost love's reminiscent bitterness. All in one night, and that's just the surface -- there are more stories to be heard.
Eric Peterson, with the aid of production designer Kenneth Mooney, has provided a bare-bones production that allows four actors, taking on all the roles -- 19 in all -- to tell the stories in the best way possible. They show us everything necessary to make us understand their particular situations. Under Peterson's watchful direction, we experience more kissing than there is in a Holocaust musical, more embraces than you'll find in a Disney show. The romances are finely tuned under this director's concept, and the bittersweet endings are always delivered with taste and humor. Peterson has found the formula for his actors to use to make points and never over-sentimentalize a situation.
The cast of four consists of Natalie Wilder, Richard Howe, Shawn J. Davis and Marianna Bassham. They sometimes switch costumes and roles in the wink of an eye and come out on stage ready to be whoever they need to be. When your set change consists of setting a chair and removing a beer can, there isn't much time to spend getting into anything -- coat, dress, mood. This quartet handles such short interludes brilliantly.
The playwright has settled on a framework tale, Pete and Ginette, whose love is so great they almost never need to speak or touch to set the mood and create the final tableau. And around their attachment to the star-filled night dominated by the planet Saturn, the others stories are strewn.
Wilder is especially touching in the story about a woman who has rushed back to this town to give an answer to a question asked of her years before. She hasn't changed much, but the man has grown into someone she no longer knows. I have seen a better performance of this story, but never a performance where the woman's acceptance of the reality of her sad situation is held tight and only touches her, not the audience. The shock of such a close-to-the-bone handling of the emotional impact here is easily mitigated by the body posture, the walk and the inclined head moving into a self-sufficient place of pride that is obviously false. Wilder's take on this ending is remarkable and beautiful in a way I would never have anticipated.
Davis is a joy as Phil, a man whose own greatest joy is in the awful dates he has with women. His best friend bests him, but he isn't fazed by that, as long as he and his friend can remain as they are. When things change between them, Davis' playing out of the altered relationship is funny, funny, fraught. He plays this wonderfully and is helped enormously in the mirrored actions of Richard Howe.
Howe takes on Pete like no one else has so far in my triple experience of the play. His unique, sad-sack face lends itself perfectly to this nonverbal lover. While he is equally fine in his other roles, it is Pete who will remain in memory, I think. This tale is split into three sections, and by the third one, he is breaking our hearts. When he moves to follow the lost Ginette, but hesitates to do so, he makes us want to throw something at him just to motivate him from outside as he clearly can only be scolded from the inside. The resultant happiness generated by his hesitation seemed to be just exactly right.
Bassham has no best role. Each one is unique, but it may be the enthusiasm for finding out what lies beneath in her Rhonda that makes the best single take of the evening. As one animal instinct replaces another one, Bassham roars with confidence and a new-found freedom. It was just lovely to watch.
"Almost, Maine" may be the easiest play ever written when it comes to just sitting back, taking it in and enjoying it. Peterson has done well to bring Maine down to Vermont (or back up from New York and Massachusetts). You would do well to just go sit down and watch it.

"Almost, Maine" plays at the Bennington Center for the Arts through Aug. 9. The theater is located on Route 9 at Gypsy Lane in Bennington, Vt. For schedules and tickets, call 802-447-0564.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:06 PM | Permalink

"What is the Cause of Thunder?" By Noah Haidle. Directed by Justin Waldman. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

In the opening scene of Noah Haidle's new play, now having its world premiere on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ada the actress, in her soap opera character, hears a litany of recent tragedies spouted by an oddly anti-devout nun in full habit. Ada's character has been praying hard before being interrupted by the other woman who bemoans the burning nursery, the animals let loose from the zoo, the coma-restricted daughter of Ada's character and finally, after enumerating the number of times Father O'Brien has touched young boys in "those places," the fact that, oh by the way, God is dead. The God Ada has been praying to devoutly, seeking help, answers and salvation from. The nun then makes a spectacular exit after making a few more revelations. The scene is hilarious because we do not know anything about these people or the situation in which they find themselves.
In fact, the whole "soap opera" reality theme of this play is presented slowly in the scene that follows.

Ada at home with her pregnant daughter seems to be still caught up in the drama of her day at prayer, her day at work. It takes more than a few minutes to reveal the next level of reality. Ada and her single, but very pregnant daughter Ophelia, share an apartment. Ada treats the girl more like a servant than a relation and there are instant parallels to a similar situation in another play about a soap opera star, "The Killing of Sister George." As in "George," there is an angelic and inspiring aspect to Ada's character's character (later on we learn she has murdered at least three people including her only son as an infant). Also as in George, the actress lives with an attractive younger woman (a daughter here, a lover/mistress there). In both cases the girl has a very childish aspect; in "George" she is even called "Childy."
Also, in both plays the star is about to get the axe. The death of a popular character to shore up the slipping ratings of a TV soap opera lies at the bottom of the motivations in both plays. There the similarities really do end, although a bit of reflective Shakespeare now and then crop up in the two plays as well.
This 90 minute one-act play feels like a one-act play grown long. In spite of excellent work by two dynamic actresses, the play wears itself down long before it comes to an end. Tedium strikes the final chords as Ada slips back into a madness that has overtaken her before if we can believe the dialogue between daughter and mother. Her levels of reality have been sorely tested, from the start, and her inability to identify away from her Television identity is taking over her natural thought processes. The imminent birth of her granddaughter saves a moment of sanity, but we can tell that her "resurrection" is about to be a masterwork of self-deception.
Wendie Malick plays Ada with all the bravura gestures and vocal mechanics she used in her role of former super-model on "Just Shoot Me," a television series that ran for several years and truly brought her talents to light. She played a character there who was bigger than life and less capable than the truly living. It was a fun character, a guaranteed laugh getter and she reprises many aspects of that woman in Ada. Here she takes things a few steps further down the path to self-deception and madness. Here, while she is fun as she acts her "part," she is devastating as she plays her primary character. It cannot be easy for an actress whose success has depended on characters such as Ada to dissect such a woman and present her literally inside-out for all to see. Malick succeeds on every level even without the slightest faint hope of salvation as the outcome of Ada's life.
We easily see Ada's meaner aspects even while applauding her talents. We admire her use of all that is theatrical to overcome her own shortcomings in her real life relationships with her parents, her absentee husband and lovers, her ever-present daughter whose own phobic hallucinations bring about a fake engagement and a non-existent wedding. The one thing we do not really do is sympathize with Ada' s deeper problems and that comes not from the actress's inability to bring us that place, but with the playwright's unfortunate mistake in not providing her the means to do so.
Betty Gilpin plays Ada's daughter Ophelia and also her TV daughters, twins, wheel-chair-bound Harper (when not in a coma) and evil Bathsheba, recently released from prison for impersonating an oral surgeon. Gilpin also plays every other character we see in the play including the nun, and the son who was buried alive as an infant. She manages to make these characters wonderfully different. She is so good at it, and with very quick costume, wig and voice changes, that there were a few instances in which I had to squint hard to be certain that a ringer hadn't been sent in. She is a very talented actress who can make whining into something with a smattering of charm.
Clearly Justin Waldman has worked hard to make this play work as well as it does. Not even a talented director, however, can compensate for the script's short-comings. A proposed 15-minute intermission was cut prior to opening, and that was a wise decision here as many of the audience might not have returned for a second act.
The set is Broadway-bound, even if the show may not make it there. It is big, wonderful and fun to watch. Designed by Alexander Dodge, it is a very impressive piece of theater all by itself, but here it is ably supported by the excellent lighting design created by Jeff Croiter. Nicole V. Moody's costumes so perfectly suit each of the characters in this play that the reality of all of Gilpin's people is established almost by look alone.
This is an odd one, indeed. Worth seeing for the physical production and the two actresses, but don't expect a completely satisfying evening of theater ... or television. And, oh, if God is dead, it's probably just a little bit due to this play. Neither of those just mentioned concepts works for me, however. Neither does the play.

"What is the Cause of Thunder?" plays on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through Aug. 2. The theater is located in the '62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College, 1000 Main St. (Route 2), Williamstown. For information and tickets call the box office at 413-597-3400.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:16 PM | Permalink

"Sleuth" by Anthony Shaffer. Directed by Jesse Berger. At Barrington Stage Company.

Revenge sings a loud song on the stage at Barrington Stage Company's theater just now as Anthony Shaffer's Tony winning play "Sleuth" rears its beautiful head. For 1222 performances back in the early 1970s, this play riveted people to their seats as its changes and hard-right angles confused and duped audiences as the two main characters played their roles. Milo Tindle and Andrew Wyke, as played originally by Keith Baxter and Anthony Quayle, held onto the Broadway audience, sophisticated and aloof as it can be, with four hands gripping the throats of anyone unable to guess the unlikely outcome of this entertainment.
"Sleuth " is a thriller, a mystery play with a difference. Instead of there being a detective as indicated by the title, there are two men competing for the same thing - supremacy in life and love. Older Andrew Wyke is losing his wife Margaret to young Milo Tindle. Wyke, who doesn't love her, is furious and intent on revenge. He executes his concept and then it is the turn of others to torment Wyke, taking revenge to other levels. That is the basic plot of the play.

Barrington Stage's production, under the excellent hand and eye of director Jesse Berger, is a truly terrific one. It would seem that every item on David Barber's moody set which appears to be falling apart - much as its occupant's life is falling apart - is placed just right, just as it should be. Aided by Jeff Davis' dark and mysterious lighting and Clint Ramos' high pressured costumes - the mask for the clown alone is a triumph - the production has the right feeling and even the right smell - though there wasn't actually one. In spite of the oddly cantilevered walls connected by shoe-strings, the set does what it needs to in order to convey the necessary sense of order tempered by conversely proportioned lines.
There are seven characters if you include Margaret Wyke who never appears or is heard in this production - the film employed an actress cleverly self-named as Eve Channing (think Margo and Eve in "All About Eve") for a phone call or two. Still, Margaret does dominate the play in ways that her romantic rival Tea (who also never appears) does not. Three of the men are police officers whose dialogue desperately amuses. Margaret, or Margo, is the fourth and, naturally, there are the two protagonists mentioned above.
As Milo we have Jeremy Bobb, a young man whose closely cropped hair would seem to not be right for the romantic lead, and yet there is something to the severity of that cut in terms of who the character turns out to be. Bobb seems not to have the stature to inhabit the room in which this play is set. Then his performance turns on the reality of the situation and Bobb who never overplays or underplays, brings Milo into sharp focus. He fits into the part without exaggeration and when the word "smarmy" is tossed his way, we feel that there is something almost right about it, almost but not quite.
Andrew Wyke is delivered to us by Charles Shaughnessy, an actor who surprises as often as his character does. Whether serving meager drinks or spouting mighty paragraphs from his character's novels, Shaughnessy makes Wyke into a man who is smaller than the sum of his parts. It is as though he has contracted before our very eyes, taken the peripheral characteristics of the man and compressed them into the hard shell that Wyke presents to others. It is a fascinating technique taking a larger-than-life intellect and reducing it to something that challenges through minimal efforts. Every gesture has an effect; every word takes its toll. Shaughnessy's Wyke is twice the man for being wound tight, a spring ready to eject all normal reality. In the second act that control goes haywire for a while and the effect is mesmerizing.
Inspector Doppler is played to full effect by Sean McNulty. You will understand acting when you watch this man at work. The other two policemen have such brief roles that it doesn't really matter what I say at this point about their work.
Director Jesse Berger has altered some of the Britishisms into more readily understandable American terminology. I don't think it necessary to make such changes. The references fly by and somehow Wyke feels less himself to me. He should be a bit more aloof and such word play aids in that effort. That said, Berger has done a remarkable job of letting his actors take the space. There were two or three moments in the first act and one in the second act where I felt the director's presence rather than the actor's. In a show as well done as this one, we forgive such moments.
Thrillers usually have characters who present as common clay under the influence of bad weather. In "Sleuth" we have people caught in situations of their own making that must have inevitable ends that we hope won't arrive. Wonderful players have preceded Bobb and Shaughnessy: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Jude Law, to name only three. The two on stage in Pittsfield are the equal of those who preceded them and they are live and in person too. We may cringe at a film, but when the acts of revenge present themselves within arms reach they truly move us to respond.
Not a laugh riot, "Sleuth," but amusing in very basic ways. Do not try those ways at home.

"Sleuth" plays at Barrington Stage Company's Main Stage on Union Street in Pittsfield through Aug. 1. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-236-8888 or check out their Web site at barringtonstageco.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:00 PM | Permalink

"Veronica's Room" by Ira Levin. Directed by Allen E. Phelps. At the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

It is the various levels of reality that playwright and novelist Ira Levin dealt with in 1973 when he wrote "Veronica's Room," now playing at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y. Moment by moment, incident by incident, he strips away those levels until at the bottom of things we are left with the horror of the real reality of the tale he is spinning for us. Levin is a master storyteller and so, just as in his biggest hit novel "Rosemary's Baby," we slowly discover the truth that allows the lies, the reality that disguises itself in other realities.
There are no untruths in this play. However, like life itself, the veils of truths are not always what they seem to be, nor hide what they seem to cover. Director Allen E. Phelps has understood Levin's intent in this play and as he strips away character-characterizations we know that each bit of play-acting done by every participant in this one-night world of horrors is just as real as the one that preceded it.
If this sounds like dissembling, it is. This is a thriller, a horror tale, a mystery. I have no desire to give away one single thing, depriving you of finding out for yourselves what lies beneath. I am not that sort of spoiler. I will, instead, talk about the players and not their characters, the designers and not their designs.

Harry Vaughn plays The Young Man. He does so in three different styles of playing and by his final assault on reality we understand almost enough about him to feel the fear that anyone would feel on a first blind date. His good looks are his own. His base intentions are misleading, especially when he reveals the character flaw that should tell us all. Vaughn has the subtlety to make this work. What happens later is almost indescribable, but when you see me, talk to me about it and I will discuss openly what happens. When two people have seen the same thing, then it may be discussed.
Ashley Blasland is The Girl. She has a voice that I find difficult to listen to and that is the same reaction two other characters endure, so what is real here? Are we meeting Blasland or the character she plays so neatly. The Girl has two breakdowns in this play, or is it three? At least her final collapse into reality is done with spirit and feistiness and climaxes in the only way possible. Blasland has the subtlety to play the moments in this play and she handles her transitions from one state of mind to another with elan. Does she have a nude scene? Not really. Does it feel like she does? Just possibly. Am I crazy? Who knows!
The Man is played by John Philip Cromie who begins pleasantly albeit with a sinister undertone, then plays sinister with a sarcastic overtone, then plays romantic with a diffident air and plays sadistic with a compassionate balance. I loved his work in this play. Cromie never plays just one aspect of his character, but always two or more, working in opposition, at the same time. There are more colors in this man, as he acts this role, than in the large-size Crayola container. There is never a single dimension to his personal reality.
The Woman is a role taken by the estimable Kathleen Carey. I think it must be said, and this is not exactly a challenge but it might be taken that way, that Kathleen Carey has never met a role she has not conquered (including her wonderful comic/tragic turn in "Same Time Next Year"). I remember the wonderful Eileen Heckart in this part back in 1973 and Carey is her equal - not in style or character - in her depth of identification with a part. Here she takes on a role that allows her to play in so many styles that whether you see this play as a romance, a satire, a soap opera, a horror show, a laughter-free farce or a melodrama, there is no mystery in her work. There is only honesty and she lives through the part, top to bottom, with a reality that makes all other realities seem impossible. In "Veronica's Room" Carey is at her very best from the first moment (almost transparent) to the last (completely transluscent). Levin is wonderful in creating twists and turns you never expect and Carey matches him by playing them all brilliantly. I was especially fond of her work here at the top of the second act: harsh, cold, unwavering and yet sentimental in the oddest sense of that word. Someone should write a new play just for this actress; she deserves one.
Tim Baumgartner's set is perfect for this play as is Stephen Vieira's lighting. Kate R. Mincer has created three styles of clothing for these characters and each outfit is just right. Kudos to the director, again, for pulling off the dark and strange transitions presented by the playwright. He is lucky to have the right cast, but his work is standing on its own merits here. He knew exactly when to turn something into something else, to plant a real reality, as The Woman says in Act Two, even if it is a fiction on some level or other.
I would have to say that this is a play not to be missed. Levin went on a short while later to write "Deathtrap," but in this play he was showing us how well he can handle the technicalities of horror. Everyone needs to pay attention to what really happens in "Veronica's Room" - and no blind-dates, please.

"Veronica's Room" plays at the Theater Barn through July 26. The Barn is located at 645 Route 20 in New Lebanon, N.Y. For information and tickets, call the box office at 518-794-8989 or visit theaterbarn.com

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:56 PM | Permalink

"True West by Sam Shepard." Directed by Daniel Goldstein. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

"Here's an idea," said a Mickey Rooney-like character. "Let's put on a show with one set, four characters and no more than five costumes. How much could that cost?
"I know. We'll put on one of those Sam Shepard plays that fit the description above. Simple. There'll be some anger and some laughter and some camaraderie and some family stuff, too. How much could that cost?"
Well, folks, I don't how much it costs, but the destruction of the props and set in your typical Sam Shepard play can really run you down into the ground pretty quickly. In the new production of "True West" at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the costs must be skyrocketing in this down-and-dirty one-set, four-character, five-costume play.

Director Daniel Goldstein has let the Shepard script dictate the levels of mess and mania here. His choreography of the action (assisted here ably by Thomas Schall's fight choreography), set in a kitchen and breakfast room of a small suburban tract house about 40 miles east of Los Angeles in 1980, keeps people and props flying around the space. There is more destruction in this show than in many plays about the San Francisco earthquake. I don't know if that's your thing; it's not mine.
The set, by Neil Patel, puts this play into the odd context -- script-related -- of a small movie set in a huge sound stage situation in Hollywood. The connected rooms, complete with roof and ceiling units, revolves into place (getting a large hand from the theater's staff in the balcony; they also cheer the apprentice stage-crew at the curtain call much more soundly than they do the cast of the play) within a gigantic open space, with back brick wall, a flyspace revealed behind the missing proscenium arch, with more stage lights than are ever used, large klieg-style lights and strip lights which sometimes blind the audience as they attempt to give a semblance of real, lifelike light and the unreality of a missing kitchen door through which at least three of the actors move at times. There is too much reality in the contained space and only the vague hints of film studio interiors surrounding that space.
Lighting designer Ben Stanton needs to sit in row B through E, house right, to get a sense of how his lighting removes a major portion of his audience from even seeing the play as it reflects off the faces and bodies of ticket-buyers, let alone trying to grasp its deeper, darker meaning (too much light over there for "darker").
Clearly the metaphor of the set and lights reflects an aspect of the play, the writing of a film script. It seems to me that the bizarre reality of the play is destroyed by the visual attempt to put it into the context of the production.
Two brothers taunt one another in their mother's kitchen while she cruises the coast of Alaska. One is a drifter, one is a screenwriter. They fight over a story that the drifter sells to the other one's agent by using his bizarre sexual appeal to sway the third man. The screenwriter, house-sitting, neglects his responsibilities once he loses his own contract to his brother's and together the two of them destroy the home that Mom comes back to a few days earlier than expected.
Nate Corddry is Austin, the writer, the good son who gives up wife, family and self-respect to steal toasters and to try to live his wastrel brother's life. Corddry gives a wonderful performance even when the written words he spouts make no sense for him at all. His transition from good to gonif (Yiddish for scoundrel) is either induced by too much liquor or by an accident of Shepard's, for there is no logical, visible transition here and the fault is in the writing, not the acting or direction. Goldstein tries misdirection with a golf club and a pile of toast. It doesn't work -- and I'm sure they're both in the script as well.
As his brother Lee, Paul Sparks turns tables (literally), upsets apple carts (figuratively) and turns gold back into dross (actually). Anything he touches becomes garbage. Lee is a veritable whirlwind of damage come to call. He also has a drawl that seems not to belong in this family and that impedes lines, that keeps us from understanding about 25 percent of what he is saying. Still, the overall effect of his performance is overwhelming and exhausting.
Stephen Kunken plays Saul Kimmer, the agent who switches his loyalty from one brother (Austin) to the other (Lee). His 1980s homosexual is a bit too obvious and when Lee capitalizes on it Kunken takes the fatal step into period parody. He is helped by a suit that no self-respecting 1980s homosexual would have been caught dead wearing, so the reality of the other costumes designed by Linda Cho takes a big step backward. I wouldn't want to assume that author Shepard has it in for gays, but the way Saul and Lee carry on it would seem that a statement of some sort (disgust, perhaps) is clearly showing through in the writing here.
Finally, at the end of two scenes during which the environment of home becomes a decimated vision of the collapse of western civilization, Debra Jo Rupp, as Mom, appears. If ever an actor was destined to almost save a production, it is Rupp. As she has often done before, she brings onto the stage a presence that pleases and surprises, shocks and irritates, all at the same time. Dressed in simple shoes, glasses and a red coat, she is the image of the unhappy traveler wearily approaching the sanctity of place. Rupp's comedy timing is such a welcome relief here, even as she stands by watching one son criminally attack the other. Her exit comes too soon, and her entrance comes too late.
The play ends where it begins, with a visual sense of threat. The sense has increased incrementally, however, and for my part, I couldn't have cared less where these two brothers were headed next. I was just glad that they would be doing it, going there, whatever, without me having to watch one more moment of their tiresome game. The concept of a simple play has been exhausted calamitously, and Mickey Rooney is spinning in his well-earned grave.

"True West" plays at the Williamstown Theatre Festival's Main Stage in the '62 Center for Theater and Dance, 1000 Main Street, Williamstown, through July 26. For tickets and schedules, contact the box office at 413-597-3400 or go online at wtfestival.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:03 PM | Permalink

"Underneath the Lintel" by Glen Berger. Directed by Andrew Volkoff. At Barrington Stage Company.

Do you remember how your great-aunt used to ramble, telling one story, then another and never finishing the first one while she got you all entangled in the second one and just when you found you were really interested she changed the subject, referring to the unfinished first story, but actually moving on to another new one? Or maybe it was an uncle who told wonderful tales but when he got to the kicker, that final moment you'd been waiting for, he took a drink of wine and never spoke again? Or maybe he changed languages for the last paragraph -- broke into Yiddish or Polish or colloquial French?
Onstage at Barrington Stage Company's Stage 2 in Pittsfield, just such a relative is holding forth on the subject of A-period, a man who returned a library book after 113 years. She is a librarian, a maiden-lady who suffered through one great romance, or at least it seems great as she relates incidents from it without ever telling us much about what really happened, because that isn't the tale she's telling. Instead she is relating the details of a quest that took her around the world, cost her not just her job, but all of its related benefits and probably a whole lot of her sanity.

She has a suitcase with the evidences she has collected along the way. Her trained mind has turned from returned books to missing pieces of a global puzzle. She has become obsessed with discovering the truth about man, God, the world and the relationships among those three.
Obsession is really what this play is about. A guidebook borrowed from the Hoofddorp Library in 1873 is shoved through the overnight book slot and the librarian (she has no name) set out to fine the borrower who waited until 1986 to bring it back. An absurd concept, you think, but as time goes on and her obsession takes hold we hear the theory that the borrower, whose only name is A-period (a dot at the end of the A) may well be the legendary Wandering Jew. Obsession -- go!
This play has had a life, not unlike that of the librarian. It has had several productions, mostly with men playing the single part of the librarian. It ran more than a year in New York. I don't know how it would be to hear a man do this role now that I've seen Glynis Bell play her.
Opening night the play took just a hair under 90 minutes to draw to its awkward conclusion: the quest continues. Its portrayal of eventual madness seemed drawn on sketch paper, thin, translucent and even transparent at times. Her personal trials and tribulations at home became welcome respites from her quest-consciousness, even though they were simplistic and predictable: competition for a better job; the loss of her one romance; her learning to lie to her boss and its inevitable consequences.
Bell is wonderful in the role, even if she cannot sustain the Dutch accent with which she begins the play. She and Andrew Volkoff, the director, have given a dynamic life to the play, as she moves here and there, skitters, chills, shivers, brims, shines, undulates, shouts in triumph and cringes in pain. From her timid entrance in full light to her bizarrely flamboyant exit through the audience, Bell and Volkoff have kept her in almost constant motion.
The set, a messy auditorium platform, is wildly realistic yet cautiously impressionistic. Brian Prather brings it life with things we want to see used but they remain just things. Jeff Davis his lit this space in such a way that we never lose sight of the mess around the librarian as we discover the mess inside her. Every once in a while she seems to fade from view as he underlights a space she inhabits. And in those moments we see her more clearly for having to look just a bit harder at her, hoping she is still there within her body and her mind.
This isn't going to please a lot people. It will confuse more than it will illuminate as its peculiar story is related. But it isn't her story that we are meant to see, I believe. It is what happens to someone who obsesses at this level and breaks down in front of a roomful of strangers.
She actually bemoans the size of the audience, but if the space were larger and fully occupied she might be forced to hold herself together longer. The librarian is not smart enough to know that her sanity is in jeopardy and that her choices bring that loss ever closer. What she does know is amazing and what she may yet learn is all she has, now and forever. She is a picture of any of us who prefer the quest to a sandwich, so this is a cautionary tale. Take notes.

"Underneath the Lintel" plays at BSC's Stage 2, located at 36 Linden St. in Pittsfield, through July 26. For tickets and information, visit barringtonstageco.org or call the box office at 413-236-8888.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:15 PM | Permalink

"Candide," music by Leonard Bernstein, book adapted from Voltaire's novel by Hugh Wheeler, lyrics by Richard Wilbur, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and John LaTouche. Directed by Ralph Petillo. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

"Candide" is never the same twice. In its initial version, dating from 1956, it had a book by Lillian Hellman and some additional lyrics by Dorothy Parker. That version played only 73 performances on Broadway. In 1974, it came back without Hellman and Parker but with a new book by Hugh Wheeler and additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. This time it ran for 740 performances. In 1997, it made a third appearance on the main stem with pretty much the same book and lyrics as the second version, but with some additional songs and with some material cut from the first version now restored but to different characters. This one lasted 104 performances.
Even though version two ran for almost two years it was never considered a major hit. There are also at least two different "opera" editions including one created for the Scottish Opera and that version is now the most frequently seen. Now, at the Unicorn Theatre, the second stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, there is a version different from all the others, but clearly based on the second Broadway edition. Whether this is the actual version now licensed for production, or an extraction created by director Ralph Petillo, I do not know. What I do know is this: The show is pretty darn good.

I must admit that I have always liked "Candide," and I saw the original. I wasn't crazy about the Harold Prince show in the '70s and I think the opera gets pretentious. But I love the songs and the characters and all the zany, inane things that happen to them. I adore "Glitter and be Gay," Cunegonde's aria to her jewels and her lost honor. I thrill to the choral backup singing for "El Dorado," and the Bernstein bumpiness of changing rhythms and meters in "The Best of All Possible Worlds." In fact, there isn't a song in the multifarious scores that I don't like, including the Old Lady's "I am Easily Assimilated," performed wonderfully by Julia Broder, which I often find myself humming.
Here's the story, made easy. In Wesphalia, the illegitimate Candide loves aristocratic Cunegonde who finds out that she loves him too. They are separated by her parents and a war with Bulgaria. After wandering the world and floundering in the Atlantic, they are finally united in wedlock, although philosophically they are suddenly worlds apart. The End.
So it's the songs, you see, that make the show which is otherwise a simple, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses girl, boy loses girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, but does he really?
The Unicorn production has a cast of 21 young actors, the interns and apprentices, and that should sound a death knell to any complex musical but somehow, let's call it luck, the show is a joy to watch. The silliness and the solidness of the show's score and book are working wonderfully in this zesty presentation that only young people could survive eight times a week.
The orchestra has been supplanted by two pianos and, for a change, this actually works. I don't know why, unless there is just such a richness in the arrangements that I didn't miss the other musical sounds that so enrich the work ordinarily. Matthew Stern and Jae Han are to be especially commended for their work in this show at grand pianos that flank the set, a jungle jim of pipes, planks and boxes, a widely colorful assortment actually, with the musical instruments seemingly built into the maze. Erin Kiernan has designed this wonderful world of entertaining compartments.
Ben Rosenblatt has the odd role of Dr. Pangloss who, in this version of the show, remains Dr. Pangloss throughout (in the original Wheeler script he became Voltaire, his own twin brother and somebody else I've forgotten). His tall, lanky body and quirky voice are just right for this odd character who preaches not what he practices but uses his preached philosophy to create his own oversexed environment. Rosenblatt is a genuinely comic talent, a nice addition to this company in such a role.
Cunegonde is played by McCaela Donovan, a young woman whose dark looks and dismal demeanor would be funny in any role. I've never seen a better scowling diva than Donovan. She sings well, acts well and dances flirtatiously. In the finale I nearly burst out with guffaws as she faced her future flawlessly furtive. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the serving maid Paquette, played brightly by Becky Webber. Her bio indicates that she also plays the violin, a talent that would have been an additional joy with Bernstein's music. She has a lovely lyric voice and a sweetly comedic manner with the sensual material she is given in this show.
As Maximilian, the stunningly pretty prince, Kyle Shaeffer pulls off the nearly impossible task of making us like his character. He is often much more sympathetic than this character is meant to be and I liked that. Matthew Stern, the music director, doubles in this production as the governor of Colombia. He acts the role better than he sings it, and plays the piano better than he acts.
Candide himself is a role taken by a young singer/actor named Julian Whitley. He has, according to his bio, been forging a career in opera and that shows in the size and power of his voice. He would almost be better off if his voice was not so prominent in his performance. This is a small theater and doesn't require the kind of volume that he so easily projects. The young man is an excellent actor and an expert comedian, making the simplest of straight lines into hilarious statements with an innocence that is both delicious and upsetting. Singers trained for classical singing are not given the tools to take them through eight performances in a week and his character is the principal voice singing in no less than 15 of the 22 musical numbers, with seven of them either solos or duets. That's a lot of singing.
The concept of a parochial or private school examining the story of Candide in almost modern dress is the presentation style that director Petillo uses in this production and, again, it works to the advantage of the piece. Jessica Risser-Milne has created the costumes and all of them felt just right in a surprising mixture of styles and periods. In a way the look of this show is reminiscent of the original Godspell. Jaime Davidson has done fine lighting and Janie Bullard's sound work serves the show nicely.
You may not love Candide the way I do. There are things here I admire, like cutting the two sheep out of the show and trimming the book. There are things I miss like the orchestra and the song "Quiet." There are things I won't forget, though, and most of them are already mentioned. If I can fit it into my busy schedule I will make a return visit to this Candide, and that's the first time this season I've felt that way about anything I've seen.

"Candide" plays at the Unicorn Theater on Route 7 in Stockbridge through Aug. 15. For schedules and tickets, call the box office at 413-298-5536.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:43 PM | Permalink

"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," music and lyrics by William Finn, book by Rachel Sheinkin, conceived by Rebecca Feldman with additional material by Jay Reiss. Directed by Tim Fort. At Weston Playhouse.

Children are just as competitive as adults, and theater folk are even more competitive than either other group. In the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company's production of "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," all three are put in play simultaneously. This is the third time I've seen this show and Weston has a slight edge on the piece at the moment, simply because it allows that sense of "Me, Me" to downplay a little bit and allow other things to come to the forefront.
I have no problem with kids competing for a prize. I did it myself and I did it in several ways. I know the thrill of the win and the damage of the defeat. I know what it's like to seemingly disappoint a parent and I remember well the joy of knowing that I could have won if I had wanted to, but I made a decision to lose something someone else wanted for me. All of these experiences are part of this remarkable show.

It is remarkable for something else as well. More than any other show written and produced in the past decade, this musical may be what assures live theater a place in the future. It is inspiring young people to come to a play, the cheer the winners and losers, to participate in an unusual expression of their own feelings. It gives them more than a fanciful Hogwarts school gives them. More and more this show may bring us, not our new actors, but our new audiences.
On a wonderful, solid set designed by Howard C. Jones, the kids of Putnam County, winners all (or most), compete for regional championships in spelling. They range in age, size and type. One is home-schooled. One is super-Asian-American. One is a boy scout with lots of merit badges. One is a neglected and abused child. One is the offspring of two fathers and an overachiever.
As Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, the last on the list, Piper Goodeve lisps her way through the competition and the peripheral relationships she develops there while one of her fathers encourages her to cheat to win. Goodeve is the most touching Logainne I've seen so far. Her simple humanity (she is also the youngest child in the competition) is touching and her odd situation is beautifully shown in her body language and her facial expressions. Goodeve is a winner just for doing the part so naturally.
Randy Blair's William Barfee is much more subtle than any I've seen. He has a frightening gentleness that indicates a hidden volcano being held down inside him. It's a grand performance.
Tracy Michaelidis plays Olive, the girl without the entrance fee in a plain, straightforward manner that almost makes you want to cry. She is the misfit whose parents have basically deserted her and we feel her pain as she saves a seat for the father who won't show up and dreams of a mother who won't come home. Like her mom, Olive may never be at home again, but her decision to make a friend rather than make a killing is beautifully played.
Jason Yau was a subtle Chip, the kid who discovers puberty isn't something just to spell. His underplaying robs the audience of a laugh or two, but at the same time he also brings us the honesty and embarrassment of failure.
Logan Lipton's Leaf Coneybear was also less an exaggeration and more of a real oddball child. His declaration that he is smart, something he could never truly claim before was beautiful and his secondary father as one of Logainne's dads was a wonderful turn-around.
Ka-Ling Cheung played Marcy Park, too intelligent to be a child, too childish to be an adult, too sweet inside to be mean for long. Cheung milks every moment with a growing degree of facial and body language that leads her character, rather than just following the script, to a wonderfully illogical conclusion. It was a lovely performance.
The three adults were also more subtly played than in previous productions. Kudos to Susan Haefner, C. Mingo Long and Marcus Neville for their subtle and clever characterizations. The reality here in Weston is that there were no caricatures drawn; all of the people were real, just as real as Alison Spahn, one of the audience participants who outlasted all the others and withstood the ribbing about her polka-dot clothing. Her blush and her adorable reactions to things said or done were just as real as those of any of the actors playing children around her.
Brava!
Tim Fort has directed all this and kept the action real. Whether it is the odd reality of the set that helped the actors, or vice-versa, there was never a trace of pretentiousness or over-acting or under-acting. His pacing was a bit strange at times within a scene, and some of the musical numbers were much less pumped than I anticipated, but the end result was this feeling of actually being at a spelling bee where, for some inexplicable reason, people were singing instead of just spelling and I was having personal flashes of memories not my own. I really loved Fort's approach to this material.
Rachel Kurland has done a perfect job with costumes and the subtle lighting by Kendall Smith might have done a bit more to help the memory/fantasy sequences, but by and large it didn't matter. I knew what was going on. I hope the rest of the audience did too.
The show is unmiked, it seems, so some of the words got a bit lost when actors were upstage, but the unmiked concept is right for the show. It just becomes a matter of playing it and getting voice placement adjusted.
This is a wonderful production of this show, one that brings out elements worth examining, especially if you are a child, a parent or an actor -- or any combination of the aforementioned. I think that covers everyone.

"Spelling Bee" plays at the Weston Playhouse through July 25. The playhouse is located at 703 Main St., Weston, Vermont. For information on tickets, call the box office at 802-824-5288.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:37 PM | Permalink

"Beauty and the Beast," music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, book by Linda Woolverson. Directed by Doug Hodge. At the Mac-Haydn Theatre.

Everything Disney. Pretty Disney music with a slightly Gallic flair. Charming Disney costumes full of color and hard to wear. Aging Disney story telling; paging Disney! It's not jelling!
On stage at the Mac-Haydn Theatre is a very pretty production of the cartoon classic, officially known as "Disney's Beauty and the Beast." There must be something about the license agreement that insists that Disney's name in the Disney cartoon font must be used on the program. It's as though someone must be afraid that there's a person over the age of 2 who won't know this is a Disney product. Frankly, the logo is unnecessary. This show reeks of Disney.
That isn't actually a bad thing. I should make that very clear.

While there may be little of Disney that appeals to middle-aged adults, they are probably the only group not affected in some way by the fluff that Disney produces. There's a tug at the heartstrings, for sure. Sentimentality rears its pure blond head. There's the quirky humor evinced in character names and costume choices: Lumiere with his candle-shaped head; Mrs. Potts with her crooked arm-handle; Madame de la Grande Bouche's wardrobe with makeup mirror.
The songs are clever, tuneful, singable and danceable. The book uses language suitable for 4-year-olds and funny enough for their grandparents to still enjoy. Belle, the beauty, is a bookworm but gorgeous. Gaston, the bully, is built and blustery, full of himself and his muscles. The Beast is ugly, mean-spirited, with a gruff voice and a canned roar but underneath is shy and frightened and as ready for a bit of love and affection as any man-child would be at any age. All the ingredients are there for a successful show. Director Doug Hodge mixes these ingredients together nicely, adding a hint of reality here and there to make this fairy tale into something accessible.
The Mac-Haydn cast is really quite up to the peculiarities of such a property. In particular, Laura Hartle who plays Belle, the Beauty, manages to replicate the walk, look and dance techniques of the screen Belle, the cartoon. She is fascinating to watch and lovely to listen to when she sings. Luckly for the audience she sings quite often in this show. This dark-haired beauty from New York City takes instant command of the stage in Chatham, N.Y., and never gives it up for a second. Hers is not the facile performance of the very young and new but rather a refined, studied presentation that would make any professional proud.
Her equal in these techniques is Monica M. Wemitt as the teapot housekeeper, Mrs. Potts. With everything easily set in her vocal range, she is romantically suited to the role, intoning the title song beautifully and moving her audience most effectively. She is also charming with the boy, George Franklin, who plays her son, Chip.
Jeffrey Funaro is wonderful as Lumiere, the French butler turned candlestick. There is also Quinto Ott, who lends credibility to Cogsworth the English butler turned mantle clock. At the performance I attended, Karla Shook as the wardrobe could not be heard at all. I had no idea her voice was so small and contained before this. Her sister, Kelly Shook, does double duty in this show, playing Babette the very French Maid and choreographing the dances. She performs both functions admirably.
Jon Reinhold plays Gaston in such a way as to make him not only not likeable but to make him despicable. His sidekick Lefou is played with acrobatic smarts by Seth Eisler. Belle's father Maurice is handled by Charlie Robertson in a slightly unconvincing manner.
Ben Jacoby's Beast is nicely played. He must appear to be frightening and loveable at the same time and that isn't easy, especially with a masked costume that presents a monster appearance. Jacoby does well acting the altering levels of understanding and commitment. His singing is fine, especially in the first act closer "If I Can't Love Her."
Dale DiBernardo has done a wonderful job with the costumes. Each one, so close to the Disney originals, still has a unique appeal and they move wonderfully in the complex set changes and onstage dances and movement sequences. The set design, a joint venture between lighting designer Andrew Gmoser and Kevin Gleason, is clever and functional and impressive in the many moods created by the same arches.
Josh Zecher-Ross creates a nice sound from the synthesizer-based music box.
This is a good family outing show, but don't make the mistake one pair of parents did at the show I attended and bring an infant. The Beast is scary; the wolves are scary; the men are scary. And two and a half hours is a long time to listen to a baby screaming. This is one Disney tale aimed at the middle-aged kid, not the 5-and-under crowd. Tale as old as time! (Well, not really that old, but probably from the late middle ages.)

"Beauty and the Beast" plays at the Mac-Haydn Theatre, located on Route 203 north of Chatham, N.Y., through July 26. For tickets and information, contact the box office at 518-392-9292.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:58 PM | Permalink

"Knickerbocker" by Jonathan Marc Sherman. Directed by Nicholas Martin. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

What is a man to do? What is a man of 40 to do? That is the problem confronting Jerry when he and his wife finish their second sonogram and discover that their first-born will be a boy. "I'm not ready," he tells his wife over dinner in their favorite booth in their favorite New York City restaurant. Pauline is encouraging. She wants him to know that she thinks he is ready. He's not certain.
Nine scenes later, still investigating the repercussions of impregnating the woman he loves and has married, he leaves the booth in order to escort this mother-to-be to the hospital for the birth of their son. In between, during the 90 minute excursion across his own uncharted waters, Jerry learns the awful truth about fatherhood: you are never ready. Amusement at his own situation has turned to dread. Dread to despair and despair to hope. Jerry has no more self-confidence in this process to come, fatherhood, parenthood, than he had at the beginning, but he knows that this is the only reasonable way to take on this responsibility.
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is giving audiences this gift from playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman this summer. Through Jerry's journey, a round trip to nowhere, we can experience the universal fears and loves, hopes, and unspoken angers, and fears again as the tiny thing takes on its own reality, assisted by the constant fatherly voice emerging from Jerry and the man's personal strengths. Artistic Director Nicholas Martin has taken on this problem play and helped it to soar to unexpected heights as actor Reg Rogers pursues the goals for Jerry.

Rogers is a handsome man whose face and hair will seem familiar. He has a flair for exaggerating a gesture and then bringing it back home again having made a valid point that never seemed valid before. There is, in his off-hand performance style, a humanity that pokes out of any holes that might surface in the script, blocking the leak and forming a bond that keeps the audience as alive and aware as the cast is in their characters. Although a real play with characters interacting, the evening at the Nikos theater feels almost like a long, long monologue. Normally, I really don't like monologue shows and this one actually isn't one, it just feels like it somehow. Probably because Jerry never leaves the stage, never leaves his place at the Knickerbocker, never leaves himself for very long.
Rogers works beautifully, and without affectation or influence, with every other member of the company. His wife Pauline, played by Susan Pourfar, has three major scenes along with him at the Knickerbocker. Pourfar's pregnant wife grows steadily in self-confidence as the play takes its time leaps forward. Her physical changes help to keep in perspective the narrative conscientiousness of the play. Pourfar is delightful and pleasant and encouraging in this role and it is her downplayed performance that keeps a few of the other scenes from seeming unreal, or imaginary.
His former mistress, Tara, is played to a seductive "t" by Annie Parisse. As they reminisce and question their past relationship, judging each other by their current ongoing relationships with Pauline, Parisse works her way through a steady stream of attitudes including flirtation, verbal sexual by-play and honest friendship. She handles each one of these, and the sharp changes between them, with honesty.
Two men share time with Jerry at the restaurant: Chester, played by Peter Dinklage, and Melvin, played by Brooks Ashmanskas. Dinklage is ruthless in his characterization of a man almost too desperate to have Jerry admit that he is his best friend. Relentlessly pursuing this relationship, Chester over asserts his position. Dinklage is so good in this role that he is almost a bit scary to watch and listen to. His "scary," however, leaves Jerry more confident in his own choices and more sure of his belief that though not ready for fatherhood, he might be in the right place and the right time. On the other hand, Melvin is a sharer. Every experience he has had he will share.
Ashmanskas plays this sort of character well, as he proved last season at this theater as George in "She Loves Me." This time around, however, he has to protect that self-confidence with a different set of manners. Melvin's actual relationship with Jerry seemed clear to me at the outset of his scene, but I lost the focus somehow and came away wondering how they knew each other. The two men could be brothers, but when I lost the thread, I lost it permanently and came away unclear on this point.
Jerry's father Raymond is played with absolute correctness by Bob Dishy. He is funny, touching and a bit frightening as well, as he and his son discuss Jerry's mother, Jerry's birth and his childhood. Dishy occasionally reacts to a question or a thought with an almost non-sequitur that catches us unawares. The rapidity with which he recovers his position in this relationship is quirky and just right.
Rightor Doyle has a small moment as the waiter.
It is the set designed by Alexander Dodge that makes this play work so very well. A semi-circle of overstuffed leather surrounding a single pedestal half-round table that contains the characters as they talk and talk and talk is the playing area for almost every scene. It sounds stagnant, but director Martin moves his characters constantly within this space and like Alfred Hitchcock in "Lifeboat" keeps our attention trained on the relationships without tricks or optical illusions. We are his camera and he easily points us in whatever direction he wishes us to view from at any given moment.
The design team includes Gabriel Berry, whose costumes are right for the characters and Philip Rosenberg whose lighting is fine.
This is an intriguing play that sets us up for the oddness of its situation from the first instant when Jerry produces the wrong sonogram and the discussion of baby names becomes a contest between Tobias and Tobias. Along the way -- in a monologue -- we learn about a man whose peculiar history, being struck by lightning seven times, affects the way our protagonist lives his life. While the parallels aren't immediately evident, the follow-up thought process, post-show, begins to show an astute observer/listener just what the playwright had in mind.
Just as in childbirth there is an "ah-hah!" moment in the epiphany of the hesitant father.

"Knickerbocker" plays at the Nikos Stage of the Williamstown Theatre Festival through July 19. Information and tickets can be obtained through the box office at 413-597-3400 or on line at wtfestival.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:36 PM | Permalink

"Merton of the Movies" by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. Directed by Jonathan Silverstein. At Dorset Theatre Festival.

Merton Gill, native of Simbury, Ill., is everyman, is us, is the American dreamer. Clerking in a drygoods store, all he wants out of life is to meet his favorite movie star, and maybe even become a movie star himself. Created in 1921 by playwrights Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman, Merton Gill succeeds where others fail, where we might fail, due to the intervention of true love and a few clever turns in the plot.
The play "Merton of the Movies," produced in 1922, made a Broadway star out of Glenn Hunter who went on to star in the silent movie version in 1924. The show was filmed two more times, in 1932 with Stu Erwin and in 1945 with Red Skelton. The writing of this character, and of the play in general, is so good and so true to that American dream referred to above, that all three film versions were wonderfully accepted. People turn to "All About Eve' for a film about the entertainment industry that takes a swing at how things work, but "Merton of the Movies" did it first and did it brilliantly.
On stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vt., Merton has taken the stage again and taken it beautifully.

Directed with stylish grace and power by Jonathan Silverstein and played with a period accuracy that shouts "1922" by a wonderful cast, this show is the best yet in the company's series of plays by Kaufman. In fact, this show is as good as their version of "Theophilus North" two summers ago, and that was just short of brilliant.
At the center of what is so right about this performance is Merton Gill himself, played by Mark Emerson. Emerson has a wonderful sense of physical expression and physical comedy. Not one gesture is misplaced or wrong for the character. His face and voice are wonderfully in line with the youthful enthusiasm that Merton feels for his future in Hollywood. Falling apart or taking charge of his destiny, Emerson manages to bring reality to a new level of delicious. This is a performance not to be missed, not if you like true acting, acting that doesn't betray itself by feeling like acting. On stage, Emerson is Merton and Merton is alive, kicking and protesting his dramatic possibilities. This is wonderful theater.
As the Montague Girl, a Hollywood wannabe who does it all -- extra work, doubling, writing, and saving the hide of a novice like Merton -- there is Crystal Finn. She is quirky and delightful, the perfect match for Emerson's Merton. Finn could probably do a triple take (she doesn't get one here) if she had to and make each bit of it a scream.
Curran Connor makes movie comic Jeff Baird quite loveable and Kirk Jackson does well in both his roles, the storekeeper from Illinois and the stage actor turned film waiting-room drunk (a Kaufman staple, a character who makes it to Hollywood again in GSK's first collaboration with Moss Hart, "Once in a Lifetime"). Mark Alhadeff is an excellent film director, Sigmund Rosenblatt -- a combination of Victor Fleming and Eric Von Stroheim. As the film star Merton adores, Beulah Baxter, there is the stunning Gardner Reed.
Nearly stealing the show away from the leads is actress Ann McDonough as Merton's landlady Mrs. Patterson. Silverstein has given her some of the funniest business and she carries it off with aplomb, making her repetitive gestures funnier each time she performs them. In fact, the entire company of 13 acts to a tee the 19 roles they've been given in this slightly reduced cast list (the original play had 32 characters). Running just over two hours and fifteen minutes with a single intermission, the play, particularly the second act, zips by as laughter, charm and pathos, yes pathos, fills the audience's brains and hearts while Merton plays out his story of love and desire.
The set for this show is absolutely ridiculous, and absolutely perfect. Four of its five sets utilize the same backdrop and once you know what it is, it fades into negative space, letting the action play out where it should and the movement of other actors and stagehands become part of the panoply of life in Hollywood. Bill Clarke has imaginatively put this all together.
The period costumes designed by Theresa Squire wear wonderfully on these actors and Josh Bradford's lighting does exactly what it should do in giving us highlights and low lights as well.
All in all, this is a wonderful way to spend a summer evening, or afternoon, especially if it's cold and wet. Or, come to think of it, hot and steamy.

"Merton of the Movies" plays at the Dorset Playhouse through July 18. The theater is located at 104 Cheney Road in Dorset, Vt. For full schedules, prices and to purchase tickets, contact the box office at 802-867-5777.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 11:07 PM | Permalink

"The Einstein Project" by Paul D'Andrea and Jon Klein. Directed by Eric Hill. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Good old Albert Einstein. The guy with the crazy hair who said quirky things, including "E=MC-squared." He also said, and this is my favorite because it's true, "I do not know how the third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the fourth -- rocks!" I love that. Good old quirky Al Einstein.
Well, the Berkshire Theatre Festival is doing its best to convince me that I may have had Einstein all wrong all these years. Its new play, "The Einstein Project," tells the gregarious tale of Einstein as one of Germany's leading physicists and theoretical mathematicians who rebels against the changing political climate and emigrates to the United States, leaving his family behind apparently, to become one of the world's leading quirky celebrities, celebrated constantly by Pathe Newsreels and screwy, oddball behavior. 

This Albert E runs around the country ignoring the principals he set into play back home in Deutschland. His old pals mourn his loss but move ahead utilizing his scientific data and his theories to develop the atomic bomb so that Hitler and his gang can move across the sea and reclaim quirky Al as one of their own.
We meet Al in a boat with his son, Eduard (spellers take note) who is being grilled on prime numbers and sailing through storms. A lot later, Eddie is put into an asylum and roundly ignored by his father and we learn, somehow ,that he is dead. (Actually, diagnosed with severe schizophrenia, Eduard Einstein lived to the ripe old age of 55, dying in 1965, some 10 years after his father.)
What we ultimately learn about Einstein in this play is that he lived an intellectual life, somewhat devoid of emotions or personal involvements, without caring much about humanity but living "in his head" rather than in his heart. It is something of a shock to learn that this man, who defied two governments, school officials over his education, married more than once and reportedly loved more times than that, fathered three children and sacrificed one career for another in order to preserve his moral sensibilities, lived "in his head" as an intellectual rather than as a man.
Of course, I never met him, so I don't know for sure. Knowing what I know, though, makes me question the basic principles of this play.
One thing that intrigued me though was the news that Einstein solved many of the problems being worked on by "The Manhattan Project" without ever knowing he was involved in the creation of the American atomic bomb and that he was denied any and all access to his old cohorts who were brought to the United States from Europe by the American Armed Forces. That intrigued me.
Eric Hill's production of this new play, developed following a workshop production at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in 2000, follows many of the principles of Tadashi Suzuki, using movement and control to highlight emotion and content. While interesting to watch, it normally leaves me cold. In this production, however, it adds a certain sense of humanity and context to dry, scientific dialogue that often sounds like a group of textbooks arguing with the covers only partially opened. Hill's use of an ensemble to create the worlds in which Einstein and his friends congregate is very effective, and what the play lacks in emotional content is often overridden by the beauty or grotesqueness of the greater humanity dealing with its day-to-day struggle to survive. Hill's other great decision for this production is no foreign accents. Ever. Perfection!
Tommy Schrider is a wonderful Einstein. He has a look that seems right and his earnest delivery, his utter belief in a deep sense of humanity makes his Einstein a multi-level character. Even when confronted with his close friends' characterization of his separation from the real world of people, Schrider's Albert strives to make right their seeming misunderstanding of him. In the end, Schrider's body tells us, he is aware of just how right they all were.
James Barry is his good friend and greatest antagonist, Werner Heisenberg. Barry does young and Barry does world-weary and Barry does disgusted with the human race equally well. His scenes with Schrider are brittle and fascinating. He adds electricity to the work, a substance it greatly needs some of the time.
Brandy Caldwell and David Chandler make a superb couple of fellow scientists -- Clara Immerwahr and Fritz Haber, whose relationship provides a glimpse of the possibilities our character of Einstein is immune to for the most part. Walter Hudson is remarkable as physicist Otto Hahn, a character who would have been played by Felix Bressart in the movies five decades ago. C.J. Wilson is mesmerizing as Walter Gerlach.
As the Eighth Man, a multi-character role there is Jesse Hinson who carries off his short but important parts with a sense of illumination. Eduard (Edward in the program) is very well-played by Miranda Hope Shea; watching a play about the theory of relativity definer (it reconciles mechanics with electromagnetism) I had to wonder how it would be if a boy played Shirley Temple. Would there be a ruckus and a row? Or would relativity rear its confusing head?
Joseph Varga has provided a wide-open factory/airplane hangar set with a door that provides a visual and auditory "grand guignol" effect far too frequently. Charles Schoonmaker has provided a single costume for each major player and an array of special effects looks for the ensemble. Matthew E. Adelson provides what lights there are in this moody, often very dark, production, including some glorious special effects with photographs attached to wood blocks. J Hagenbuckle's music and sounds overwhelm at times but are oddly right for this play and production.
There is nothing so strange as a play that gets you going, then leaves you flat. I'm not certain what I was supposed to learn, to come away with, here in this new play. There is something about morals that permeates the work. There is something about God, too, but it's never really made clear. Then again, at the last minute, the authors decide to preach a short sermon, a gesture reminiscent of early Kander and Ebb musicals. Does anyone but me remember "You Are You (you are not Myrna Loy, Myrna Loy is Myrna Loy, You are You!" from "Flora, the Red Menace?" I think that ending needs to be cut here and something substantial by way of a definitive statement by quirky Al Einstein be substituted. How about that line I quoted in paragraph one? That says something and it has a moral that doesn't sound like preaching.
Einstein always did say something. And he didn't like socks.


"The Einstein Project" plays on the Main Sstage of the Berkshire Theatre Festival through July 18. The theater is located on Route 7 just north of Main Street in Stockbridge. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-298-5576.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:19 PM | Permalink

"Children" by A.R. Gurney. Directed by John Tillinger. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

I admire the work of A.R. Gurney. I don't feel much as I listen to his well-heeled characters say what's minimally in their minor hearts, but I admire the major craft and talent it takes to get them so perfectly down on paper and to give them life on a stage. The playwright's notes in the program of the Williamstown Theatre Festival's production of his early play "Children" reveals what may well be an apocryphal tale. Even so, it is telling. A New York producer considering a production of this play suggested that Gurney should pay "for earphones and simultaneous translations for New York's Jewish audiences." In a way, that's the problem.
Translation of the language is not necessary. Gurney uses the English language, as it is spoken in the Northeast, beautifully. He gets the cultural class distinctions just right. Where translation is needed is not in the spoken language. It is in the thought processes that produce the spoken words.

In this play there are four people speaking almost constantly while offstage another three living adults (Pokie, Miriam and Artie) are spoken of, and something like 10 children are referred to, and a baby-sitter makes an unseen, unheard appearance and so does a dead man, the father of the adult children on stage.
This long-dead (about five years) pater is part of the problem. He is both missed and not missed by everyone on stage and their constant references to him tell us very little about him or his relationship to any of them. We don't know much about how the three visible children felt about him; we learn that his wife liked him enough to allow him to father three children.
We don't ever learn the truth, the whole truth, about "Mother's" real love life or her faked love life, if love life is even the proper term for her behavior with her husband and with her "true love." We don't see the boyfriend of the daughter, Barbara. We only know that mom suspects that after 15 years or so in this affair, he can't be trusted, that his motives are suspect. We never quite understand why her son and daughter-in-law seem to barely tolerate each other except when he makes love to her and then we can only guess her reaction because we never really get to see it. And the prodigal son who never really appears -- he's always somewhere else in the summer beach cottage where they all meet for a fourth of July celebration -- seems to be motivating the others but we don't really know why; we have to guess and our guesses are probably correct. Yes. They are.
So much that we should be seeing happens off-stage in this play. So much of what we should know seems to be kept in secret places, never spoken of, never revealed.
It is this odd remove that Gurney gives to his characters that makes them difficult for us, not the language. I am told that WASPs are like this. I know many and I've seen one or two actually exhibit emotions. These people pretend to exhibit them. They throw things. They pout. They are only playing the games of emotions, but they are not relating to anyone.
Katie Finneran is Barbara, a recent divorcee who wants to live in the summer house her family has owned for more than 80 years. The actress has got this woman down perfectly. She has no guilt, no shame, no pity. She has needs, but she cannot share them with anyone, not even the boyfriend who is Catholic. Finneran knows how to hold her head, how to cock an eyebrow, how to gesture with three fingers. She does it all very well, but like the others, she never lets us approach and find out who Barbara really is.
Mary Bacon plays Jane, Barbara's sister-in-law. Her character lets us come the closest here, and Bacon plays the ingrained charm her character possesses for all it's worth. She is pert, petite and pretty enough to catch our eyes and ears, but again Gurney shoves us away, even when Jane is confessing her feelings, something the others rarely do.
In fact, Mother, played brilliantly by Judith Light, talks about feelings often, her own, naturally, and no one else's. She does concede that her children do have feelings, but she has never discovered what they are or whether they are of any importance. Mother is the sort of person who makes the women played, late in her career, by Bette Davis seem like the essence of warmth and mother-love. "What fun!" she announces as she tells Barbara and her brother Randy, that their sibling, Pokie, is paying a late, unannounced visit. You can almost hear Davis puffing on a cigarette pronouncing those two syllables with restraint and clipped pronunciation.
Light is marvelous in this role. Her rants and ravings in the last scene are just marvels of restraint and muted ... something -- anger? Lust? Amusement? Disappointment? It is hard to know exactly where any of her speeches are coming from (other than Boston by her accent). Her character abuses her son Randy while admonishing him to serve her needs. Light plays the opposites in this woman with an uncomfortable familiarity. She is giving a shatteringly correct performance, but of course, that is what WASPs do. Isn't it?
The son, Randy, is played very nicely by James Waterston, although at times he comes very close to expressing an emotion other than anger or lust. He almost overrode the dialogue with honest passion. He nearly quashed the impulse to take on a life that interfaced with others. He is the dangerous actor in the company, his own enthusiasm showing a bit too much to suit the playwright, I am sure.
James Noone's summerhouse back yard was realistic and lovely, a jewel box of a setting for the semi-animated goings-on of this family. Jane Greenwood's costumes are almost too no-time to define the 1970s, attractive but non-specific. Rui Rita lights the one-day procession of the play's time-line interestingly. This is a 90-minute one act play, by the way, so discreetly prepare, in the manner of a true WASP, and no complaining.
John Tillinger has a knack for keeping these sorts of plays interesting to watch. This time around he keeps us focused nicely as his people vie for the upperclass hands of suitors no one can name. Bill, Artie, Dad, it's all one and the same, and Tillinger lets us dream a bit of all of these men who keep being mentioned, talked about and thought of. When he shows us an image of Pokie, it is almost too much to bear.
If this family was only waiting for Godot, we'd at least know they had a goal. In "Children," the only thing that really happens is that Mother lets the playday end with things much as they were they were at the start. She still owns her house. She is still unmarried. She is still not on speaking terms with her child. Her rationale for these things may be different, but the effect is the same. The only real difference is her dress: appropriately black and white for those are the range of colors in the emotional lives of these people.
With a 35-year-old play, you have to give its people what they require. Tillinger and company have done that admirably. WASPs may adore it; I don't know if they do that, really. I found it fascinating but just a bit too arms-distance for my taste; even if the wittiness is accessible, the humanity is not.

"Children" plays at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through July 12. The theater is located within the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College on Route 2 in Williamstown. For schedules, prices and ticket information call 413-597-3400 or visit wtfestival.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:33 AM | Permalink

"Leading Ladies" by Ken Ludwig. Directed by Tony Capone. At the Theatre Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

Ordinarily I am a sucker for a farce. When I see seven doors, or five doors for that matter, on a set I know I'm in for a good time. Ken Ludwig's latest comedy has a set, on the Theatre Barn stage, with six doors and an alcove with a screen -- the magic number seven. I've enjoyed his two previous outings, "Lend Me a Tenor," and "Moon Over Buffalo," so I was prepared to enjoy this one, "Leading Ladies." I did, ultimately, but first there was the first act.

Unlike Ludwig's two other excursions into the madness of farcical behavior, this time the setup takes far too long, nearly an hour. The premise is this: Two young English actors doing a sort of digest of Shakespeare lose their bookings and discover that two other young Britishers have come into a lot of money. They decide to impersonate the missing heirs, collect the millions and get the hell out of Dodge. Before they can do so, though, the slight-framed one, Jack, falls in lust with a waitress on roller skates. Leo, the broad-shouldered one, falls in love with the third heir, a young woman engaged to the stuffiest minister ever to preach a sermon in York, Pa., where the play is set.
In addition to this, the aged aunt whose death has sparked the waiting legacy turns out to be alive, and when she meets her two nephews she revives to a state of amazing good health. The big catch is that Aunt Florence's three heirs are all really heiresses, so the two men have disguised themselves as women. Hence the title. Are you with me so far?
Florence's doctor has a son who is engaged to the roller-skating waitress who has fallen for Jack, now playing a deaf-mute woman. Both men have to share a bedroom with the third girl, Meg. The minister is suspicious of the British gals (or guys) and Leo decides to re-create himself as Leo to impress Meg, who already has a yen for him -- she admires his syntax. And that's Act One.
It gets tedious, I'm afraid.
However, Act Two is much better as a month goes by and the wedding plans of Meg and the Minister progress. Leo agrees to stage a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and the real heiresses cable their imminent arrival. Let the farce begin, and once it does -- with quick costume changes, hilarious lines and funny situations, with all seven entryways in full motion -- the play is very funny and very worth your time if you like farce. Which I do.
Joshua Forcum is Leo and his female counterpoint Maxine. Not quite the romantic figure full of masculine strength and charm, he cuts quite a dash as Maxine, especially in her purple party dress. He does well in both parts, really, but the fun would have been more fulsome with a buff guy in the role. Forcum has a delicate charm and a pale wit, but he uses them graciously and is ingratiating.
Adam R. Deremer plays Jack and Stephanie. His long, angular jaw makes him a dead-on counterpart of Edna May Oliver, a fabulous character actress from the 1930s. He plays his part and his role with dash and splash and fun. Together the two men are charmingly original as their respective female functionaries.
John Trainor plays the hapless doctor who is accidentally tricked into believing that "Stephanie" is in love with him and will also inherit all the money. His wooing scene is actually very funny, especially as Capone has staged it with the two of them using the entire set for their accidental rendezvous.
Joan Coombs as the dying aunt makes the most of all her moments on stage. She is perfectly cast. Likewise, Chris Ide as Butch, the doctor's son, couldn't have been better. Jonathan Sundham as Duncan, the minister who is planning to marry Meg, needs more seasoning before he can time the laughs and moves in a farce. He is part of the tedium in the opening scene, the other part being the poorly written scene by Ludwig.
Amanda McCallum plays Meg for all she is worth. She is silly, sweet, entrancing, endearing when she declares her love for Maxine -- yes, she does. Everyone basically gets a bit confused about their feelings in this play, and Meg has the moment that tugs at your heart here.
The outrageous performance by Sheira Feuerstein as the roller skating Audrey is made even more so by her performance as Sebastian in the two-minute Twelfth Night. Feuerstein actually steals the show away from everyone else for a while as she struts and Brandos herself in this very crazy part. I don't believe in "actor-proof" writing, so it is to this actress's credit that Audrey is the wonderful creation that she is in this production.
Capone and his team have done everything they can do to make this a perfect evening. The one thing they cannot do is improve the writing in the play. The last thing you would expect is to have someone quoting famous lines from "Some Like It Hot," with its two leading men in drag, but a few of those lines come popping through. Capone has let the lines take their toll, even punching one of them with an over-the-top gesture.
Abe Phelps, who is an old hat at designing farce rooms, has delivered a fine one this time and Kate R. Mincer has provided some of the silliest costumes imaginable, and also some marvelous ones. You won't believe Meg's final dress. She makes Stephanie and Maxine into stylish, modish models. Stephen Vieira's lighting is fine.
"Leading Ladies" won't open doors into worlds you wish you knew. It won't provide you with a long-term memory of grand theater. But if you let yourself wade through the first half you will be rewarded with a guffaw or three in Act Two. I think it's worth the wait.

"Leading Ladies" plays at the Theatre Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y., through July 12. Located at 654 Route 20, New Lebanon, tickets can be purchased by calling the box office at 518-794-8989 or online at theatrebarn.com.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:23 AM | Permalink