Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

"Lies & Legends: The Musical Stories of Harry Chapin," words and music by Harry Chapin. Original concept by Joe Stern. Directed by Joe Antoun. At the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

Harry Chapin wrote songs that rivaled the French chansons of Jacques Brel in a very American idiom. Popular at about the same time and fighting the shadow of Bob Dylan's raspy reality, the international impact of smoky-voiced Charles Aznevour and the creepy wholesomeness of a very young John Denver, Chapin never achieved the highest level of success enjoyed by his most immediate rivals. Nevertheless, a loyal following and some remarkable songs kept his career alive and viable.
"Cat's in the Cradle" was his only number one hit song and that happened in 1974. While not his only hit and not necessarily his most enduring song, it is a highlight of the second act of the show "Lies & Legends" now playing at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y. Five singer/actors bring to life the songs and stories of Chapin in this non-stop, relentless revue. Accompanied by piano, bass and drums (Logan Culwell, Walter Bauer, Ian Tucksmith), a perfect trio for this show, Trey Compton, Lara Hayhurst, Jerielle Morwitz, Allen E. Phelps and Christopher Timson do their best to enliven these story-based songs. Some do much better than others this time around.

Morwitz is a wonderful performer. She really seems incapable of doing something wrong. Her rendition of "Dogtown" is a memorable event. Her ensemble work, her duets and her musical scene work are all essential ingredients to the success of this show. Her only rival, or equal, in the presentation of these pieces is Phelps. Phelps is, more often, the lighting designer at this theater, but his musical appearances are often highlights and this is certainly no exception. In two songs, the above mentioned "Cradle" and another major Chapin hit which comes near the start of Act Two, "W*O*L*D" (#36 on the 1974 charts) are showstoppers.
Next best, if there can be such a thing, is soprano Lara Hayhurst, who wins the night with her performance of "Dreams Go By" -- a beautiful experience indeed, especially duetting with Phelps. She also has one of the best moments in Act One, "Winter Song."
The other two men, while nice to look at, aren't much to hear. Timson, when he sings out, sings decently. I think it's a nice voice, but he seems to have trained for a body microphone, for even in aisle F -- the fifth row, folks -- he was hard to hear most of the time. Even worse was Compton, whose singing voice may not have made it past the first row in this eight-row theater. Even his monologue in the second act was almost impossible to hear. Both of these men have a lot do in Act One, which made that first hour a boring experience.
The set for this show is a mixture of elegant and folksy, showy and practical. It was designed by Tim Baumgartner. The simple and under-altered costumes were created, or approved, by Michelle Bohn while Tracey Richardson pulled together some intriguing lighting for this show.
Joe Antoun, arranged his quintet around the stage in ways that began to seem similar to images we'd had before and ultimately became a bit boring. I am sorry to note that he didn't force his performers to perform and so lost his audience's interest in some complex material that should have demanded more attention.
An uneven production creates an uneven reaction. What's good here is very good and what's not may not be able to endure improvements. Still, it's always fun to be reminded of old favorite songs that have long since faded away.

"Lies & Legends" plays through Aug. 8 at the Theater Barn on Route 20 in New Lebanon, N.Y. For information and tickets, call the box office at 518-794-8989.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 1:02 PM | Permalink

"After the Revolution" by Amy Herzog. Directed by Carolyn Cantor. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

In a perfect world in a perfect play, each character would perfectly express his/her thoughts, feelings, emotional needs, political beliefs, morals and mores, and we would leave the theater in a perfect state, perfectly understanding the meaning of the piece and able to perfectly discuss the play in all its aspects. "After the Revolution" comes so close to being that play, but for me at least it leaves us with a hanging chad, an unfinished vote, a stopping point and not an ending.
Up to that point, though, Herzog held me to that impossible standard of perfection.

Here is a very talented writer dealing with a tough subject. Emma's grandfather, whom she has idealized with a foundation that supports nearly hopeless causes, turns out to have been a spy for the Russians in the 1940s. Crushed by the news, and the additional news that she is the last to know about this, she crashes emotionally and morally and has to find her way back into the relationships that have created her and held her in thrall for most of her life. In the version of the play now on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, she almost makes her way there, but we're not sure if she has, or if she ever will. It does leave you with lots to talk about, lots to think about, but one of those "think" things is "what happened to....?" and you can fill in the blanks.
The good folks in Williamstown have assembled an extraordinary company to present this play, which was developed in workshop at the festival in 2009. Katharine Powell plays Emma, the girl with the mind that won't shut down -- ever. Playing a thinker is something akin to stepping in a bear trap out in the woods: you are held fast in one spot; it hurts; you yell until you're blue in the face; perhaps someone comes to help you and perhaps not. Thinking on stage is one of the most difficult dramatic concepts and Powell has mastered the look and feel of it. For all we know, she is conceiving her supper for after the show, but her face and body, the tone of her voice would have you believe she is thinking about the issues in the play, about the parent-child relationship that keeps the play alive, about her own grandmother and the one played by Lois Smith who might not like each other if they ever met. Her performance is at the center of the play and she holds center stage even in the scenes for which she is off-stage.
Her father, the villain if there needs to be one and I am not sure there needs to be one, is played by Peter Friedman. If ever an actor found the key to confusion it is Peter Friedman. He gives us a man who knows what he wants but not how to find it. He shows us the inner workings of a second-generation American anarchist, one who plays it safe rather than explosive. He does this all with a simplicity and honesty that is revelatory.
Mark Blum plays his brother, a source of constant energy and solace. Blum is the complete package in this play, losing himself entirely in the character he portrays. As Emma's confidante he could not be better. As his own brother's conscience he is a human-sized Jiminy Cricket, cute and cuddly and available for chats. Their mother is played by Lois Smith, and her deafness comes across as a tool for reconsideration. She seems to play the "can't hear you" card at all the right moments for the other folks on stage as they speak truths, or half-truths. A gem of a character is played by a valuable stage asset, a diamond in the rough.
One of the oddest, most real people in the play is a woman named Mel, the stepmother, or "beautiful mother" of Emma, played here by Mare Winningham. Whether she is discovered talking over her husband's monologue, or telling a personal story of shame and pride, she adds a unique tone to this troubled family picture. David Margulies as the old family friend with the money the Fund needs to survive (they are working on an appeal for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, still in prison and on death row) their way out of 1999 and into the twenty-first century is terrific. He barks at waiters, but coos to Emma. He is gentle, yet authoritative. Margulies does well by this man.
Elliot Vinar plays Miguel, Emma's associate, or assistant depending on how he behaves, and also her lover. He is good in this role, playing neatly off of her strengths and weaknesses to create his own parallel sensibilities. It is his pushing off from their personal relationship that the play begins to feel like a play rather that as a slice-of-life experience. Emma's sister is played by Meredith Holzman who brings a naturalistic attitude to the work helping to push it over from theater to "fly-on-walls" experience.
It's a terrific, not to say genius, company.
The era, a decade gone now, is brought to vivid life by Clint Ramos's set and Kaye Voyce's costumes. Cantor has directed the product into a vivid reality on this intimately proportioned stage. She even provides us reasons to doubt reality when two homes are overlapped into a single set and two scenes are visible at the same time in the same space. It is believable and it works.
One of the finest new plays on our regional stages this season in a run that is all too short, this is one to catch. Even without an ending -- as far as I'm concerned, but you may not feel that way -- it is a play that sparks conversation, forces thought and challenges convictions.

"After the Revolution" plays through Aug. 1 on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, located in the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance at 1000 Main St., Williamstown, MA. For information and tickets, call the box office at 518-597-3400.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 4:19 PM | Permalink

"Murder on the Nile" by Agatha Christie. Directed by Giovanna Sardelli. At Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vt.

Agatha Christie's well received 1937 novel "Death on the Nile" was translated into a theatrical piece in 1944 by Christie herself. Tired of her well-loved hero Hercule Poirot, she wrote the detective out of the play, curtailed the plot by eliminating about a dozen major characters, with more than half a dozen prime suspects among them, changed many of the character names and almost succeeded in creating an entirely new piece from the basic plot of her novel. When the play opened on Broadway in September 1946, it featured character actor Halliwell Hobbes, movie heart-throb David Manners and up-and-coming starlet Diana Barrymore in principal roles. The play only ran 12 performances and hasn't had a mainstream revival ever.
You can see Dame Agatha's play for a while at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont, where a company of bright young things have taken on the challenge of making us forget the superb film and the excellent novel while ignoring the absence of the author's most endurable detective. For someone totally new to Christie, there may be trouble with the languid opening as each character becomes established. For those who are very familiar with the piece, there could be head-scratching and some "mmm-mmm-mmming" going on as new versions of beloved characters come to the fore. By the final curtain, it will all be worth it. Christie basically gives us the same old ending, only the journey there is a new and different and challenging one. Any actors want to join in the fun? There may be room as characters in this play do get bumped off regularly, and more of that is promised.

A terrific set by Sue Rees and elegant costumes by Emily Pepper bring us superbly into the time period of the play which is, I think, 1937. McGuffins, those misleading clues, abound. Twelve characters weave in and out of the story. Unlike the novel or the film ("Death on the Nile," in both cases), the play remains in one setting, the observation saloon of the River Nile Steamer Lotus. Combining characters such as Marie Van Schuyler and Mrs. Allerton are merged into the character of Helen ffoliot-ffoulkes while Cornelia Robson and Miss Bowers become Christina Grant. William Smith is a combination of Mr. Fanthorp and Mr. Ferguson and the three characters of Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race, Andrew Pennington become Canon Ambrose Pennefather.
The Doyles become the Mostyns and there are other changes as well.
The Mostyns are played by Kathleen Wise and William Connell. They are a most handsome couple, and the actors show us that they are deeply in love. Their mutual friend, turned mutual enemy, Jacqueline, is played by Jamie Klassel. Klassel does a creditable job in the role, but a more sophisticated lady might have brought just that much more to the role. Klassel felt a bit too young for the circumstances to evolve the way they do. Wise is a lovely and intelligent Kay, and Connell is fittingly handsome and suitably devious.
Rose Marie Perfect is practically her last name in everything she does, but somehow her character emerged as a bit wooden and stiff. She seemed to loosen up a bit toward the end of the second act, however, and that was good for the play. Her niece Christina was played by Christie Escobar, and she was charming and lovely in the role.
As the Canon Pennefather, Oliver Wadsworth holds the stage in his tight-fisted grasp. He does a wonderful job as the controlling pastor who plays detective even while exposing himself as a prime suspect in the principal murder -- yes, there's more than one. Melissa Lusk is almost his match as Louise, the maid.
Quincy Dunn-Baker is a surly Smith and later in the play a charming Smith. Go figure. David Alastair Lewis is an excellent Dr. Bessner making his hypodermic needle into a much sought for light motive.
For all that's good in this Christie play, for all that's there and all that's missing, I say you owe it to yourself to see how a masterful creator of detective fiction could reinterpret her own work for a new and different medium. There aren't many opportunities in this life to do such a thing, and it's worth it.

"Murder on the Nile" plays through Aug. 15 at the Dorset Theatre Festival, located at 104 Cheney Road in Dorset, Vt. For information and tickets, call the box office at 802-867-5777.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 4:11 PM | Permalink

"Art" by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton. Directed by Henry Wishcamper. At Barrington Stage Company.

Art is a catalyst. It gets people talking, sometimes dreaming, about another life, another place, another relationship. In the play, "Art," three men who have enjoyed a fifteen year long friendship are made confrontational when one of them buys a controversial painting. That painting, a white-on-white rendering, is at the center of their conversation in the one-act, 89 minute-long show now playing on the main stage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, MA. The author understands the art of conversation. Through it she develops so many visions of friendship and its outer limits that she almost misses her own basic point: friendship is an art form.
These three men have little in common. Serge, played by David Garrison, is a Dermatologist, successful and comfortable. Marc is an aeronautical engineer played by Michael Countryman, also successful and comfortable. Brian Avers as Yvan is a self-proclaimed failure, a man whose work in textiles has led him, through an impending marriage, into the wholesale stationery business as a sales agent. He is definitely not comfortable and not successful. As friendship's need go, Yvan is the neediest. Serge requires support from friends on his decisions and Marc is a true independent who needs no one and relies on no one. But they are friends.
The art of "Art" is staggering at times. It rips apart at the seams the closeness these three feel and leaves emerging gaps or holes in their friendship. Deep down, however, the three do understand that their interactions are necessary and they find ways to repair, through a trial period, their dangerous kinship.

In the current incarnation of this play the philosophical gives way to the emotional. This transition is amiably reinforced by a brilliant set designed by Robin Vest that gives to the framework of the friendship a remoteness that is designated by a vastness of elegant space. Serge's apartment, or Marc's, includes no major furniture, rooms that are accessible through narrow doorways, steep stairways, large windows. Paintings predominate whether they are hung or not. There is a separate world outside that we never see, but within the walls of these Paris apartments people are merely ornaments that move and talk.
The simple and elegant costumes provided for Marc and Serge by Jenny Mannis easily set them apart from Yvan. Matthew Richards clever lighting design provides absolute alienation and disorientation when necessary. Michael Burnet's fight choreography is excellent.
Holding this together, fusing the distant patterns with the instant rapport, is the work of director Henry Wishcamper who seems to have a unique hold on the impact of this play. Whether it is the raw energy he inspires from his actors or the almost erotic use he makes of physical disorientation in a scene where Marc and Serge throw accusations back and forth at one another, he brings into focus for us the immediacy of friendship on the verge of closure.
Avers is a marvelous Ivan, the protestor through a vast and humorous monologue on the difficulty of getting a wedding invitation correctly worded. The oddest reaction to this speech is the accusation of self-absorption. Truly about his impending wedding it is really about a host of other people whose demands and lack of understanding are the actual point. Avers delivers this and all of his lines with an honesty that is refreshing.
Countryman takes Marc to a level of meanness that is actually endearing. He shows us Marc's inner man, needing to retain his sense of influence on his friends and their choices. We don't just hear the words, we can see the struggling human being behind them. It is a performance that demands notice in a play where ensemble work is the goal. Oddly, it is the perfect choice.
Garrison is doing the best work of his distinguished ("Married...With Children" aside) career. He plays a man so convinced that his decisions are spot-on that it seems he may never understand an opinion at odds with his own. His Serge moves the farthest into the future, not only as scripted but as acted. Garrison has an elegance that Serge does not and by the end of the play he has transferred much of that quality to his character. As Serge grows, Garrison disappears into the role, fleshing it out with his voice, gestures and personality.
When the concept of "Art" becomes the theatre's best friend, and the audience's best friend too, then something superb has been achieved. This season has brought so many one-act plays to the fore on so many stages that a two or three act play has seemed a relief. That feeling is over now that "Art" is on the stage. Drink your wine or coffee early and come see what real art is all about.

"Art" plays through Aug. 7 at Barrington Stage Company, 30 Union St., Pittsfield. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-236-8888 or go to their website at www.barringtonstageco.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 9:10 PM | Permalink

"Damn Yankees," book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. Based on the novel "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant" by Douglass Wallop. Directed by Jim Kidd. At the MacHaydn Theatre.

A good musical that tugs at your heartstrings twice -- or more -- is a wonderful thing. "Damn Yankees" at the MacHaydn manages to pull that off in spite of everything else that happens, or nearly happens, during the two hours and 43 minutes it takes to complete this musical theater journey.
Near the end of the first scene, young Joe (Hardy) leaves his wife, Meg (Boyd), of of more than 25 years to pursue his dream. As he finishes his song "Goodbye, Old Girl" and rushes off to confront his promised future he leaves behind a sadness that comes into play two more times before Joe (Boyd) returns home to his wife and begs her help in keeping him there, snug in a safe harbor. In this show, a good old-fashioned vehicle (they don't write them like this anymore) we are transported back to an earlier time, perhaps a better one, but certainly a good one.
Monica M. Wemitt has as much to do with this reaction as the material she sings. Her deeply saturated reading of three songs adds immeasurably to their resonance and even her lack of presence at the end of scene one isn't actually a presence problem. She is being sung to, serenaded, and she cannot hear it. That tugs at the heart just as much as the emotional depths of her own singing and acting later on. She is a wonderful Meg, with not enough to do, but doing all that she does to bring the level of this theater up to professional standards. Not since her Lizzie in "110 in the Shade" has she been this remarkably good in a role at this theater.

She is joined by two versions of her man, Monk Schane-Leydon as Joe Boyd, her husband, and Jon Reinhold as Joe Hardy, her friend. Both men give much to her in their performances. Schane-Leydon is perhaps the weaker of the two with only the opening and closing scenes in which to help us understand and sympathize with him. Reinhold has the rest of the show in which to explore his relationship with Schane-Leydon's wife.
This trio of players is about the best this show gets in its large truckload of players. There are a few standout performers in the company. One is include Colleen Gallagher as Gloria, whose triumphant "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, MO" in Act One is nearly a show-stopper . Another is Shawn Morgan, whose Van Buren, the baseball team's coach, sings a rollicking "Heart" which clearly inspires -- forget the director and choreographer -- a team and then another team of a different sort to sing a philosophical ditty about fortitude. Both Gallagher and Morgan can act too, and that makes things so much better than they might have been.
Disappointing in their roles were Andrea Doto as Lola and David Bondrow as Applegate. Generally seen as the star roles, these two performers do not live up to expectations. Bondrow isn't bad, but in fact he just isn't bad enough. This devil of a role requires a sardonic quality that Bondrow doesn't even aspire to; he seems to be too busy becoming endearing. Sadly that approach wasn't even funny, and funny is an aspect of Applegate that needs emphasizing, for humor is how this devil deflects discovery.
Doto has a bigger problem in her role. She isn't sexy, she doesn't dance attractively and she doesn't sing with "heart" or even with emphasis on the meaning; she's a cling-to-the-notes girl. Her costumes don't flatter her. Her acting ability is still in the formative stages and she can't deliver a comic line with the clarity she needs to get a laugh. She is just not ready for this role.
Ben Jacoby delivers nicely as Rocky, and though Cori Cable Kidder is too young, too pretty and to good a singer to be the character Sister is intended to be, she was fun to watch and to listen to. Her cohort playing Doris, Brittany Weir, has even more problems being believable as the older woman she can't pull off yet.
The chorus sang wonderfully, danced some delicious variations designed for this small round stage by Ryan VanDenBoom and provided enough to watch to distract most of the audience from realizing the shortcomings in the principals.
Nice costumes by Eric Franzen, sans girdles, defined the characters well. Jim Kidd moved his characters in and out of moments beautifully and easily, but he could have devoted a bit more time to character development, although the difficulties of doing this show in the round must have made his life a living hell. Especially with Applegate's magic tricks.
A great score and a fun book are given a mixed message in this production. Still worth seeing even if not a great evening of theater, "Damn Yankees" won't completely disappoint, but it won't completely satisfy either.

"Damn Yankees" plays through Aug. 1 at the MacHaydn Theatre on Route 203 just north of Chatham, N.Y. For information and tickets, call 518-392-9292 or visit machaydntheatre.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 3:07 PM | Permalink

"The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare. Directed by Kevin G. Coleman. At Shakespeare & Company.

Two kings, a pregnant queen, an ambitious rogue, young lovers, courtiers, shepherds and a band of rustics are the chief players in William Shakespeare's romantic play "The Winter's Tale." It has a story told, simply, as this: A jealous king abandons his daughter, unsure of his paternity, tries his queen as an unfaithful woman (shades of Henry VIII in the "fiction is no stranger than truth" school of writing) and loses his best friend for more than 16 years. Later his friend's son marries his unclaimed daughter and his queen, believed dead, returns to claim her throne and his heart. The End.
Of course, this is by Shakespeare so there are lots of other characters floating about to complicate the tale. Long considered a problem play, this melodrama begins as any Othello or Henry play might, with drama and camaraderie hand in hand. Then the mood darkens and the heavy drama begins, ending in this play with a trial scene that, with Jonathan Epstein and Elizabeth Aspenlieder playing Leontes and Hermione, is guaranteed to tear your heart out.

Later in the lengthy first act (this play is now divided in two parts), comedy intrudes upon the formerly dark and brooding play. Shakespeare often introduced comic character to liven up and relieve tension momentarily in a dark subject. Here, however, that final scene serves as a mood changer that affects the entire second half of the play, which becomes a deliberate comedy once "Time," played beautifully by Scott Renzoni, sets the stage for the long gap in the play of 16 years (this is the official opening of Act Four, by the way).
On come the country bumpkins of Bohemia in some of Kevin G. Coleman's most deliciously designed scenes. Women fight over a man, musicians offer their instruments to audience members, disguised royalty invade a sheep-shearing party, a king's son and a shepherd's adopted daughter dance and continue the process of falling in love. Prince Florizel is a wonderful Ryan Winkles and his love interest, Perdita, is played resourcefully by Kelly Galvin. Her father is the marvelous Malcolm Ingram and her silly brother is played by pratfall expert Wolfe Coleman.
Dana Harrison is delightful as the battle-worthy Mopsa who loves Coleman's character but who has to fight for him with Leia Espericueta's Dorcas. Their battles, staged by fight choreographer Ryan Winkles, are among the comic highlights of this production.
Johnny Lee Davenport plays the Bohemian king Polixenes extremely well, although once disguised as a simple traveler he becomes a trifle too "Green Pastures" to easily continue passing as Winkle's dad. His friend and companion Camillo is well played by Josh Aaron McCabe.
Corinna May is a precious Paulina, whose advice is never heeded but who manages to orchestrate a startling revelation and resurrection in the final scene. Jason Asprey is funny as a most convivial thief and rogue.
Kevin Coleman has delivered a very neat package with this play. Half dark, brooding drama and half light comedy, he has managed to bring both ends into sharp focus, principally abetted by his fine cast, significantly Aspenlieder, Winkles, May, Epstein, Davenport, Renzoni and Harrison. There is the very moving trial scene for Aspenlieder, the monologue for Epstein, the upbraiding by May. More and more moments occur as the tempo increases in Act Two.
Coleman's particular genius seems to be pushing the pace of the play, and along the way one or two small things like character development go out the window, but that comedy, slapstick and otherwise, easily takes the place of "getting to know you." And anyway, by the time you want to know these folks, you find you already do.
From problem play to playful, "The Winter's Tale" is a treasure to have with us for the summer. For one more go-round, Shakespeare and Company is delivering on its promises. Keep it spinning, folks.

"The Winter's Tale" plays in repertory through Sept. 5 at the Founder's Theatre at Shakespeare and Company, located at 70 Kemble St. in Lenox,. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-637-3353 or visit shakespeare.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 3:00 PM | Permalink

"Pool Boy," book and lyrics by Janet Allard, music and lyrics by Nikos Tsakalakos. Directed by Daniella Topol. At Barrington Stage Company.

Richard Rodgers knew how to make a lascivious, restless loner into a charmer, as he proved in "No Strings" and with Lorenz Hart in "Pal Joey." John Kander and Fred Ebb made us swallow the small-minded, selfish, crude and annoying characters in "Chicago," turning them into people we could tolerate. Cole Porter made gigolos popular and prostitutes sympathetic. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein made us love someone on a "Show Boat" who passes for white, endangers her husband and friends, and then does it all again while getting drunk.
Now, at Stage 2, Barrington Stage Company's little theater, Nikos Tsakalakos and Janet Allard are making us dislike a sweet, misguided kid who doesn't rise above a bad situation, working as a "pool boy" in a play of the same name and trying to make it in the music business in Los Angeles. It gives one a real respect for Rodgers, Hart, Kander and Ebb, Porter, Kern and Hammerstein.

In a very long two hours and seven minutes, Nick, the fledgling rock singer working pool-side at the Hotel Bel-Air, finds his way down the slippery slopes provided by the City of Angels. In short order, he is seduced by a married woman, outrages a record producer, courts and then betrays an Arab sultan, destroys the love of a young and ambitious woman, alienates his only friend (a misguiding mentor) and angers his boss, who demotes him back to where he began. Happy ending.
He does all this in a show that has three songs: the fast-beat one, the slow-beat one and the Latin-tempo one. All this in 20 musical numbers and 25 scenes.
To be perfectly frank, there are four songs that have charm, style and wit. In the first one, the slow beat, Nick kind of falls in love with April: "She Swims." In the second, the fast-beat, they examine life lived in the "Background." The third song of note gives the record producer and his slut of a wife a chance to examine (fast beat again) the option to "Live It Up." Finally, in Act Two, Nick writes his song -- oops, I mean steals April's song -- another slow-beat number, called "Swimming to China." Even in this tune, he cannot create something original: "Swimming to China/That's where you'll find me/The whole world ahead and nothing behind me..." I think we've heard this all before somewhere.
It's a great and wonderful thing to examine new, emerging talents and to give them room to grow and to develop a piece for the theater. Barrington Stage Company has come up with some marvelous works in the past ("The Burnt Part Boys," "Spelling Bee," "Calvin Burger"), but this one will not be joining those ranks, I fear. Not even the bright talents of the performers found in this production can really overcome the mediocre concept and slightly lower level realization.
Jay Armstrong Johnson plays Nick with an earnestness that would be a credit to any role. It is possible to conceive of him as J. Pierpont Finch in "How to Succeed" He'd be terrific. Here he is trapped in a part that makes us like him less and less as he lets himself be sucked further and further down the rabbit hole of shame.
Sara Gettlefinger is a lithe and loathsome Mrs. Duval. She imparts to this role a sensuality that would be wonderful in any part, but in this one, a despicable woman, she is just an aging seductress who lowers her self-esteem by not even being honest with herself. As her husband, John Hickok gives a performance that is so good you hope not to meet him afterward in the lobby for fear he might shake your hand as you leave the theater and you'll not have an opportunity to wash that hand for a while.
Cliff Bemis is Mr. Lopes, who is probably the nicest character in the play. A man who has sacrificed his own identity for a quarter century to forge a minor career, he is intent on bringing every employee into submission. He's the nicest character. Bemis gives Lopes his all and when the man does a turn-around for a moment, he becomes the quintessential hero of the show. But he loses it again, sadly. Jon Norman Schneider plays Jack, a fawning, self-deprecatory man who works at the hotel and tries to manage Nick's career. When Nick fails him by acting honestly, Jack turns into just another piece of Hollywood trash.
And then there's April. Cortney Wolfson plays the heroine of the piece who cannot come to grips with honesty when she's faced with it. Nick lies, she lies. Nick tells the truth and he's a bad man. Nick plays the "game" and he's a bad man. Nick repents the "game" and he's a bad man and April cannot honestly face her own intentions. Wolfson plays her wonderfully and it is almost possible to empathize with her. Even so, she allies herself, for a time, with the sultan, played wonderfully by Sorab Wadia. This character flaunts his wealth and power with a heavy hand and a sense of personal terrorism. He commands and sings of "Mortal Kombat" -- the game -- but is it a game to him? It's hard to know for sure. Wadia plays the part with gusto.
Everyone plays their parts with gusto. It's a gusto show. There's just no show there, when the second act feels like a new first act, when the music shows so little variation and when the lyrics, like the dialogue, are peppered with words that you can sing, but that don't sing.
Daniella Topol does as good a job directing this show as anyone possibly could, aided by some cute choreography by Shonn Wiley. Brian Prather's set is functional and fun, while Holly Cain's costumes are just right for each character. Nicole Pearce lights the show nicely, but Brad Berridge, sound designer, aided by Daniel Kopp, seems unable to balance his singers and the rock band properly. The piano was so loud on opening night that even the company singing in chorus could not always be understood, and this in a theater that isn't even 15 rows deep.
There should not be any microphones needed in a house like this. Certainly there shouldn't be any amplification of a show with so little to say, or to sing about. Let the "Pool Boy" drown in chlorinated water.

"Pool Boy" plays through Aug. 8 at Barrington Stage Company's Stage 2, 36 Linden St., Pittsfield. Ticket prices range from $15-$45. For information and tickets, contact the box office at 413-236-8888 or go to barringtonstageco.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:52 AM | Permalink

Molnar's saucy sex comedy "The Guardsman" was an eight-performance flop in 1913 when it first appeared on Broadway as "Where Ignorance is Bliss." Translated by Philip Littell, a well-known American author and translator (his same-named descendent now writes opera librettos), it didn't attract much attention in the American arena.
Eleven years later, in Phillip Moeller's translation, the Theatre Guild paired two of its best young actors, Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, for a successful 273-performance run of a play they would continue to revive and to send out on tours for the next decade. This version was sold to MGM and the Lunts, now a married couple, repeated their roles in their only full-length movie appearances. The script was later used as the framework for a musical version of Oscar Straus' operetta "The Chocolate Soldier," and it has been the basis for three more movies, a couple of musical versions and the occasional stock production somewhere.
It's a very funny play. An actor, jealous of his wife and sure she is falling in love with another man, creates a man for her to love and plays that man for his wife. She falls for him, and he never knows if she was true to him through his new character, or untrue in the same way.

Currently the Berkshire Theatre Festival is presenting an excellent version of the Moeller script (new translators are listed in the program, but what I heard was startlingly the Moeller version) starring another husband-and-wife team of players, Michel Gill and Jayne Atkinson. In a very stylish production, with Klimt-inspired costumes designed by David Murin for her and a set that resembles the Alte Pinakothek in Berlin, where the play is set, designed by Alexander Dodge, the leading players, abetted by Mary Louise Wilson, Richard Easton, Tara Franklin and Stephen DeRosa, deliver a solid, laugh-filled edition of the play.
Franklin plays Liesl the maid, and she delivers strong moments as she snoops about, lusts after her employer's husband and plays at being a perfect maid, something she is definitely not. DeRosa delivers nicely as the usher, Mr. Spengler (a rewrite from the original usher, Mrs. Spengler) and is even more enjoyable as the Creditor who pursues the Actor for middle-sized debt. He delivers some of the best comedy lines, including one that is really a simple statement of fact.
As The Mama, a role that can be as confusing as it can be humorous, the company offers the delectable Mary Louis Wilson. No stranger to the odd line and odd action, Wilson presents a remarkable character in the odd, employee position of The Mama. Wilson definitely can make the most of a simple line of dialogue, and in her red wig, she looks about 30 years younger than her actual age. The Critic is played by Easton. He makes the character's undeclared love for the Actress go a long way. The 10 years of that relationship are swept away into something new and romantic every time he comes into contact with Atkinson's character. He brings an Old World charm to the part, and that is just what the role demands.
Atkinson and Gill are a beautiful couple. Together they present a picture of two egoistic, self-centered people who love one another in spite of the fact that in the 24-hour period of the play, they are not themselves but other people. These two show us how it is possible for love to exist in a world where no one loves anyone else as well as you can love yourself. Gill has a strong personality as the Actor, but when he disguises himself as The Guardsman, he becomes dark, Russian and something he seems unable to be as himself, exotic and erotic. He allows us to see the mystery in his characters by playing them fully.
Atkinson as The Actress plays with the opulence of the role as written. She drags herself screaming from one emotional outburst to another. She charms with a smile that can kill, eyes that can hypnotize and arms that can manipulate continents without half trying. When she catches her husband "acting" she pulls no punches, but tells him off instantly. Atkinson plays this role so well it makes one question the concept of acting at all, rather than living life out loud in front of an audience.
John Rando has directed this show with more style and much more flare than anticipated. He has capitalized on the period and the stage manner of the time, providing much leeway for his principal actors in their gestures and line readings. He has held the comedy together nicely, pacing the play appropriately and letting all of its humor leap off the page onto the stage. His only major error occurs in the third act (there are two intermissions, folks, just like the playwright wanted) when the Actor's trunk blocks a major scene from those sitting in the first several rows on the right side of the house.
One of the best productions on the Stockbridge stage in a long time, "The Guardsman" is a show you owe it to yourself to see. This very good play is not done often, so take advantage of a unique opportunity and enjoy this 24-hour excursion into the meaning of love and lovers, marriage and career.

"The Guardsman" plays through July 31 on the Main Stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-298-5576 or visit berkshiretheatre.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 7:23 PM | Permalink

"Six Degrees of Separation" by John Guare. Directed by Anne Kauffmann. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Nobody is completely honest with themselves or the ones close to them in John Guare's 1990 play "Six Degrees of Separation," now playing on the Main Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Flan and Ouisa, the principal characters, accept a situation that even in 1990 would have been unthinkable for them. A young black man is carried into their elegant Fifth Avenue apartment one evening, a knife wound in his side, and left there by the doorman. They do not know him. He claims to know their children. They accept him at face value and in just a few minutes ask him to prepare a dinner for them and a wealthy guest from the scraps hidden in cupboards in their rarely used kitchen.
Knowing New York City in that period, it is completely unacceptable to assume that this could have happened in this way. Unacceptable. That is until you realize that Flan and Ouisa are upper-crust flim-flammers and it takes one to take one. Paul, the young man, is a mini-master at flim-flam flummery.

Like former President Jimmy Carter, Ouisa (short for Louisa), find herself secretly lusting in her heart. "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times," said the southern governor in 1976. Ouisa, bored with her unconventional yet highly ordinary marriage, feels this way in her heart about the boy, Paul, who claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier. And like the president, she believes that this is something that God recognizes I will do -- and I have done it -- and God forgives me for it."
Whether or not her husband feels the same way about any of this is left for us to decide.
"Six Degrees" is an existential expression of boredom with the sameness of things, a deliberate attempt to portray mankind as linked through no more than a few twists and turns of fate. The basic story is based on facts, the tale of one David Hampton, who made the preposterous claim of relationship to Poitier and persuaded many society folks to provide him temporary shelter, food and even a short loan of funds a decade earlier. What Guare does in the play is to make him not be the center of his own story, but to hand that over to Ouisa to express the broader issue of lust in the heart. "You can't bullshit a bullshitter, and I'm not a bullshitter," her husband flings at her, but she knows better: he is, she has, and so has Paul.
Ouisa is being played by a lovely Margaret Colin, who knows ways to make any line mean twice what the author wrote. Through body language and facial twitches she can turn a "yes" into "well, maybe, but no" without half trying. As Ouisa opens up, like a peony would, revealing unthought of layers of beauty and confusion, Colin lets us in on her secrets slowly and surely. Wisely casting her in this central role brings clarity to a confusing story of people acting against type, accepting myths as realities and hopes as concrete facts.
Tim Daly plays her husband, Flan (for Flanders) Kittredge. Daly has a way with edginess that serves him well in this role. He can say one thing, loud and strong, physically support that meaning and yet somehow let us know that the flim-flam is under way. He manages to carry this through until near the end of the play when he realizes his wife stands on a precipice and just the slightest emotional shove would have her falling to her doom. As he plays this scene, Daly is clearly not running toward her with a lifeline, and yet there is in his performance an odd sense of other-purpose and he sustains the concept of possibly rescuing her from her own worst instincts.
Paul is delivered complete and without flaws in the first half of the 93 minute one-act by Ato Essandoh. He cracks his own facade in the second half of the play, slowly crumbling into a not-justifiable madness. In doing so he robs his character of believability and that makes it harder for us to accept Colin's Ouisa as she falters in her purpose. Essandoh delivers his best work early and only works against the play with his later choices.
These may be the decisions and direction of Anne Kauffmann. She has staged the play wonderfully, but some of the characters seem under-rehearsed. Drigan Lee's hustler is just fine, but Benjamin Mehls' Trent, a vulnerable college student, was less believable. Ariel Woodiwiss and Lucas Kavner played their roles perfectly, but Clea Alsip and Lauren Blumenfeld seemed over the top. Ned Eisenberg was the most believable of the other characters while Michael Bradley Cohen as a very tall 8-year-old (actually in his 20s) was convincing but annoying. John Beford Lloyd and the others were just fine.
The sets by Antje Ellermann and costumes by Jennifer Moeller were exactly right for the play. David Weiner's lighting solved difficult problems perfectly. Fitz Patton's sound design was sometimes confusing.
"Six Degrees of Separation" leaves you wondering about all people you know, know online, and think you know. Anyone who believes that they understand people will find this a jarring play, their personal reality challenged at every turn. Those of you who know that people are deceitful, conniving and dangerous will wonder why a woman with a sense of responsibility would ever find this situation compelling and fascinating. For the rest of us ... it's a play.

"Six Degrees of Separation" plays through July 25 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival's Main Stage space in the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance, located at 1000 Main St. in Williamstown. For information and tickets, contact the box office at 413-597-3400 or visit wtfestival.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 7:46 PM | Permalink

"Fallen Angels" by Noel Coward. Directed by Suzanne Agins. At Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vt.

Noel Coward wrote his light marital comedy "Fallen Angels" in 1925, a year that also saw his plays "Hay Fever" and "Easy Virtue," as well as the musical "On With the Dance." He was starring in his own play "The Vortex," which had opened the year before. "Fallen Angels" received poor notices, even with Edna Best and Tallulah Bankhead playing the two title characters. Bankhead was a last-minute replacement with only two days to learn the role and get up in the part.
On stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival, history is almost repeating itself. An actor named Ronan Babbitt has just played his first performance as Willie Banbury, husband of the character played by Tallulah originally, after only two days of rehearsals. Like his stage wife's ancestor, he did brilliantly in the role.

This play has a slight story. Two women, best friends, discover that a man they both once had an affair with seven years earlier has just come to London and wants to see them. As their husbands are on an overnight golf holiday, they plan to casually meet their former swain and while waiting for him to show up, they get drunk, reveal some old animosities and have a perfectly wonderful cat fight. All is resolved the following morning and a quartet of friends has become a quintet of wary folks.
With the help of an endearing maid named Saunders, played here by Melissa Hurst in an informal and casual manner that works wonderfully, the two wives and their husbands attempt to resolve their differences while the Frenchman, Maurice, played to the gallic hilt by Gene Gillette, manipulates his way back into the lives of his two best girlfriends.
It takes this company of young, invigorated American actors only 92 minutes to play out the 24 hours of this piece. There is no intermission between the any of the three acts and the show doesn't seem to suffer for it. The troupe manages their accents with aplomb, never faltering or altering them. Even drunk, the two women manage to control their vocal projection, their Jane and Julia keeping close to the mark in their portrayal of long-suffering wives from the upper-middle classes.
Amy Lynn Stewart is lovely as Julia, poised and posed in classic 1920s fashion. She is almost perfect, although every now and then there is something of the cross-dresser about her gestures or stance. Still, the resulting character she creates is awesome, filled with understanding and a cooperative nature. She takes and holds the stage well and makes us really like her Julia.
Jeanine Serralles has a slightly harder time with Jane, the flibbertigibbet friend who seems to always be on the run. Her second act drunk scene is a highwater mark for comedy and she moves from one state to another, emotionally and physically, with wit and charm and even her hostility in this situation she finds herself in, is winningly portrayed by Serralles.
Together alone, for the most part, in Act Two, these two actresses give us every possible stage of friendship from uneasiness to antagonism to love and trust and even to ugly disdain. As their collaborative reunion with their former lover turns into a drunken brawl, they become funnier and sillier and even more loveable than they were before. And watching them play through the third act's twists and turns is hilarious.
Their husbands are portrayed by (in the same order) Tony Hogopian and Ronan Babbitt. Both are very good actors. Their reactions are so unforced they become real and that makes the men terrific foils for their wives. Hogopian is more polished in his role, but even his role has a certain degree of polish in it. Babbitt, as noted, performed perfectly and was totally believable in the part.
As the maid, Saunders, Hurst does just fine, as noted. It is the mysterious Maurice who holds our attention in the latter part of Act Three. Played by Gillette, he comes across from the first as smooth and oily and tricky and someone who will manipulate this situation to his own advantage. Gillette plays consistently on this and with the witty Coward dialogue to toss around, he does as well as his fellow players do in their longer, more difficult roles.
Jacqueline Firkins has designed some of the cutest 1925 clothes I've ever seen, particularly Jane's second act gown. Ryan Palmer has restored a sense of summer stock to the set for this show and on the stage of the Dorset Playhouse that is a wonderful thing. There was once a look that all audience expected. This is it. It's not something we see often any more, but here it is and more power to him for exercising his right to make the play fit the theater.
Suzanne Agins has pulled this production together without flaws. She has delivered delicious Coward on a summer stock platter with young hopefuls playing bigger and better than they knew they could. It looked like the '20s, sounded like the '20s and for 90 minutes it felt like the '20a. You can't ask for more than that while "wallowing in a quagmire" (see the show and get the reference).

"Fallen Angels" plays through July 25 at the Dorset Theatre Festival, located at 104 Cheney Road in Dorset, Vt. For information and tickets, call the box office at 802-867-5777.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 7:37 PM | Permalink

"Samuel J. & K." By Mat Smart. Directed by Justin Waldman. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Reunions are always difficult. They are never more so than when there are two brothers who have had difficulties that seem irreparable. There is nothing more difficult to overcome than the classic clash between siblings over a woman. In Mat Smart's play "Samuel J. & K.," we have a situation that calls on the old standby of a man scorned by a woman who prefers his younger, prettier brother. Samuel J. understands that there is a conflict between him and K. He feels the closeness between them stretching out for miles. When he discovers how right his instincts have been he takes a hike, literally. The Naperville, Ill., boy becomes a man of Cameroon.
It is the reunion, which takes up most of the second act of this play, that is the focus for both men. Neither one has anticipated it in the way it happens. K. assumes that J. is dead. J. believes that K. couldn't care if he is dead or alive. In truth they each have a valid point, but their first meeting after a seven-year separation (speaking of classic time periods) doesn't go the way they imagined it would.

For one thing, Moms has a way of dividing and conquering and she uses it. She may not mean to do this, but she does. For another, both men are lying to each other about almost everything which doesn't exactly keep the reunion sparking along. Finally, old conflicts play a role in controlling a volatile situation that neither man can manage alone.
This is the play being presented on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival at the present. It is a very good play, calling on its ancient forebears for style, clarity and form. In the hands of an exceptionally good cast it works as a very modern piece that still tugs at the heartstrings and reverberates in the brain.
As Samuel J. there is the talented Justin Long. He has a way of playing superiority that is actually endearing. Somehow he manages to take the low road and still maintain a certain sanctity about it. In the emotional conflict with his brother he has the upper hand throughout the play but there is an edge to that position that is practically a precipice with him dangerously balanced on its rim. He walks that tightrope throughout the play and it is often difficult to know where his character's impulses are taking him. Long makes all of these qualities into a seamless singularity. He is a moderate player in a high-tension role and he plays against the anxieties and tensions most of the time, leaving the character's words to reveal the inner man. He conveys the surface beautifully, letting the mind and heart jump out onto sleeves and lapels and basketballs. His work is just lovely.
K., on the other hand, is all emotional surfaces with facial gestures and physical responses jumping for the hoops and collapsing on the floors. Owiso Odera is perfectly marvelous in the role. Tall, commanding, youthful even in his maturity, with a quizzical face, he brings to K. all of the elements of tragedy. Here is a man trapped in the mysteries of his origins unable to reason with his own past. Odera adjusts his look, augments his motions with vocal transitions, and masks his inner truths with a triumphant rage that escapes him in the games he plays. As the younger brother in this duet, he tries to hold his position but is constantly bumped into corners through his own odd lack of confidence. This is a lot to portray, and Odera manages it handsomely.
Adam Stockhausen has created a marvelous fluid set that functions brilliantly in three separate locales. Nicole J. Smith has brought a fascinating look into the lives of these two men through her excellent costumes. Marcus Doshi does nice work with the lighting of this show, encapsulating moments, creating environments. Bart Fassbinder's sound design seemed to spark odd noises now and then, but perhaps that was a technical glitch. There was enough noise at times that was clearly part of a design sense that it is hard to be sure. Kudos to Thomas Schall for his fight direction in this piece.
Justin Waldman holds this all together nicely with his staging of the show. He knows how to contain violent reactions and he holds back his actors obvious need to physically go further. The tension he creates, over and over, is just right for this play.
When a new play is this good, it's a pleasure to see it, talk about it, write about it as well. The only problem is not being able to see it again in two or three months to see how the characters have developed, to see where the play has taken its actors. This is especially true when the show doesn't depend on quirky writing, odd forms or experimental styles. This is just good old-fashioned theater by new artists. Good stuff.

"Samuel J. and K." plays through July 18 on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival located in the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance, 1000 Main St., Williamstown. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-597-3400 or visit wtfestival.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:24 PM | Permalink

"Endgame" by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Eric Hill. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Endgame means the conclusion of events in their natural course. For playwright Samuel Beckett, the word took on somewhat larger proportions, for it came as close as anything could to the original French title "Fin de Partie." He claimed that the nuances in the French could never be accurately or completely translated, but in this new production at the Berkshire Theatre Festival's second stage, the Unicorn Theatre, nuance is almost everything.
Not that there is much here that is subtle. The characters are blatant, loud, and over-the-top, but there is nuance vested in their statements and their confusions. Subtleties sneak up on you, that's what they do, and this production really needs more than one viewing to grasp all that the actors and director have ladled into it.

Beckett also believed and stated that any production done without complete adherence to his stage directions -- which include set and costume descriptions, movement and gestures -- was not being true to his intentions. He and his agents have sued major producers who dared to stray from the written word. Eric Hill's production takes a middle ground between Beckett and the interpretive sensibility that an artist brings to a project. I don't think Beckett would sue anyone over this production; however, he might not be pleased with emotional outcome achieved here.
Even this tightly written piece, which hardens the hearts of its observers, manages an almost tear now and then. It trembles on the eyelid, then disappears back to where it came from, leaving only a hint of saline falling from an eyelash. Hill plays with that, tugging at the emotional centers of his two principal characters as though trying to produce that single tear.
This is the first time I have been struck with the concept of the Trinity and its chief representative -- Jesus -- in his struggle for final domination over the devil. It hadn't occurred to me the last, and only other, time I saw a production of this play. (I confess to only having read it once, a long time past.) As theater of the absurd goes, that sudden interpretation is as vastly accurate as any other might be in this case. Beckett's plays in the 1950s and early 1960s helped to establish that particular school of thought, creative writing and production. What was absurd then, when I was truly young, strikes me as less absurd and more specific now that I'm as old as I am.
The results of all this time and tribulation is a new understanding of the Beckett play. Mark Corkins plays Hamm, an aging, blind, wheelchair-bound and aristocratic neurotic who dominates the room that houses him in a world that is seemingly coming to an end outside this room. His servant, Clov, as played by David Chandler, is a twisted, crippled, mumbling, martyr of a man who uses his master's blindness as a screen for some pretty vulgar business.
Hamm's parents, who share this room with their son, are Nell and Nagg, played by Tanya Dougherty and Randy Harrison. Pale as ghosts and crazy as loons, they inhabit two garbage pails, or rubbish bins, secured into the floor of the room. In the course of the 90-minute, one-act play Nell dies and perhaps Nagg does also. Clearly, Hamm will die through neglect and ignorance of his own situation and Clov will have the final word, the final control over the remaining environment.
If people thought God was dead after seeing Beckett's earlier absurdist masterpiece "Waiting for Godot," they must have left this play knowing it to be true. One by one, the threesome, the family, the trinity, pass out of existence and only the devil is left holding the bag, literally.
Chandler is brilliant as the quirky manservant. His physical disabilities and his verbal abuse of everything strike directly into the heart and mind. As he slams this and bangs that, he is the explosive framework for the endgame plays of his employer and the family. Chandler's deep-set eyes and hollow cheeks give him the look of one deprived of all the necessities and he uses his fine and expressive face to say more than the lines he spouts. It is a wonderful performance.
Corkins is the direct opposite as Hamm. He seems tirelessly the bully. He is a perfect barker of orders. He holds back the humanity in his character until very close to the end of the play when his tortured cry for his father goes unheard, or at least not responded to in any acceptable way. Stuck in his wheelchair, he has very little body to use to create and motivate character, so it is the voice and the arms that give him opportunities to change what can be changed which is very little. He is compelling to watch.
If Tanya Dougherty's character was called Nagg that would make some sense. She is playing a squalid and deprived woman and she plays it with a nagging intensity that is just about right for the character. Her partner in the floor-encroaching bins is played by Randy Harrison who by now is no stranger to Beckett -- he played Lucky on this stage in Beckett's "Godot." Here he plays the pathos of Nagg, the dedication to the memory of Hamm's childhood, the defensive and deprived, older, nursing home parent with deliberate style and a delivery that couldn't be more right for the Beckett script.
Hill's stylized production gives each actor an opportunity to outshine each other actor on this stage. The game here is not chess where the term refers to the final moves, but rather to the end of time, just as Beckett has written it. That visual imagery of the Trinity becomes inescapable as one by one they drift off into oblivion. Hill has done a fine job of bringing his actors into the mental space where this can work.
Gary M. English's dark and dingy set works well but adds little to the piece. Charles Schoonmaker's costumes are deliciously bizarre and Dan Kotlowitz lights the show with appropriate coolness.
"Endgame" is absurdist but not absurd, heavy with dim laughter and a treat of a sort, though not a sugarplum, not by a long shot. This is a play that really needs study and concentration and multiple viewings. Even then it may not make complete sense. This production tries to change that and it goes a lot further with its talented crew than anyone should expect.

"Endgame" plays through July 24 at the Unicorn Theatre, located on Route 7 north of Stockbridge on the campus of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-298-5576 or visit berkshiretheatre.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:03 AM | Permalink

"Richard III" by William Shakespeare. Directed by Jonathan Croy. At Shakespeare & Company.

I am a sucker for a good Shakespeare comedy. In all honesty, I never thought I could say that "Richard III," a play filled with bloodshed, death, monarchy issues, child killings and a war would ever rank high on that particular list of plays. Under the clever and inventive direction of Shakespeare & Company player and director Jonathan Croy, the first three acts of the play have been transformed into a light, farcical romance with the above list still in play. There were enough laughs to satisfy a stand-up comic, but we still got the deviousness, the plotting, the danger and the murders. Nothing, unfortunately, can transform the second half of the evening, and so we end up with another "Don Giovanni" sort of evening where the comedy suddenly darkens and the other side of life takes over the scene, almost completely.
This really occurs after Richard is crowned king of England. Once that goal is achieved, the play becomes more a typical history play. While it may be true that Shakespeare's Richard isn't quite the villain he's been painted to be, it is also true that the play is the play and at some point the foolishness and oddity of peculiar line readings and oddly out-of-keeping relationships gives way to that other reality that Shakespeare does so well.

Croy has a brilliant cast on hand to pull the humor out of the drama and put the drama back into the play. First and foremost there is John Douglas Thompson as Richard. As a deformed human being, and third son in a royal clan, he has some issues, and Thompson explores those along the way, while never forcing them onto the audience. The way Thompson plays the role, every issue Richard has is merely a part of the whole picture. His is a very well-integrated man. Thompson's particular strength seen here is his sense of humor. It is delicate and precise, and as Richard progresses through his self-generated horrors, that humor comes out more and more often until the Act II scene when the audience proclaims him king. When he does Richard's emotional turnabout, Thompson strikes the perfect note. The transition happens as a visual turn, and it works brilliantly. He signals to us that the comedy is finished; now begins the play.
Four women dominate most of the show. Tod Randolph is superb as Queen Elizabeth, Richard's sister-in-law. Emotionally she is richly endowing her character with nuances and shifts that take her to the right places but mystify us just a bit. She is delightfully quirky. Elizabeth Ingram has fabulous moments as Queen Margaret, Richard's grandmother. She is the dark, foreboding voice always floating on the horizon of this play. Annette Miller takes top honors a the Duchess of York, Richard's mother. In wild costumes designed by Arthur Oliver, she is a virago. Leia Espericueta makes a perfect Lady Anne, forced into marriage with Richard. Together or apart, these ladies tear down the non-existent walls of Patrick Brennan's functional set.
Best among the men in the show are Nigel Gore as Duke of Buckingham, Josh Aaron McCabe as Catesby, Ryan Winkles as Tyrrel, Johnny Lee Davenport as the Lord Mayor of London and Robert Biggs as Lord Stanley. Youngster William Palmer delivers nicely as the Prince of Wales, too.
Croy's unusual vision, tempered clearly by years here in French farces, helps bring a very trying melodrama into focus through the use of humorous delivery of lines. These actors all know how to take a dramatic moment and bring out the underlying foolishness or the insistent physical joke or the baseline attitude that alters its meaning ever so slightly. His stage pictures and his clearly established on-stage relationships are focused nicely in spite of the rapid fire dialogue. As conceived and adapted for this company by its new artistic director Tony Simotes, "The Life and Death of King Richard III" almost cannot reach its climactic cry of "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse," because of the volume and the excellent fight choreography provided by Ryan Winkles. Audience involvement in major decisions affecting that life become radically important in the best scene in Act II.
Get thee to the Founders' Theatre for a lightweight heavyweight fight over control of England. You're slated to be a winner. This show certainly is one.

"Richard III" plays in repertory through Sept. 5 at the Founders Theatre at Shakespeare & Company, located at 70 Kemble St. in Lenox. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-637-3353 or visit shakespeare.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:59 PM | Permalink

"Chicago," book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb. Directed by John Saunders. At the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y.

Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, way back in 1975, crafted characters for their musical "Chicago" who had almost no redeeming features. These were dark characters, people who lived for the momentary pleasures, people who gave very little to others retaining everything possible for themselves. They were played by the most likeable people on Broadway: Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Jerry Ohrbach and Mary McCarty. Somehow these actors softened their playing in these roles and even though there was nothing about them to make them likeable you liked them just the same, in spite of yourself and your better instincts.
And there were those songs: "All That Jazz," "Razzle Dazzle," "Mister Cellophane" and "Nowadays," to name a few. And there were the dance numbers, choreographed in his own inimitable style, by Fosse. Hard to resist.
Along came a revival in 1995, still playing on Broadway, and a whole new generation of theater-goers got to see the show and come to love it, in spite of the fact that it was still the same show with still the same unlikeable characters, played this time by Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, James Naughton and Marcia Lewis. Then there was the fine film version with an equally fine cast and still there were the selfish, unbearable characters to deal with. Again it was loveable.
Now the show plays for two weeks at the MacHaydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y., with the same old selfish folks played by another group of talented individuals: Emily Afton, Kellyn Uhl, Ben Jacoby and Yvette Monique Clark. Once again there is no one you want to cheer on, root for, get behind. The same problems exist and once again the show manages to charm its audience through the power of song and dance.

The current quartet of lead players cited above play, respectively, Roxie Hart, Velma Kelly, Billy Flynn and Mama Morton (same as the lists that precede this one). They are all wonderful in their roles. Clark's prison matron, Mama Morton, is the most personable. She has softened Mama M a bit it seems to me, particularly in her first song in which she doesn't push hard on the almost offensive lyrics; instead she croons the piece with a seductive gentleness rather than an inane pride which is the most often used attack on the lyrics.
Afton's Roxie seemed less likeable than ever before, but by the end of Act Two she is almost a treasure in spite of her transition -- as if by magic for no reason is presented for this -- into the Vaudeville partner of her bitter enemy, Velma. Velma is played by Uhl in such a brash and insensitive way that it is almost to be taken as the director's intention to force us to appreciate the even more rotten Roxie. It almost works. Uhl's dancing is spectacular in this show and our vote goes to her side.
Jacoby is a slick and handsome Billy. He sings appropriately with a sneer in his voice and on his lips. He hammers his scenes until you almost want to cry out for him to stop, to be nicer to Roxie and Velma, and then you realize who they are and you stop yourself. Jacoby plays with an unexpected power in this part.
Equally powerful in a negative way is Kevin Gardner as Amos Hart, Roxie's inept husband. As intended, he almost disappears, but Gardner makes him into a more stolid figure than anticipated. As gossip columnist/reporter Mary Sunshine, there is an exceptional performance by K. Kelly. Kelly brings a strong whiff of other-worldliness to the role and sings like a diva. It's a winner of a showcase.
Perfect costumes by Jimm Halliday set off the characters wonderfully. The augmented orchestra with Rick Hambright on woodwinds, Susan Radcliff on trumpet and Dan Cordell on trombone/tuba make a world of difference to the sound of the show. In fact, I cannot imagine how much less entrancing this particular show would be with just the usual piano, drums and squeaky synthesizer normally offered in this theater.
Director John Saunders has done a beautiful job of staging this show in the round. He uses the turntable unit to great effect and his stage pictures generally provide a fair shot at the principles all of the time. Saunders places his principals in optimum positions for important scenes and, with choreographer Bryan R. Knowlton, creates a fluid sense of time and space in and out of "limbo" and other places. It is a beautiful job for this theater and much to the credit of Saunders who has played in this arena and knows its quirks, faults and benefits. His use of a full-fledged circus motif for "Razzle Dazzle" was a brilliant touch.
A great score in a show about people whose worth is equal to mud with talented people creating what they can from that combination under the watchful eye of a talented director makes this a very good evening of musical theater. Even the happy ending has no joy in it, and so the curtain call almost makes up for the philosophical wrongs of "Chicago." But leave your sense of right and wrong at home. It won't make you a happy person by 10:30.

"Chicago" plays through July 18 at the MacHayden Theatre, located on Route 203, just north of Chatham, N/Y. For information and tickets, contact the box office at 518-392-9292 or visit machaydntheatre.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 8:59 PM | Permalink

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Directed by Jessica Stone. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

It is a rare night, an auspicious occasion, when a critic can simply sit back and rave about a stage product. Just sit back and rave, not rant. This is just such a moment. Director Jessica Stone, choreographer Denis Jones, Melcap Casting and the Williamstown Theatre Festival's producers have pulled off the funniest, most musical, not to say magical, extravaganza imaginable with Stephen Sondheim's 1962 comedy-musical, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." They have done this with a concept that seemed outlandish and extreme -- an all-male cast in a show featuring leggy showgirls and a classic virgin -- when it was first announced a few months back. To my surprise, and with my eternal thanks, they have pulled it off.

First and foremost there is the comedy. In a cast led by Christopher Fitzgerald, an inspired young comic actor who has given this company some classic moments in the past, the company takes things to new heights, levels of inspiration and hilarity hardly ever seen on the stage anymore. We have become an industry that demands "meaning" and "sincerity" and "relevance" in our evenings out. Gone is the sheer joy in something well done for its own sake and for the simple idea of entertainment. That word, the "E-word" let's call it, has taken on a dirty underside: It is something for the simple-minded, the lower classes, the uneducated, something to be looked down at and forbidden to the cognoscenti.
Well, folks, up in Williamstown they are suddenly embracing that "E-word" wholeheartedly, and it IS what works best, now and forever. Frankly, they could cancel the rest of their season and just run this show for the entire summer until the college kicks them out to make way for students of serious drama, serious dance. If they could do that, it would be my firm wish that those students be compelled to see this show and discover for themselves what makes the theater tick, makes it work, makes it fun.
Fitzgerald as Pseudolus, a Roman slave who has developed the fine art of chicanery into something grander and nobler, is divine. He seems to have very few firm bones in his body. He has an expressive face that makes even the most dire situation into something huggably silly. He sings more than merely credibly, dances like a Ray Bolger clone, seems to be perpetually in motion even when he is standing or sitting still. He understands the subtleties in simple lines and how to make them have maximum impact. In his performance, seamless and easy, he moves in and out of director Stone's hilarious ideas and choreographer Denis Jones-inspired, old-fashioned steps with such ease it as though he is making the whole thing up as he performs.
As his fellow servant and perpetual victim, Hysterium, we have Josh Grisetti, who almost can match Fitzgerald for humor and seriousness. Grisetti outdoes even Jack Gilford, who played the role originally on stage and later in the film.
In the principal female role of Philia, a virgin residing in the house of courtesans, David Turner makes the most of all possibilities. While we never forget that Philia is played by a man, he manages to create an unforgettable young woman through the craziest of line readings and physical reactions. In the finale, when Philia seemingly invents a musical instrument, he is still in character and still the most deliciously delightful young girl on the stage today.
David Costabile has a wonderful time in the role of Lycus, a procurer. Chivas Michael plays Domina brilliantly, and as her husband, Senex, there is the very funny, highly talented Jeremy Shamos.
The rivals for Philia's hand are played masterfully by Graham Rowat as Miles Gloriosus, and Bryce Pinkham, in the world's most outrageous blond wig, as Hero. Kudos also to Kevin Cahoon for his hilarious take on Eronius.
The entire company of players, 14 in all, manage to do simultaneous reactions to changes, revelations and outrages, and there is hardly anything funnier to watch. The choreography and the chase scene are more comic than I would have thought possible. Early Roman comedy and classic French farce come brightly into contact in the second act of this breathless show. Although Philia's hilarious revenge song "That'll Show Him" has been replaced by the sweeter "Echo Song," which was cut from the original show, the comedy continues despite her instant recognition of Hero's devious attempt to force her romantic hand.
In the pit are 16 musicians and a conductor, Gary Adler, who handles the music, and a few important props, brilliantly. And here's something I haven't said recently, perhaps ever, in a review: The sound design work of Drew Levy and Tony Smolensky was absolutely perfect. Nothing sounded pushed, nothing was forced or over-the-top. The balance between singers and musicians was an effortless combination. I never once felt assaulted by sound. The microphones on people's heads and bodies were almost universally well placed and hidden, and it seemed for most of the time as though I was back in New York in 1962 with the sound was only partially reinforced by foot mikes on the stage again.
Director Stone delivered a wonderful version of "She Loves Me" last year, but she has surpassed herself here and has set the bar very high for anyone or anything to follow up with in the future, here or at any other theater in the region. Her work establishes the standard from now on.
I am hard-pressed to use the word "brilliant" again, but brilliant it is, this fine old show. Often "Gypsy" is cited as the most perfect musical ever written. For me, after this production, that shifts to "A Funny Thing ..." as the director and her company have proven it to be seamless, musical, funny and actually plausible. What a perfect combination! No wonder I'm in love.

"A Funny Thing" runs through July 11 on the Main Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, located at 1000 Main St. in Williamstown. For tickets and information, call the box office at 413-597-3400 or visit wtfestival.org.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 7:33 AM | Permalink

"The Pavilion" by Craig Wright. Directed by Giovanna Sardelli. At Dorset Theatre Festival.

Twenty years too late, Peter apologizes to Kari for leaving her in the old-fashioned lurch. Peter wants to begin again, to set things right, straighten out the time/space continuum so that a happy ending is possible for both of them. He tries to make that happen in as many different ways as possible during a high school reunion gathering in a lakeside pavilion in Pine City, Minn. He even attempts to perform theatrical magic, to restart the universe and rush it through to 1999, the year in which the play has been set. On stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival, Peter does his very best to make right his wrongdoing. He almost makes it work.
With this production of Craig Wright's play, "The Pavilion," the summer theater in Dorset, Vt., begins an era of production under the leadership of Dina Janis. Her predecessor lasted three seasons, offering some remarkable productions of interesting plays. Janis meets the challenge set by Carl Forsman with a triumph of her own.

This show sets a high watermark for the subsequent season. A well-crafted play, three excellent actors, a fine director and a beautiful, magical production make for delicious theater. Here we have a play that intrigues with its constant turns and changes. One actress, the Narrator, actually lays out the plan for the story to come and then joins in as a multitude of characters who interact with Peter and Kari and sometimes with themselves alone. Played by Antoinette LaVecchia, these characters in their late 30s all come vividly alive before our eyes. She has as many physical postures as she does voices and faces. Her instant differentiation of them all -- male, female, married, single, lesbian, pathetic and sympathetic -- are beautifully drawn.
Sarah Kate Jackson as Kari has the most difficult role in terms of understanding and believability. A happily married bank employee who gave up a child out of wedlock and has never had another one, she works her way through two dozen attitudes about the man who got her pregnant and deserted her showing up at their reunion. She runs the gamut from insulted to passionate. Each turnaround leaves her facing a new direction in their relationship, and while some may be hard to believe, none of them are hard to understand.
As each new revelation reaches the surface, Kari becomes a more complicated individual. Jackson plays with simplicity and honesty, and every alteration in her character seems natural and inevitable. Even her final decision about her future seems oddly right, knowing what we now know about her life and her past.
Peter, as played by Jeremiah Wiggins, is a man tortured not by guilt so much as by a deep mistrust in his own strength and self-awareness. He has goals, set out directly in a few speeches in Act 1, that are achievable in a perfect world. Sadly he has never lived in such a place, and the Pavilion isn't exactly the right choice for resolving that search for perfection. Wiggins has a softness about his voice and demeanor that almost makes it impossible to imagine his character taking the actions that would have started the ball rolling toward this denouement. Nevertheless, he plays the pursuit of his dream with straightforwardness and presents a significant humility when all is said and done.
Debra Beach's set is visually perfect for this play, as is the effective lighting by Michael Giannitti. Barbara Bell's costumes could not have been better for her two principal players, and the single outfit worn by LaVecchia was generic enough to allow her all the latitude she needed to be everyone else. Jane Shaw's sound design work was sometimes confusing and too busy.
"The Pavilion" is an intriguing little drama about teenage mistakes coming home to roost 20 years later. Not exactly light summer fare, it makes a perfect statement of intent for a theater with a long history of interesting work: There will be good theater in Dorset.

"The Pavilion" plays through July 11 at the Dorset Theatre Festival, located at 104 Cheney Road in Dorset, Vt. For information and tickets, call the box office at 802-867-5777.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 7:32 AM | Permalink

"Red, White and Tuna" by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. Directed by Phil Rice. At the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

Part three of any trilogy sometimes leaves you wanting things you never get. The "Tuna" trilogy, which plays with more than 40 characters played by two men who make lightening-quick costume and wig changes, and also gender shots, come as close as you can get to total satisfaction.
Set in the third smallest town in Texas at no particular point in time, these three plays have lifted many a local playgoer out of the doldrums of season change into summer. The current production at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, New York is no exception to that simple rule.

It's a typical Fourth of July Tuna High School 10-year reunion (they only have one every 10 years) and the attendees include Amber, once Bernie, and Star, once Vernie, who approach the event with trepidation. They are joined by local theater director Joe Bob Lipsey, socialite Vera Carp, the Tastee Kreme Gals Helen Bedd and Inita Goodwin, radio personalities Arles and Thurston, and Didi Snavly, whose used gun shop provides comic ammunition for one of the lengthiest scenes in the show. Arles and Pearl are destined to marry but argue and call off the wedding. Didi's husband R.R. Snavly, missing for 1,999 days, returns unexpectedly on the eve of her divorce proceedings from some other galactic experience and the Rev. Spikes emerges from jail just in time to run from the law again.
In the hands of director Phil Rice and two excessively funny actors, Tom Frye and John Trainor, there is nothing that can mar the evening's fun. Together they have forged an unforgettable, never regrettable sojourn in the hot Texas sun, where 110 in the shade is normal, but it's all right because it's dry heat and even a honeymoon can turn into a chase of the chaste.
Frye has the most plastic face imaginable and he can make his characters, handsome, ugly, bizarre, distorted, feminine, animal, drunk or sober. When he plays the overwhelming squiffy Garland in Act Two you could split your sides with laughter. His various turns as Didi are delicious and his Vera Carp is perhaps his most genuinely played minor villainess. He has charm and a professional sensibility as Arles and as Petey the animal humanist he takes on the ultimate character role. It's great fun to watch him morph from one to another and back again. Great fun indeed.
Trainor is less plastic and more genetic in his roles. His face is less pliable, but his voices are fabulous. As sisters Pearl and Bertha, he couldn't be more different and yet more the same. He shows us the remarkable relationship and only playing them both simultaneously could make his performance more wonderful. Perhaps the funniest creation on the stage in this show is Joe Bob Lipsey, whose death wish turns into an extraordinary triumph at the annual picnic.
In this show, more time is spent by both actors in the female roles, or so it seems. Their scenes together seem to wander into the catty genre more often than not and even when both men are doing their genteel ladies acts there is a bit more substance than there is in some of the men.
The actors are aided immensely by some of the funniest costumes I've ever seen, designed to perfection by Michelle Bohn. Breasts are an issue and in a few cases issue commands from places you'd never expect. Abe Phelps has provided a wonderfully fluid set and Allen E. Phelps lighting helps to work the necessary magic in the changes of character from moment to moment. It's the sort of production where if someone screws up, the audience just finds it funnier than they did a moment earlier and the whole thing moves forward inexorably.

"Red, White and Tuna" plays through July 11 at the Theater Barn, located at 654 Route 20 in New Lebanon, N.Y. For information, schedules and tickets, call the box office at 518-794-8989 or visit theaterbarn.com.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 7:31 AM | Permalink