Peter Bergman Theater Reviews

"Dial 'M' For Murder"

2011-10-17T00:33:07Z

"Dial M for Murder" by Frederick Knott. Directed by Flo Hayle. At the Ghent Playhouse in Ghent, N.Y.

Margot Wendice believes she knows and understands her still youthful, tennis-playing, center-stage-addicted husband, Tony. She would defend him to the ends of the earth. She would even do this to Max Halliday, the young American man she loves as dearly as she once loved her husband. In Frederick Knott's play "Dial M For Murder" -- a true classic -- everyone has a motive for bringing a murder case to its conclusion, and no one more so than police Inspector Hubbard, who has seen the case through from investigation to death sentence. The true crime in this play is not the murder itself, nor the intended crime that is aborted; it is the deliberate obfuscation of the deepest motive of all: the need to be appreciated.
On stage now at the Ghent Playhouse, Knott's mystery hit (it played 552 performances in its initial Broadway run, inspired a Hitchcock film and has been restaged and refilmed more than two dozen times) is opening their 2011-12 season. Having seen the play just a few months ago at the Dorset Playhouse in Vermont with a brilliant cast and a director who brought new insights out of the script, it is difficult to see it again so soon and with a company of community players -- whose work I generally like -- doing somewhat less than the summer's professional company brought to their roles. This was inevitable.
Still, the show on stage in Ghent is engaging and endearing and the workings of a good script are still in evidence. For an audience that has never seen the play on stage, this is a well-wrought introduction the work. I feel somewhat out on a limb with someone just out of reach slowly but inexorably sawing my branch off the trunk. I will proceed to tell you what I saw, but that observation will obviously be colored.

]]> Let me start with Max, the American TV mystery writer, played here by the talented Paul Murphy. Tall, big-haired, bass-baritone Richard Derr played the part originally in New York and the film presented Robert Cummings as the romantic leading man. Murphy and Cummings have something in common here: Neither one succeeds in making the character believable and for the exact same reasons. Max's dialogue is strained and hard to take in the first act. He, a "typical" American of the 1950s, is not given a credible sensibility by the British author. As written his ego far outweighs his ability to express it. He messes up reality by overplaying his hand for Margot and both these actors fall into that trap. Making Max believable and likeable is the hardest task in this show, and Murphy does much better in the final scenes of the play than he does anywhere else and Cummings was in exactly that same position. Neither man has the physical charisma of Derr and it may have been that romantic impression that saved the actor in the role way back in 1952. Murphy, who has charm, doesn't physically bring that sensibility to the stage this time.
Jill Wanderman pulls Margot out of her British hat by ignoring the rigors of a recognizable accent and playing the role "American." She has a lovely voice that tends to be shrill when she plays anger or anxiety. She is not the romantic figure of a girl that Grace Kelly was and not even the exotic soul of the younger Gusti Huber. Instead she presents a wife in mid-marriage who has given glamor a break and taken on an upper middle-class appearance enhanced by the odd costumes designed by Lisa Baumbach. Wanderman's dresses don't seem to fit either her body or her character. There is no flow to them, nor to her nightdress. They only emphasize her plains, and not her sensuality. Her performance has moments of absolute sheen but those are surrounded by periods of utter commonality. She makes you wonder why Max has fallen for her, why Tony is jealous.
Tony (Maurice Evans on Broadway; Ray Milland in the movie) is played with a rigorous American fervor by Daniel Region. Like Murphy he seems to strain against the dialogue at times, although he does better throughout the play. He delivers no English accent, has no mannerisms that separate him from his American rival. He is believable, however, as a plotting scoundrel with an emotionless soul. He gives a Tony whose motives seem immediate and accessible, whose technique is solid and as well developed as his tennis backhand serve. Region is intriguing to watch. He is handsome and attractive for a moment, then moderately repulsive as his body and his face contort awkwardly. He lets his Tony struggle with this odd, Dickensian trait. As often as possible he plays against the scripts words and in the third act he adds a laughing persona that allows him to play out Tonys fantasy of controlling his world easily and without fear.
John Trainor brings a remarkably realistic British sensibility and accent to his performance of the police inspector. His years of experience in murder mysteries has given him a self-assurance in these roles that clearly shows in this play. Under Flo Hayle's directio,n he seems to be rushing through a few things that he would normally take slowly and deliberately and now and then he seemed to be fighting the directors need to move on. But even that helped to give his character edge and fire.
Neal Berntson does a nice job as Captain Lesgate, the reprobate who is caught in Tony Wendices murderous trap. He knows how to make sleazy acceptable and how to make pseudo-respectability into an uncomfortable box ripping at its seams. Paul Leyden makes his first exit as Thompson a memorable moment. Someone does nicely with voices.
Hayle's direction of the play includes a brief but highly effective choreographed murder, some devilishly tricky acrobatics on furniture, and a few less defined visuals that seem to be the result of not wanting to imitate the work of others. Unfortunately those are the moments we wait for: the shaft of light from the bedroom door; the staircase discovery; the telling looks between Margot and Max. The play suffers from a lack of these things. On the other side, she has given her Margot a reality that is hard to come by, has strengthened Lesgate's dignity, and taken a few new and interesting turns with the unrepentant Tony.
On balance, this production cannot compare with the one I saw in Vermont in July but it does factor favorably against the Hitchcock film. Tony's sense of humor is better here. Margot's near breakdown is broader and more realistic. Maxs realization of the plot is presented with greater simplicity and honesty on this stage. This will never be my favorite production of the play, but it is one that adds much to the long history of a very good play and that makes it worth the time and money. And a good play is always worth revisiting.

"Dial M For Murder" plays at the Ghent Playhouse, located just off Route 66 in Ghent, N.Y., through Oct. 30. For tickets and information, contact the box office at 518-392-6264.

"Night and Her Stars"

2011-10-01T13:40:37Z

"Night and Her Stars" by Richard Greenberg. Directed by Eric Peterson. At Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt.

How many men does it take to make a really good man? Start with intelligence, stir in intellect, add a bit of humility and a nattering of morality, throw in a pinch of humanity and heat up with handsome features, a good body and eloquent hair, and what do you have? The impossible dream, it would seem. In the 1950s, all of these elements existed, split among a dozen men who appeared as often as possible on televisions quiz shows. Some, like Herb Stempel, were unattractive savants with miserable lives but transforming brains, men who could remember everything and sort it out quickly from those steel trap brains of theirs. Others, like Charles Van Doren, could channel Don Juan, ignite cigarettes with only their smiles and still spout poetry and history and solve math problems with transcendent grace.
When the game show "Twenty-One" pitted these men against one another, sparks lit up the airwaves and the pulse of the nation speeded up for a while. But then it all changed. Stempel lost his agonizing attraction and Van Doren became a morning pedant. These two, who had combined passion and intelligence, charm and a touch of madness, almost made that historic single person in the minds and hearts of the American public. But when scandal broke around these shows and their own participation became a question mark in the press and in Congress, the world we knew changed drastically. So did the players.
Richard Greenberg's play "Night and Her Stars" deals with this situation. Never a playwright to avoid problems, the author of "Take Me Out," "The Velvet Hour," "Three Days of Rain" and "Eastern Standard" sets his sights on the conflicts within Stempel and Van Doren as well as the conflict between them that sparked so much of the trouble. In its current production at the Oldcastle Theatre Company's soon-to-be-lost home space in Bennington, Vt., an odd thing has happened to the play itself. Director Eric Peterson has created around an extraordinary cast a new problem -- focusing the play.

]]> From the final scene's sentimental look at lost idealism, we should be clearly dealing with the sadness and the destruction of Charles Van Doren, and the play should be giving us the costs of fame and fortune when a wholesome scholar betrays his background to become a media darling. However, through the performance of the actor playing Herb Stempel, the play has been transformed into a single-thread irony concerned with the valueless appropriation of a genius savant with personality disorders. This, and the strength it achieves in the superb performance by Matt Malloy as Stempel, throws the play into a careless careening imbalance. And somehow, that's just fine. As the characters are caught off-balance, so is the audience. Greenberg in the hands of Peterson has created something to talk about!
Peterson's entire cast takes on the play with verve and drive and a deep understanding of the flaws and the power each character is endowed with by the author. TV producer Dan Enright, who sometimes narrates the story unnecessarily, is played with weird mental lapses by Bill Tatum. If the character is written that way, it is a disconcerting technique. If the character is being played that way because Tatum doesn't have his lines down pat, it is upsetting. Either way, the man emerges as a person of interest who is struggling with his story and his part in it. This is fascinating and it enlarges the character of Enright, making him less manipulative and more a flawed man trying to protect his interests at whatever cost. Tatum plays to that image and makes it work.
As his partner in TV and crime, Richard Howe gets to be very New York Jewish as Al Freedman. He handles this well and keeps the voice of reason going throughout the show. Ron Nagle, in multiple roles including TV host Dave Garroway, shows off his abilities to transform himself nicely. Peter DArcy Langstaff does a fine job as Jack Barry and also plays a congressional investigator with a shadowy hauteur that seemed just right for the man and the time.
Melissa McCloud Herion plays her multiple characters very nicely and manages to imbue each one with enough new character traits to keep herself out of the play and her characters primary. Sophia Garder makes a personal triumph out of Toby Stempel, the sad, damaged wife of Herb. She has the quiet moments of the play and she sounds her own trumpet deep within them, just enough brass to hold the center of attention but not so much triple-tongue technique that she steals a scene from Malloy as her husband.
Shawn J. Davis and Matt Malloy are Charles and Herb. I find it hard to talk about one and not the other here. Davis makes nervousness into a one-act play but Malloy makes the word manic solid and whole and expressive. While Davis defines his Charles through facial expressions and subtle body language that seems to keep him permanently immobile yet flexible and loose, Malloy uses his right hand and his face and his chest to create a bipolar person whose incessant babble is nothing short of explosively brilliant. Malloy can make chatter into cacophony for one voice. Davis takes the half sentence to new heights of expressivity. Both men have such specific syndromes that when they both speak simultaneously late in the play it is as though that single man was being created in front of us; their individual traits disappear for a moment and a new personality emerges.
Playing Mark Van Doren, Charles' father, and a few insubstantial others, is Oldcastle regular Carleton Carpenter. Without him the final scene, the plays announced "coda," would be sad, but with him on a bench with Davis playing his son there is that transcendent miracle that the theater can provide: a scene so real and so human that the impulse to reach out and embrace both men is almost irresistible. In the film on this subject, Mark did not emerge as a very subtle, warm or human creature, but in the hands of the Abba-Dabba-Honeymoon actor the elder Van Doren is as close as we can come to the perfect man, the combination creature.
Kenneth Mooney's set and costumes work well for the play, and most of Keith Chapman's moody lighting does also. Eric Peterson has provided a delicate coda of his own to his 18-year residency in this theater (this is reportedly his final production there) and it's not one to miss.

"Night and Her Stars" plays at the Bennington Center for the Arts, Route 9 at Gypsy Lane in Bennington, Vt., through Oct. 9. For information and tickets, call the box office at 802-447-0564.

"War of the Worlds

2011-09-19T00:15:04Z

"War of the Worlds" by Howard Koch. Directed by Tony Simotes. At Shakespeare & Company.

On Oct. 30, 1938, Orson Welles Mercury Theater of the Air performed a new "smart" adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel "The War of the Worlds." What made it smart was that the scriptwriter Howard Koch had crafted a show that sounded like legitimate news bulletins and reportage before one character suddenly took over the narrative and told the story through to the end. What made it really smart -- smart as in hurt -- was that nearly half the nation tuned in late and didnt know they were hearing a play and they bought into the story, leaving it before the drama became a monodrama for Welles. Millions of Americans believed that Martians had landed outside the quaint and sleepy little town of Grovers Mill, N.J., and were taking down our country from their cylinder-shaped spacecraft.
Riots ensued. People went crazy. It would take a long time for the 48 states to recover from the trauma of an attack on our soil from outside the known world. By the time the nation was over its defeat, along came Pearl Harbor and the show seemed to be a prophetic glance into the future.
Now Shakespeare and Company is presenting what is touted as Howard Kochs' play about the play. In this new suspense-comedy-drama, a company of actors come together to ultimately produce this mind-shattering radio-play. These, however, are not Welles and company. That is something you have to know before you go. These are six actors on some other show doing their thing according to their scripts.
The other thing you need to know is that you won't really get the effect of this broadcast. Six actors can play a great many people but the can never, at least as written, understand the general alarm, the overwhelming panic that ensued. That cannot be conveyed in this form or format. That would be another play.
What you will come away with is an understanding about the art of listening. There are local jokes galore in the first half of the show and you don't want to miss them. There is a version of the actual radio show's opening moments and that is something you need to know is just part of the show. After all, the studio audience had to be brought along into the joke or conceit of the Koch original script. There was no retelling of the story. The short news items that interrupted the show in progress are given much as they were in 1938 and that slow and realistic warm-up is what made this show so dynamic, so effective.
Simotes has done a fine job of creating the working atmosphere of a radio studio and his actors are so used to working with a style of production that it is almost as though we have stepped back in time to 1938. There is a bustle and a swiftness that are all business here and that works beautifully. The women wear hats and gloves, the men are dapper with their vests and watch chains and coats thrown over shoulders. Simotes has a knack for this era and he plays all of his trump-cards perfectly.
The cast is equal to the task of perfect representation. Jonathan Croy is a perfectly wonderful Broadway and Film Star (all capitalized for strengths) who plays a recurring role on the mystery/soap opera that the show presents. As the show swings into the Welles event, Croy takes on a variety of personae that allow him full range for his abilities. He is crisp and dry, ever urbane as he swaggers into position to play a farmer from New Jersey. He is amply enthralling as an air force pilot. Not the usual broad comic in any of his roles here, Croy shows many sides of his interpretive skills and all to the good.

]]> Josh Aaron McCabe is urbane and slick as the actor who can also provide his own sound effects mid-speech. Many of the more treasured moments in this show belong to him. As the narrator/Orson Welles character of Professor Pierson, he brings that very special radio style into play when a tale-teller takes the microphone. As the host of the Jack Holloway Show, David Joseph brings many talents into the mix. He sings. Check. He is suave and handsome. Check. He is a matinee idol type. Check. He can improvise or seem to be just natural. Check. Sometimes he moved just south of reality when his style slipped into today rather than 1938, but these were small things and in the long run didn't make any difference to the enterprise.
Elizabeth Aspenlieder and Dana Harrison play a Vaudeville "Sister" Act who can sing, tap dance and act. Aspenlieder usually emerges the top player in these shows and she manages to impress once again as Dafla, who plays Carla. Her work throughout the show within a show and the show that frames the show is excellent, amusing and even a tad touching when Carla faces the monsters from the spaceship. Harrison plays a much broader range of characters and she makes them all extremely real. Her use of voice manipulation and accents lends a remarkable credence to Melindas radio abilities. Harrison, really, is one of the best actors in this piece as she takes on transformation after transformation without batting a lacquered eyelash.
Much of the credit for the believability of this play goes to Scott Renzoni as radio show host Bobby Ramiro. He literally does everything except lead the shows band and we suspect that somehow he is doing that as well. I don't think you will ever forget his Pyramus in this show, that's for certain. Croy's Thisbe may be inane but Renzoni's young lover tops him every time. If this show doesn't improve the possibilities for this actor with this company nothing ever will. He is capable, I fear, of performing this entire play as a one-man piece and we'd never know the difference.
The actors are given a marvelous shoulder up by Michael Pfeiffer playing the Foley Artist "Max Michaels." It's always wonderful to watch a sound man make his noises and know how much he means to the success of a show of this sort. Sadly, he isn't out front somewhere adjusting a few of the sound levels and balancing things a bit more. Get this man a good assistant!
Patrick Brennans set is spectacular and Kara D. Midlams costumes are absolutely right on the money. Stephen Ball does some odd things with lights but somehow they work out just fine. Bill Barclay has done everything he could do with period harmonies as the singing coach for people who just don't sing all that well.
"War of the Worlds" is not the usual October fare for the company. Their horror shows, or their Holmes plays, have always been chilling and there is some of that here, but the lightness of it and the radio show itself make this a different sort of evening. Simotes doesn't allow a few things, like the dropping of finished pages, which made radio so much fun to do, but he has provided his faithful audiences with a unique opportunity to drop into an environment that has pretty much ceased to exist today. That alone might be creepy enough to inspire the loyal, and even the newcomers, to turn up and enjoy the fine work this company is doing in every performance.

"War of the Worlds" plays at the Elayne P. Bernstein theater at Shakespeare and Company at 70 Walker S. in Lenox through Nov. 6. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-637-3353.

"Stones in His Pockets"

2011-09-11T23:34:08Z

"Stones In His Pockets" by Marie Jones. Directed by Phil Rice. At the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

Hollywood intrudes on many of us in strange and awful ways. In the play "Stones In His Pockets," it intrudes on a small town in Ireland to make a realistic drama about Irish landowners and the people affected by their intolerance, greed and prevarication. Using locals for "color" in the film, the filmmakers affect the townspeople in much the same way the film's characters affect the lives of the fictional folk around them. Life mimics art. Art realizes life.
"Don't we all dream?" one of the denizens demands of his friend. This is the question that truly invests this gigantic play for two actors with the unique combination of qualities that lets us laugh a little, cry a little and sigh a little for the loss of those individual qualities which separate the Irish folk from the rest of us. "Don't we all dream?" when asked demands an answer and no answer is sufficient, for naturally we all do as we must, but our dreams -- once at the surface for others to see and ridicule -- are almost never met with a necessary touch of reality.
Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn meet on the movie set in County Kerry. They are "extras" making 40 pounds a day. As they get to know one another better, their deeper secrets emerge in conversation and action. As so often happens in these two-handers, the actors eventually play about two dozen different characters, marked in this production by the changing of hats, which bring on altered voices and different stances. In the case of the production closing the season at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y. there couldn't be two better actors to face the task of creating a village and its interlopers than Matthew Daly and Trey Compton.

]]> Compton plays Jake, a native of the town seeking to satisfy a boyhood dream of being in a Hollywood film, and Daly is Charlie, a newcomer seeking a more permanent way into the professional world of movies. Their friendship is an uneasy one, particularly when an old friend of Jake's, Sean Harkin, whose reticence at involvement and his love of the land destroys his psyche, commits suicide. That off-stage death triggers the emotional emergence of a true character in Jake. His return from America becomes a non-incident; his devotion to a friend becomes the real burden of his life and Compton plays this aspect of Jake with a brilliant internal light.
Compton does the romance in this show with a simple sincerity that keeps laughter to a minimum and he underplays tragedy with an almost Shakespearean grace. He plays male and female roles in this play and there is less parody on his part than there is on Daly's. Compton is a subtle actor and he keeps the distinguishing aspects of his characters relatively clear from the outset. It's a very nice, professional performance by a talented young actor.
Daly is a master at character voices and physical transformations. His performance is almost classic radio acting, each of his characters presented with a unique and special sound. You can almost close your eyes and glory in his personality shifts. But you must watch Matthew Daly. His very good looks are often altered by the character he undertakes and his face and body shift into other gears, other places. As the movie star Carolyn Giovanni, he is a devastating parody of femininity, a woman who uses her sensual wiles and the color pink to entice, entrance and engage the men around her. As the film director his is decidedly phony European, pompous and crass. As the assistant director, Clem, Daly creates an Irishman who wishes he wasn't one, a professional who is too easily frustrated to sustain a mainstream career. If it weren't that Compton is good, the play would easily belong to Daly. With two actors whose styles are so different splitting the memorable moments and characterizations, the show is a dead heat in terms of the race to possession. A well-constructed play is given marvelous substance by two fine actors.
The play, well directed by the clever Phil Rice, ultimately solidifies the friendship of Charlie and Jake in their attempt to write their own collaborative screenplay about the making of the film they are working in. In 1996, when the play was written, this must have seemed like a great idea. In 2011 it feels old-hat, a device that should be rewritten to take these men somewhere else, somewhere where they can actually dream something new and different. Rice does everything he can do to keep the show a light and amusing evening, but the darkness that pervades the play makes it a much more successful drama than a comedy. Laugh-lines aside, this is a strong and determined piece of theater.
The physical production is one of the Phelps's best this season with an easy moveable set by Abe Phelps and lighting that highlights the poignant moments by Allen Phelps. Alyssa Coutourier's simple and easily altered costumes work well for the actors, her hats making the statements they need to make.
All in all, "Stones In His Pockets" is the Virginia Woolf of comedies. It says what needs to be said and then moves on, heading for the stream with the weightiness that it cannot shake off and the lilt that it cannot resist.

"Stones In His Pockets" plays at the Theater Barn on Route 20 west of New Lebanon, N.Y., on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Sept. 25. For information and reservations, call 518-794-8989 or theaterbarn.com.

"The Trial of Franklin Delano Roosevelt"

2011-09-04T18:58:55Z

"The Trial of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" by Edward Bernstein. Directed by Macey Levin.

Two different actors play Arthur Mandel, a Jewish tailor from Berlin whose life is inextricably entwined and complicated by the growth in power of the Nazi Party in the late 1930s. We meet him as an older man, already - and recently - dead. We find him as a young man about to fall in love. What the author makes manifestly clear is that these are the same man at two of the most important moments in his life. What we learn about him, eventually, in this play is that the decisions of the young man have affected the older man in strange ways.
In his later years, he has read the law and found a new vocation. That he hasn't had much practice in this profession doesn't deter him, once he reaches heaven, in pursuing his dream of prosecuting the man he officially blames for the death of his young wife during World War II and the deliberate omission of Jewish immigrants coming from a war-torn and overly anti-Semitic Europe. The man is former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR. Roosevelt has been something of an American God or icon. It's been hard to touch the man with polio who sacrificed his life for his country. Bernstein does the best he can to tarnish the holy-man image with this play, and that may be the single-most erratic problem with this show.

]]> The cast is very good, so the problem isn't that. The physical direction of the show is fine, depending upon where you are seated for the black-box-room presentation, which doesn't give the stage much orientation help nor the audience enough deliberate angle matching to prevent visuals from becoming a sore point. It could be that, but it isn't.
New Stage, that lovely and incredible live theater option at the movie complex on North Street in Pittsfield, is presenting this play developed in their spring workshop of new plays. In 12 scenes, we watch old Arthur play out his deepest desire, to put FDR on trial in heaven for his crimes against the Jewish people who were only interested in remaining alive. I have seen at least half a dozen plays in this flexible space and this is the first time I have ever had trouble seeing a show. This problem might well be laid at the feet of the director. He just didn't sit in enough seats with enough angles during rehearsals to know that this configuration was not necessarily the best.
The play begins with Mandel's funeral, continues in the anteroom of heaven and then moves back and forth between the young Arthur's meeting, wooing and winning Leah as his bride and his old-man anger being played on a cloud in a different world. It doesn't have the difficult charm of "Carousel," where the hero plays out his anger and disappointment with a "star-keeper" in a room in heaven. Here the old man is offered a multitude of options (too cute a scene to be wasted in a review) and he chooses to be the man he is rather than the man he was. This edge of age and knowledge provide him easy access to God, or Ged not to use his first name, and allow him to move forward with his heart-felt trial of the man he finds responsible for such personal loss.
There is an awkward side to the development of this play. Too often it is preachy and "educational" rather than being an insider's view of reality. Far too often we learn about activities instead of finding them within the dialogue. Too blatant can become too scholastic. Too hard can be perceived as too off-beat and where we want to feel the cathartic release of built-up tension, anger and humiliation we only find ourselves making mental notes about things to discuss later. Not that the compulsion to talk about the issues of a play after it ends is a bad thing. No, it is a good thing; it proves stimulation came from the play. But here, in this play, we discuss what we learned instead of what he understood, a subtle distinction, but a necessary one. We are in a theater, after all, and not a classroom.
Jeffrey David Kent and David Girard share the role of Arthur Mandel. Both are good, but Girard is better. He comes to the stage with a natural verve and enthusiasm while Kent presents a man whose natural instincts are being controlled by an outside force, the actor. During the trial, for instance, when Mandel is getting mad (we know this because God or Ged calls him on it) we only see outstretched arms and only hear a controlled voice. Kent doesn't allow himself to present with rage. Girard can and does when he needs to do so. It is his performance, with its grand glimpses into the past of Arthur, that makes the play work as well as it does. Kent needs to let loose and inhabit his role. Other than that, he performs well, each word is clear and noteworthy. But that isn't the performance he is capable of giving. That is it's twist-off cap.
Amanda Lederer does a beautiful job with the role Leah, Mandel's wife. She is tender and capricious, plays desperation beautifully and handles the despair of Leah in the concentration camp wonderfully. The play literally glows when she is on stage. In a very different way, Eileen Epperson makes the most of her role as God. It's not right to criticize God, so let me just say that Epperson can be my personal guide to God any time. It's a fine performance.
Fred Thaler is a fascinating choice for Roosevelt. He doesn't quite manage the accent and he never quite gets the swagger of a man in a wheelchair. But his former president turned defendant is a fascinating man. Again, with Roosevelt, the author feels the need to preach/teach rather than allowing the character to develop naturally in his own defense. Thaler ends up with a believable personage on the stage, he just doesn't make us think of FDR as he plays the role.
Andrew Joffe, who can play busy multiple roles, does so. Among his finest parts is the German solder Mütler, a sadistic man who enjoys the marginal tortures he inflicts on Leah. He is also a brilliant Breckenridge Long, assistant secretary of state in charge of visas. Likewise the divine Karen Lee has great fun with the heavenly interviewer, the German girl Lilly, the desperate Catcher who spies out Jews for the S.S. and is even a passable, passing-through Eleanor Roosevelt.
Juliana Haubrich provides visual settings that work in their simplicity, and the excellent costumes seem to have been provided by Robert Allen and Jasmine Gage. The lighting works for this production and has been designed by Benjamin Elliott.
Director Macey Levin has taken on a difficult play, one that uses stiff language, high-pressure teaching techniques and a lyrical romantic sensibility in a play that calls for more of some elements and much less of others. This is a play on the long voyage to another place and it needs support and response along the way. That's our job. Support new playwrights.

"The Trial of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" plays at New Stage Performing Arts Center through Sept. 18. For tickets and information call the box office at 413-418-0999.

"Birthday Boy"

2011-09-02T01:02:30Z

"Birthday Boy" by Chris Newbound. Directed by Wes Grantom. At Berkshire Theatre Festival.

At the Unicorn Theatre of Berkshire Theatre Festival, a new, locally grown play is being offered as an end-of-season production. It is a world premiere. As I've noted many times before this summer, world premieres are both risky and fun. We don't know what we'll get, even if we've been informed about the new play. We go expectantly, hoping for another major triumph. We probably pray a little, as well, pray for success and for a truly happy experience. To find a total reward is often much more difficult than we like to believe. More often we get a play like "Birthday Boy" - a great idea realized nicely to a particular point and then, well, not so much.
The basic problem with "Birthday Boy" is simple: there really is no play there, just an extended sketch, an idea that could play out in so many ways but instead replays itself constantly and leaves the audience with an ambiguous ending that merely stops, rather than ends, the play. The writing is lovely; it is poignant, funny, lyrical and dramatic. The characters are very interesting also: quirky, withdrawn, exuberant, humiliating, imaginative. The plot is simple and resolvable, but its structure, awkward and uneven, takes it down a lonely pathway to a brick wall. That will not do, Mr. Playwright.

]]> According to the program, this play has had at least five readings or workshops. I am told that it has grown from two characters to four characters. Those four are the right four, but it could use a fifth (odd numbers usually work better in relationship plays) to take it that big step upward into a drama with wit that effectively deals with injured relationships. For that is what we have here: a drama with wit that deals with injured relationships.
Matt and Arianne are married. They have two young kids. Their marriage is strong but it is dominated by the wife whose husband is somewhat cold, somewhat withdrawn, rather reluctant to express much to anyone else. Matt, after four months, finally meets a new colleague, Melora, whose own marital relations are strained by circumstances involving cancer, a brother-in-law's death, isolation and games-playing. These two are not compatible. Yet their attraction for one another is undeniable. When Arianne's student, Julian, pays an unanticipated visit to her at home and Matt doesn't show up for his own birthday party things change. . .or at least they should. It's a funny thing, but really, things don't. End of play.
Obviously there is much more to the play. But simply put this is what happens. Matt has a fantasy and then can't act upon it. Melora has one too, but she is even more retiring about all this than Matt. Arianne suffers a physical trauma and Julian won't go home. But he seemingly does for we never see him again and Matt and Arianne continue their half-romance marriage.
Matt is played by the very handsome, easy to look at James Ludwig. His character is so very withdrawn that his funny barbs sometimes get a snicker when a laugh is due them but his delivery as the character is so tight and limiting that this limits the reactions. This sort of delivery is perfect for Matt but Ludwig loses in the battle for recognition. He does so well by this character that the actor really does disappear and we're only left with his written ego, Matt. Ludwig must be an excellent actor to make this man seem so real, so accessible. He plays the subtext and the text, the super-ego and the ego. This is a very fine performance by a man on the verge of a major career on the stage.
His wife, Arianne, is played quite handsomely by Keira Naughton. An actress whose work has been sometimes wonderful, sometimes questionable, here she hits on all cylinders. She runs the gamut of emotions from A to Q - as far as the playwright will let her go in this script - and each step is characterized by control and emotional savvy and wit and personal authorship. Naughton really gets this woman and puts her on stage full-blown and in charge. When she loses control of her environment and her plans for it, she is a ballistic ball-of-fire ready to open up all cylinders and let fly. Arianne is sometimes hard to like, often difficult to love, but we never lose our respect for her and that is really something.
Her rival for Matt's attention is Melora, played with panache by Tara Franklin. In every role she has undertaken on these stages Franklin has proven herself to have every necessary emotion at her fingertips. Her portrayal here of a Holly Golightly wannabe is delightful. Her sense of esprit is light and airy and right on target. She manages the sometimes quixotic changes in her character with ease and makes it seem as though the playwright really knows his business. She has been trusted with the task of making odd stories seem real; she does it effectively. If only she had a play to play with and not a Saturday-Night sketch extended to a full evening to be saddled with instead.
Nick Dillenburg makes the most of his pivotal role as Julian. Devotion sits well on his face, hands, body and voice and he is quite believable as the love-struck student.
Director Wes Grantom has choreographed this show like a silent movie with visible stage-hands moving a lot of set pieces on and off the stage while the principal actors stand around in a limbo-light not quite finished with their scenes. There is a beauty in his vision as it is carried out by the actors and staff. He has, I am certain, helped the development of the characters but he has left in scripted anomalies that should have been addressed in rehearsal, things that might not strike you as odd or peculiar in a reading but which stand out awkwardly in the playing of the piece (One such instance is the lack of relationship of an actor to a prop, a sort of "which doesn't belong in this picture" sort of setup).
The quirky and distracting set is the work of Kenneth Grady Barker. The simple costumes are nicely executed to Charles Schoonmaker's designs. Derek Wright uses the theatrical lighting as though it was watercolor paints splashed on a heavy sheet of vellum.
Unique is the word for a world premiere. It is something to cherish in that it is something different. In this case there is a beautifully realized incomplete play that shows the playwright's talents and shortcomings equally well. It is an excellent showcase of many talents, and abilities, and it is, perhaps, the most important step on the journey to a major career. Only time will tell.

"Birthday Boy" plays at Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge through Sept. 3, then closes but will reopen on Sept. 29 and play through Oct. 16. For more information contact the box office at 413-298-5576.

"Red Hot Patriot"

2011-08-29T00:20:19Z

"Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins" by Margaret Engel and Allison Engel. Directed by Jenna Ware. At Shakespeare & Company.

Raised in Texas, died in Texas. That could encompass the life of Molly Ivins if she had not intruded on our national conscience through her skillful reportage, her brilliant and observant mind and her fine-old Texas-style use of humor and gall in calling a spade a spade and not meaning a black person.
After dubbing the recent President from Texas, during his former life as a Texas Governor, "Shrub," she commented on his role in Federal politics "however you put it, George W. Bush is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America." It was that sort of incisive and deliberate political writing that endeared Ivins to Americans well outside of her Texas haunts.
In a new play about the reporter and columnist, "Red Hot Patriot," we meet the woman herself toward the very end of her life. She is at her desk in the newspaper office trying to write a column about her father, a man whom she has been unable to fathom for her entire life. She has gotten down three sentences and is stumbling about the rest of it. A cancer survivor herself, she is being assaulted by news stories from her own personal history on the AP machine and each one inspires her chatter. It isn't until late in the one-act, 93 minute play that she realizes the awful truth about her own status. She has died. Even this doesn't stop her from laying down a few more insightful remarks and that, it seems to me, is true Molly Ivins.

]]> In this production, well directed by Jenna Ware on the Elayne P. Bernstein stage at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox Molly is played by company founder and goddess Tina Packer. It is hard to be too critical of Packer, who is a good actress who somewhat sacrificed that side of her career to run a large company that has given so much back to the community over the years. Her appearances in other works, recently, has helped to reinstate the actress-side of her work and her venturing into a character so completely American as Ivins is a risk a good actress should take on with panache. I cannot quibble too much with her accent. British overtakes Texan and the peculiarities of both coming out of one mouth is the result. You get used to the oddness of it quickly and the words she spouts take precedence. That's all you need to know about that aspect of her work.
In the attitude of the character she really ranks supreme. Her Molly has the swagger and joie that the real Ivins had. Her laughter is on target and her anger is imbued with the spirit of the real woman. She moves through the survey of Ivins' life as though truly reminiscing and not acting and that alone is a triumphant combination of talents. Packer gives the impression of having disappeared into Ivins and on those rare occasions when the actress is visible it really doesn't matter for it seems as though Molly has taken a deep breath, stepped back to take a look at herself and then decided to continue as though nothing has happened.
"Hate has taken over the conversation," she comments at one point in an open discussion about the state of American politics. It is a point of departure for the witty woman who turns the humorous tale of her life and her work into a personal polemic that is so real and genuine it almost becomes frightening. Therefore, be warned: you may find yourself challenged there in your seat in the audience. Molly Ivins, dead since 2007, may still be finding you out and holding you accountable for your thoughts, feelings and actions. When the play takes this turn, it is as though all hell has broken loose in the newsroom in Texas and, as with Hurricane Irene which was storming her way up the coast on the night I saw this play, you may find devastation all around you.
A comic diversion from the wit and wisdom of Ivins is provided in the semi-silent addition of a copy-boy who appears from time to time to provide Ivins with the latest Associated Press updates. He is played with style and humor by Harrison Wilken and his "heavenly messenger" is a fascinating aspect of the last fifteen minutes of the play.
This is a limited run and Packer is worth the time and effort of getting to Lenox to see the show. I didn't realize how much I've missed the commentary of Molly Ivins until I sat down to watch Packer in this play. What I know, now, is how pertinent she was and still is. That's all there is to say.

"Red Hot Patriot" plays in repertory at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare and Company on Kemble Street in Lenox through Sept. 4. For information and tickets go to their website at shakespeare.org or call the box office at 413-637-3353.

"The Drowsy Chaperone"

2011-08-28T00:33:34Z

"The Drowsy Chaperone," book by Bob Martin and Don McKellerson, music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. Directed by Bert Bernardi. At The Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

There's just too much fun taking place in New Lebanon these nights. The 2006 Broadway musical "The Drowsy Chaperone" - a musical within a play - has taken up residence in the region and the silliness and loveliness of this absurd, Tony Award-winning Canadian show is tickling the funny bone and assaulting audiences with luscious melodies, over-the-top lyrics and so much on-stage talent that humming is being heard on both sides of the Taconic range as late as midnight every night.

]]> It doesn't matter that the 1928 musical that is being conjured up in a small New York City apartment by Man in Chair is trite. He knows it's trite. Trite is just right when his mood goes decidedly 'blue' and he needs a dose of his favorite show to get through the long and lonely night. It doesn't matter that the songs have lyrics that are so forgettable when the music alone has the power to conjure up a mood. And the stars - there are loads of stars from the silent screen, from the Broadway scene, from streets both mean and rude. It's the attitude that counts, that sense that a musical can cure your ills, so much better than booze and pills, so much more than a few cheap thrills. Janet van de Graaff will marry Robert Martin. Trix, the aviatrix will play her part in the marriage vows plot and Mrs. Tottendale, the hostess, who cares a lot, will tolerate each guest, and for all the rest, there's the chaperone herself, Kitty the chorus-girl elf, two gangsters disguised and a Broadway producer along with a man who's a self-acclaimed seducer. That's the show, but it really is Man in Chair about whom we care.
Craig Treubert plays the role of Man in Chair. It is his journey we take as "folks in audience." (No, we're not named that in the program, but we could be.) Treubert plays a man who lives in a world of self-delusion. He cannot hide behind a facade. He is who and what he is and even if he won't define himself, or resign himself to being who he is, he still has a way out of those personal blues. Treubert manages to make all of this feel absolutely reasonable. His performance is much more involving than the original, Bob Martin, was allowed to be in the role. While existing outside the plot of the "show" the play is his alone and he handles it nicely.
The rest of the cast exist only as physicalizations of voices on a long-playing record of the old musical. They are sometimes exaggerated in their playing, sometimes genuinely touching. They are: Lara Hayhurst as Janet, Jerielle Morwitz as the Chaperone, Matthew Daly as Aldolpho, Allen Phelps as Feldzieg, Tom Garruto as Robert Martin, Amy Fiebke as Mrs. Tottendale, Nicole DiMattei as Kitty, Judah Frank and Trey Compton as the Gangsters, Keisha Gilles as Trix, Danny Blaylock as Underling, Ryan Halsaver as George. I'll try to do each of them justice.
Hayhurst is adorable. Her show-stopper "Show Off" fulfills its promise in her hands. Halsaver is delicious tapping his heart out and singing with large, broad gestures that deserve a larger stage. Blalock is fun as the servant who works his way up the social ladder. Morwitz is both glamorous and a vocal standout as the Chaperone and her comic skills are put to good use as well. Daly is a confection as he grinds, bumps and swirls his way about the stage in his best latin-lover role to date, a sugarplum in satin shirts come to life on the stage. Gilles sings her way into your heart as she marries the marriagable and pilots them all into the finale. Compton and Frank are triple-threat killers on the loose with song, dance and pastries to everyone's taste. Garruto does a fine job in the role of a bridegroom whose lips cannot stray too far from home and his dancing is lovely too. Fiebke is a confection in pink and fun to watch and listen to while DiMattei takes things to another level including the split-level with fun and a mischievous attitude. Phelps is mesmerizing, all the light on the stage bending in his direction as he sings and dances his heart out in a Toledo Surprise.
That's the cast.
Bert Bernardi turns in one of his finest combinations here as director and stager. The choreography is elaborate enough to make the musical numbers work and also to show the inspired imagination of Man in Chair who must imagine all of this from the sounds on the recording. As far as his direction of the play is concerned it seemed, watching the show, that much more time than is allowed in two-week stock theater had to have gone into this event. Period movement has been worked into the actors interpretations to perfection. Poses and attitudes are idealized accurately. Each part played by the list above seems to have been in the actors' experience for much much longer. In short, Bernardi has turned in a nearly perfect show for the Theater Barn and their audiences should understand how difficult that is in such a tight schedule.
Abe Phelps has reduced the large Broadway production nicely to fit on the New Lebanon stage and it all works. Alyssa Couturier has created an extraordinary pallette of colors in the costumes and, in addition to those, every appearance by Janet, in costumes by John White, is lovely. Janet may not "want to encore no more," but the designers have made it possible for her to change costumes more often than the rest of the company actually enter the stage. Allen Phelps has managed to light the show to a fare-thee-well while playing a principal role on stage. Where does this man find the time to do both jobs and still sell raffle tickets in the lobby?
If you haven't heard of "The Drowsy Chaperone" before it really doesn't matter. This is a musical treat, a large bon-bon you don't have to unwrap in your seat - it comes to you ready to consume care of the Theater Barn's producers. It has too short a run, for my money, and I may have to spend some to see it again while I can. I'll look for you at the theater.

"The Drowsy Chaperone" plays at the Theater Barn located at 654 Route 20, New Lebanon, N.Y., through Sept. 4. For information and tickets, call the box office at 518-794-8989.

"My Name is Asher Lev"

2011-08-26T12:51:52Z

"My Name is Asher Lev" by Aaron Posner based on the novel by Chaim Potok. Directed by Aaron Posner. At Barrington Stage Company.

In telling his own story, a man cannot be completely objective, no matter how hard he tries. An artist painting a revelatory picture knows that there are things not shown, emotions not expressed; even a "Guernica" leaves out something. For Asher Lev, an observant Jew, an artist, a son of his Hassidic community, truth is at war with desire and is constantly eating away at his heart. He has a gift. A gift that compels him to draw and which draws him away from study, from tradition, from the life his family would have him lead, is a dangerous thing. He want to control it but it is in control of him.
In a wrenching, heartbreaking play, "My Name is Asher Lev," the son grows into his own man and the man betrays the child of his parents. In order to nurture the gift that he has lived with from the age of five the child-man, wiser than his parents, learns that betrayal is inevitable and that his own life is what he risks when he becomes a man. In the Jewish tradition a Bar Mitzvah at age thirteen is the graduation of the child into that manhood and so it is with Asher Lev. His personal journey through that transition is what Barrington Stage Company is presenting at its Stage Two space in Pittsfield and audiences, if they're like the one I spent the evening with, are being moved to tears, sobs wracking their souls and bodies as they bear witness to this artistic Bar Mitzvah.

]]> Directed by the author Aaron Posner in the simplest of story-telling terms, this play is graced with the talents of three marvelous actors: Adam Green plays Asher, Daniel Cantor plays all of the other men in the story and Renata Friedman plays all of the women. Cantor is Aryeh Lev, Asher's father, a man opposed to his son's talents and abilities, a man who is humiliated by the concept of a son who is different. In this role Cantor is almost lyrically severe as his temper flares, as his temper cools, as his temper remains anything but indifferent.
As his own brother Yitzchok Cantor takes on a marvelously Al Jolsonesque manner playing a man whose sense of humor is tickled by a simple portrait of himself drawn by his nephew. As The Rebbe, he shows a side of wisdom that is unexpected and oddly heart-warming, but it is as the complete opposite of Aryeh, Jacob Kahn - an artist and a rebel - that Cantor truly shines. Kahn is old and as the play progresses grows older before our eyes. His strength in wisdom and capability is brilliantly shown through Cantor's interpretation.
Friedman is lovely and lyrical as Rachel, a young model whose nude posing is a problem for Asher Lev. This brief scene is a sharp and drastic change for the actress who spends most of the play as Rivkah Lev, Asher's mother. She also plays Anna Schaeffer, an art dealer whose gallery sponsors Asher. Anna is sharp, sophisticated and a dynamic beauty in Friedman's hands, another, more motherly contrast to Rivkah. Rivkah; haunted, human, warm and strict, loving, torn between her two men, husband and son, tormented by her losses, overcome and overwhelmed by the peculiarities of her position between them. Friedman uses all of these qualities and presents a woman so real she is painful to watch and to listen to at times. The depths to which she takes her character are so far-removed from the Brooklyn of her reality that she almost encourages you to take her in your arms and protect her from herself. A lovely and lyrical performance.
Green as Asher Lev makes a mitzvah, a miracle, a blessing out of his role. He plays the boy of 5, the boy of 6, the boy of 10 and 13, the man of that same age and the older man who must narrate his own story because only he can tell it. He plays a compulsive individual living in a world of conformity and regularity, a world of old eastern European values that cannot be considered modern or American. His "observant" Jew is being strangled by that need to conform when every fiber of his being is rebellious and so very strong he must be in pain without an outlet. Green, with a sweet face and a charming voice, makes off this clear without being obvious about it, without torturing his audience with his character's own ritual madness. In a not very subtle role, Green is subtle in his changes and his growth. He is most convincing when he isn't about convincing, but merely conveying information.
Posner keeps this show going at a remarkable pace. While Asher's growth into manhood is slow and gradual the play keeps us involved by moving us quickly and definitively into the next stage of his development. With the fairly quick-change characterizations of Friedman and Cantor, the play never has a dull moment and never moves too quickly for the audience to feel they have missed anything. He maintains that balance nicely in the writing and the staging and he has some help from his lighting designer, John Hoey, who uses the window structures of the set to keep things moving from place to place. One of Hoey's most illustrative moments is his lighting of Rivkah Lev as she sits huddled in the living room window ignoring everything around her. Designer and actress and director have created a haunting image there.
Daniel Conway's set is ideal for this design concept show, a single set that manages to be just right for every setting and the costumes by Olivera Gajic are excellent, helping to evolve characters perfectly.
"My Name is Asher Lev" is one of those incredible theatrical events that will never leave you. Ethel Merman in the final moments of "Gypsy" and Zero Mostel's inhuman transition in "Rhinoceros" and Angela Lansbury with her "Mame" trumpet entrance, Don Quixote's death scene in Richard Kiley's hands, and Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier standing off against one another on moral and religious issues in "Becket ," along with Gwen Verdon in her mini-dress in "Sweet Charity" all hunched over with the pain of love deserted in the park - these are theatrical moments that live forever in my memory - among others. Asher Lev's 90-minute confessional joins those other moments tonight.

"My Name is Asher Lev" plays through Sept. 11 at Barrington Stage Company's Stage Two at 36 Linden Street in Pittsfield. For information and tickets (get yours soon) call the box office at 413-236-8888.

"The Last Days of Mickey and Jean"

2011-08-26T12:47:22Z

"The Last Days of Mickey and Jean" by Richard Dresser. Directed by John Pietrowski. At Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vt.

The uneasy relationship shared by lovers Mickey and Jean, as witnessed by us in their Paris hotel room, is one of faithfulness and love colored by a shared guilt. Jean is not to be rushed, but when she is ready for something she is not to be dallied with either. She is a woman who knows how to live and when her longtime boyfriend doesn't care to share a moment with her she experiences it solo. She is tough. She is determined. And she has a few secrets she is only willing to share when she thinks she has nothing to lose.
Mickey's a man on the lam. He has nerves of steel wire drawn tight through years of experience in the Boston mob. He's a killer with 19 dead to answer for should anyone ask. His weakness is Jean and his weakness is drink and his weakness is other women, but mostly it is Jean, his one great love. In the comparative safety of a foreign country they live an uneasy day to day existence, not hiding in the shadows but not really exposed much to the light of day.

]]> This is a comedy, a romantic comedy, with twists and turns and just a hint of the life of James "Whitey" Bulger, who was captured recently at age 82 after 16 years in hiding with his girlfriend Catherine Greig. Like Jean, Catherine Greig refused to testify against her boyfriend. The play premiered in March of 2010. Timely, it preceded the arrest of Bulger and Greig by just 14 months. Life imitates art once again.
In the new Oldcastle Theatre Company production, Mickey is played by Duncan M. Rogers. His performance is delightfully edgey and clearly paranoiac. He moves with the sleek and clever motion of a panther, speaks with a decidedly South Boston accent and carries off his role with the charm of a snake-oil salesman on the pitch. As this "man in retirement" begins to reveal his true nature the comedy of the play goes dark but remarkably remains light. This is due, in no small measure, to the excellent consistency of the character as presented by Rogers.
Bev Sheehan embodies Jean perfectly. No longer young, her Jean is still a dynamic and attractive woman who can use her best features to her advantage. Whether charming a stranger or disarming Mickey, she brings forward the sometimes elusive personality of this character and leaves us wanting more of almost every moment she dominates. This actress is playing the ultimate actress, a woman in love with a man who will be everything he wants when it suits her own purposes and still serves his at the same time. She is complex and in a long confessional scene in the second half of the one-act show she manages to make her bad-girl secrets into some of the funniest and most charming bits of revelation.
The third actor in this play, Oliver Wadsworth, takes on several roles including the deceptive Bobby and the remarkable Tinsel. Bobby is Southie himself and much moreso than Mickey. He is so phoney you know he is real. As Tinsel, a French drag queen, he is almost more woman than man but never less man than when he is playing Bobby. In one of the funniest scenes in the play Tinsel confronts the others with the face of truth-telling that makes us choke back the laughter even as we understand that the lowest of the lowdown may be the finest of the finesse.
Director John Pietrowski handles all of this material with a careful and tender hand. He helps us see the love behind the obsessions that control Mickey and Jean. He helps his actors control compulsive behavior and still show us that harsh urgency that motivates both of them. It is wonderful work and should be seen to be appreciated.
Kenneth Mooney has created a fresh look at a Paris hotel room with his set and his costumes are just perfect for these characters. Jean's final dress is the ideal vision for the woman. In addition he has lit the show to keep things moving, keep things in place. The single vision of this designer works well for the play.
A lengthy single act of one hour and 21 minutes, it flows like a movie and seems a bit too short. Of course, whenever miscreants are caught and their flight aced, things feel the same way. Some realism in the predictions of this play is what has happened in the months between its first viewing and now and that alters things just a bit for the theater-goer in the know. Really, truly, it just makes it more interesting than ever.

"The Last Days of Mickey and Jean" plays at the Bennington Center for the Arts through Sept. 4. For information and tickets call the box office at (802) 447-0564.

"Carousel"

2011-08-21T01:51:14Z

"Carousel," book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, II, based on the play Liliom by Ferenc Molnar, music by Richard Rodgers. Directed by John Saunders. At the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y.

No one can ever doubt that "Carousel" is very good. At just under three hours, it is a musical that seems to fly by, taking no time at all. It's songs are marvelous and its storyline is compelling. Even though, due to length, its finest song has been removed from the score in every production I've seen in the past 15 years, the show and its characters are real and alive and potent.
The story of Billy Bigelow and his love for Julie Jordan is a classic. She is a strong-willed woman and he an obdurate and unfailing failure of a man. He has the makings of a fine person, but his own past won't let him move forward and upward in life. Circumstances control the outcome of his decisions. With Julie pregnant, he takes a step in the wrong direction to assure her future and it proves his undoing. In an afterlife that is startlingly contemporary, he discovers that his nature has no outlet (the missing song goes here and reaffirms his stand; his ego is greater than the sum of its parts), but he is given an opportunity to make right what he has left wrong. How he proceeds is what the story has been leading up to for over two and a half hours.
At the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, N.Y., young summer stock performers are doing a three-week run of this classic. They are joined on stage by a classic performer, Monica M. Wemitt, and the resultant show is special.

]]> Not that everyone cast is perfect in their roles, but the sum, again, is greater than anyone's egos. This is one of those almost perfect shows, written by a team that had mastered the form and would never again achieve the brilliance and scope of this score. Songs flow so easily into one another here that most of the titles are not used, not given or hinted at in the printed program. At times seemingly through-composed, at other times song, book, song, this show helped to open the way to the Sondheim musicals of the 1970s and 1980s, to the rock operas, to the modern musical, and it all happened in 1945.
Wemitt plays Nettie Fowler, aunt to Julie Jordan, protector to her and her child. She sings three of the best songs ever written and puts them over superbly. If this company has a resident star it is Wemitt. Her presence in this role lends a believability to the show as a whole and that is not something to be overlooked. Not the star part, it is the role that captures the most attention.
Her niece, Julie, is played by Alison Drew who has a lovely voice and who uses it wisely most of the time. Her interpretation of the role is a bit shallow and thin, but she makes the final scene into a thing of beauty as she shelters her daughter Louise, played by Amanda Myers. Principally a dance role, Louise is the catalyst to piece of mind for Drew's Julie. The two make the final musical chords of the show respectable as they watch the void that is Billy Bigelow ascend to heaven.
Billy is played by John Grieco. I went back and forth with his performance, buying it completely in the opening sequence, losing it in the scene that followed, then finding it again at Nettie Fowler's place, losing it in the island scene and wharf that follows it, finding it finally in the "Up There" sequence. His playing is erratic and his singing is also. Delivering a nice "Soliloquy" he destroys the reprise of "If I Loved You." I wanted to like him so much, but he didn't deliver enough solid performance.
Julie's friend Carrie Pipperidge suffered some of the same fate, although she became better and stronger in the second act and was amazingly moving in the death scene, bringing me and the folks around me to tears. Overall, this is a lovely performance by Victoria Broadhurst. Her swain, Enoch Snow, is delightfully played by Kevin Kelly whose work has often been a standout this season. Likewise the Jigger Craigin of Joshua Phan-Gruber was a pleasant surprise. Phan-Gruber really pulls off the mentally unstable morality of the character. In a role that can easily bump over the top, he is restrained and tolerable. It becomes easy to see why Billy trusts him most of the time.
Lauren French nearly became Mrs. Mullin, the owner of the Carousel. There was little of anything that came before this season in her performance here. She was sharp and mean-spirited and sexually fraught. She balanced these elements skillfully. And as the Heavenly Friend, Andy Geary made a symbolic figure into a solid man. He was most believable in this role which has stretched more experienced actors into caricature.
John Saunders has a genuine feeling for this musical. His staging was superb and clearly he put some time into his players moving them into difficult, though seemingly simple, characters. His choreographer, Kelly L. Shook, took some big chances with male dancers' feet and audience heads but kept things under control and produced some lively and stylish dances. There are two ballets, each as important as any song in the score, and her work in both was fine and sharp and clear and clean. Together Shook and Saunders have put a fine edition of this show onto the circular stage at the Mac.
Kevin Gleason's overly dense set does set the tone for the work, and Dale DiBernardo has provided period costumes that look right and still allow for movement and fluidity. Andrew Gmoser provides excellent lighting as usual. Kevin Finn and his trio at the keyboards and percussion produced excellent musical accompaniment, particularly difficult in the ballet scores, but terrifically rendered.
I've never understood why this show is named "Carousel" since so little of the action or the characters' world revolves around this particular item. Of course, remove the "l" and you have carouse, both meanings of the word, verb and noun, being played out before us on the stage. Still I don't think that was its author's intent. There is no better title, so go see "Carousel" while you can. You may come away feeling that perpetual motion of complete circles before the end of the show. I almost did.

"Carousel" plays at the Mac-Haydn Theatre at 1925 State Route 203 in Chatham, N.Y., through Sept. 4. For information and tickets, call the box office at 519-392-9292.

"The Game"

2011-08-21T01:45:42Z

"The Game," book and lyrics by Amy Powers and David Topchik, music by Megan Cavallari. Directed by Julianne Boyd. At Barrington Stage Company.

In 1782, French Artillery office Choderlos de Laclos published an epistolary novel that made his own nation shudder at its portrayal of immorality in the upper classes. Even so, it sold out its first printing, and much later, a copy, no title or author on its cover, was found in the personal collection of Marie Antoinette. An underground classic through the centuries it made its way back into the light of day in the mid-20th century when it took the world by storm. In the author's own original preface he wrote, "Several of the characters described by the author have such abominable morals that it is impossible to suppose they could have lived in our century - a century in which (as everyone knows) all men are worthy, and all women so modest and reserved." Was he serious? Or not?
The new musical based on his book, "Les Liaisons Dangereuse," titled "The Game," may help to answer that question.
Developed in the early part of this century at Barrington Stage Company by artistic director Julianne Boyd, the show has opened at their Pittsfield home as the final mainstage production of the 2011 season. Having seen the workshop production in 2003, I think that the piece has grown and changed over the years, or perhaps I have done the growing. I don't really know. What I do know is that in spite of the questionable morality of the people who occupy the world of this musical play, what I didn't enjoy then I do now. Perhaps we've all changed since then.

]]> Briefly, the story is this (and forgive the difficulty of the names -- they are French): Marquise de Merteuil and her close associate Vicomte de Valmont, once lovers and now friends, wager on the moral undoing of several people. Each has her or his reasons for the bet and for the goals of seduction. Each has people they hate or despise or dislike and the lives of these people are in the hands of the Marquise and Vicomte. They each achieve their nefarious sexual goals and each is taken down by their own actions.
In a musical, it is best to have at least one (if not two) person whom you like and essentially root for. In this show you start out hoping for the best for two young people caught up in the web of the Marquise, but by the end of the play you really couldn't care less about them. They have willingly given themselves up to the loose morality of the generation in which they live. Even a modest and traditionally pure and faithful wife is far too easily wooed into the world of easy virtue and so loses our respect and our prayers. With no one to root for, the show begins to lose its charm and its hold and the final result is an evening with wonderful talent exposed in roles that make us almost wish we had stayed home.
I'm no moralist. I'm not blameless in the errors of my own youthful exploits and adventures. I can understand and sympathize with what takes place here. However, this story is much more suited to a straight play, or even an opera where death and retribution to music is almost a requirement of the form. Nowhere on the program do I see a rating comparable to a PG-13 or an R the way you would in a film on this topic. Don't let that title fool you, folks; "The Game" is not a family show.
The score by Megan Cavallari and Amy Powers and David Topchik is melodious and relatively unremarkable. There are a few beautiful pieces that, post-show, don't linger in the brain or on the tongue. They vary in style from mock-period, to standard ballad, to operetta. The title song, which opens the plot point of the show, starts badly with a sung dialogue that would have been better spoken over the music until the refrain catches in the throat and demands to be sung. A trio, "Until Then," was a standout in the first act, as was the Marquise's solo, "Wanting Her More," which ends the first act and lets us see into the darkness and truth behind her beauty.
In the second act she brings down her cousin Cecile's sense of self-worth in the dynamic duet "They're Only Men." Valmont has the powerful solo "How Could I Dare?" in the second half of the show and his lady-love, Madame de Tourvel sings the extraordinary "My Sin" (not a song about perfume, but about the odor of passion) and final two duets "Victory is Mine" and "Finally, Finally" bring a new level of passion to the proceedings.
All of this included, the show is not emotionally rewarding for the audience. The show leaves its audience alienated and judgmental.
A beautiful and powerful Rachel York instills as much humanity as possible into the Marquise de Merteuil. She is stunning to look at and amazing to hear. It's the sort of performance that should win an award, for she makes her character's chilled heart and acidic soul into something worth watching. It isn't just her looks and her grace that does the trick here; it is an actor's gift that she brings to the stage. At her most sensual and appealing, she shows her devil's face to her victims and she makes that a treasurable moment each time.
Her Valmont is played by Graham Rowat, who is her equal in many things but who never shines out with that satanic power. Instead he is clearly a victim as much as he is a victimizer. We can never forget that his willingness to play the game of seduction, and then the game of war, is a game of his own choosing. Even so, Rowat at his most charming is disarming to both his victims and to his audience as well. He is very good at making everyone forget how besotted his character is of the woman behind the game.
Cecile is played by Sarah Stevens who looks young, and plays young nicely. Her singing is at its best in the middle range of her voice, for when she takes it up into her higher register she becomes shrill with a fast vibrato that is unpleasant to hear. In all, her performance is delightful, as is that of her swain, Chevalier Danceny, played to the enthusiastic hilt by Chris Peluso. Cecile's mother, Madame de Volanges is given a fascinating Elsa Lanchester quality by the excellent Christianne Tisdale.
Madame de Tourvel, the faithful wife who loses her soul to Valmont's wickedness, is beautifully played by Amy Decker, whose elegance and style deserves a much more beautiful name than just Amy Decker. Her combination of physical beauty and delicacy is very special indeed. Her lovely voice and her dramatic abilities just push her up additional notches. Here is a player with true star qualities.
And welcome back to Joy Franz, who played here in the early versions of the show. As Valmont's aunt she sings grandly and looks great. She is a joy indeed.
Julianne Boyd's production is special. She has clearly put into this production everything she has to give to such an endeavor and it shows. The sets designed by Michael Anania flow as she needs them to and the extraordinarily beautiful costumes by Jennifer Moeller aid in creating the perfect picture Boyd has seen in her mind and transferred to the stage for us to witness. Jeff Croiter and Grant Yeager have turned light into more than mere illumination. Ryan Winkles fight choreography for the duel in act two is special also. Boyd's assembled masses bring us into that class of French aristocracy in the late 18th century where reality and fiction blend into a world of their own. It is Laclos' land. It is the late-night hostel of Marie Antoinette. It is the musical place where no matter how much we dislike the people we see, the picture is still very nice.

"The Game" plays at the Barrington Stage Company's mainstage at 30 Union St. Pittsfield through Aug. 28. For information and tickets, call the box office at 413-236-8888.

"The Andrews Brothers"

2011-08-14T02:32:52Z

"The Andrews Brothers" by Roger Bean. Directed by Bert Bernardi. At the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y.

The new, silly, musical called "The Andrews Brothers" tells the story of three men unable to serve in the military, and also brothers, who work as stagehands for USO troops in the South Pacific. They meet a woman, Peggy, who is the opening act for the world famous Andrews Sisters, Patty, Laverne and Maxine, and they are smitten with her and she with them when they step in to perform backup for her set. The men, Patrick, Lawrence and Max, do harmony like their female counterparts and when a disaster strikes the three guys agree - reluctantly - to replace the disease-downed sisterly trio. Unfortunately they agree to do so disguised as the Andrews Sisters.
That's the plot and I'm not giving anything away with that summary for the title of the show tells you everything you need to know. This little four character musical is fast becoming the most produced show of the year with productions all over the map from San Diego to Chicago to New Lebanon, New York where I saw it. At the Theater Barn the production is geared to the talent on hand for the season and in some cases that's a good thing and in others it isn't.

]]> Least interesting in this play is Tom Garruto as Max. His big problem is his inability to genuinely sing. He belts out a tortured note, then another one and then a third. Finally his voice drifts into a semi-somnambulant state and the lovely trio harmony is lost forever, but at least we don't have to hear his loud voice dominate in that toneless way. In fact, it is the lack of harmony that drives this show downward. As nothing is made of that fact I can only conclude that in other productions elsewhere this is not the case.
Peggy and Patrick, played by Lara Hayhurst and Ryan Halsaver, duet sweetly on "On a Slow Boat to China" in the first act, establishing a romantic atmosphere that the two manage to keep going through Act Two. It is clear from the beginning of the show that Hayhurst's Peggy is really only interested in her career, but her minor swerve into romance is a lovely and touching aspect of the show. Hayhurst manages all this without a single double take, that exaggerated reaction that is ever so often jarring, and she wants to move on, but her deeper feelings hold her back. Hayhurst is especially wonderful in the "I Want to Linger" number, a classic Andrews Sisters song with an added voice for Peggy.
Halsaver's character is shy, stutters, takes odd jobs as a living billboard and he genuinely seems to have fun playing on stage. The actor here is able to condense a lot of feelings and transitions into his music and that's good. On the flip side, however, we'd love to see him take the pratfalls and endure the scorn and then move on to another town, another country. A little of him can go a long way. His voice is decent and his movement unextraordinary, yet he is fun to watch and to hear in this show.
Lara Hayhurst plays Peggy with joy, with verve and an extra-sensitive larynx and pharynx. She sings up a storm and makes the most of Peggy both before and during the show that gets performed in Act Two. It is surprising that her voice, unmiked, does not carry across the footlights. In fact, no one's does in this production.
Trey Compton plays Lawrence, the shortest and funniest Andrews. He plays the role with style and a true comic's use for simple props. His eyeglasses become one of the most overused of costume pieces and as they appear and disappear, as with this pieces of paper, each appearance is sweeter and funnier than the last. If there is a talent carrying this show it is Compton's.
Abe Phelps set is practical and provides just enough sense of place to make sense. Allen Phelps lighting employs the homespun and amateur effects that one would assume possible in the South Pacific in 1945. Jimmy Johansmeyer's costumes are both fitting and fun, particularly in the second act.
This is not director Bert Bernardi's best work. Whether or not this is due to the material or other factors is not known. I just look forward to more work from him in the future with a finer result.
Popular now, this show may not survive another decade. If the Andrews Sisters music is your cup of tea, see the show. You may occasionally wonder what happened to the melody line; you may suddenly suspect there's a harmony thief somewhere. You will hear some gems of the period. It may be enough just to have so many songs sung in a single evening. It may be.

"The Andrews Brothers" plays at the Theater Barn on Route 20 in New Lebanon, N.Y., through Aug. 21. For information and tickets, call the box office at 518-794-8989.

"Ten Cents a Dance"

2011-08-14T02:30:48Z

"Ten Cents a Dance," conceived and directed by John Doyle, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart. At Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Despair. Rejection. Angst. Bogus. Fury. Sour notes. Rage. Unmitigated. Bitterness. Misery. Refuse. Sorrow. Dissonance. Forlorn. Violence. Heartsick. Malevolence. Fetid. Pathetic. Ambush. Damage. Sham. Liability. Malignity. Two dozen words I have never used before in a review. I will not use them again in this one, but I thought they needed to be out there, just to set the proper mood.
"Ten Cents a Dance" is an 80-minute intermission-less (no one would come back in to the theater for a second act) musical tirade about absolutely nothing. It devalues itself almost from the beginning to something more reasonably stated as ha'penny a dance and - by the way - there is no dancing in this performance; I cannot call it a show. It isn't a show. It's a show-off sequence by a director who cannot create anything. John Doyle has been rewarded in the past for his "innovative" money-saving rapes of classic American musicals produced without orchestra and with his actors compelled to compensate for that by playing musical instruments, usually when they're not singing but not always, and generally but not always with a low level of competence. In the case of this Rodgers and Hart compilation, playing instruments isn't always the right way to go for these actors, especially when some of that musical stretching is incompetent and some of it is simply faked.

]]> Five women dressed in the same gown, but not quite the same gown, and wearing the same flame-thrower wig, but not quite the same wig, walk circles around a man who plays the piano in spite of himself, and in spite of the fact that there doesn't really seem to be a playable keyboard on his piano. The man likes to take long pauses and in them nothing happens. Then he takes off an article of clothing and nothing happens. Then the women walk circles around him again. Fascinating stuff, isn't it?
The man, played by Malcolm Gets, enters slowly and with emotional difficulty down a long circular staircase, eventually followed by the five women who can easily be mistaken for one another in spite of the fact that one of them is obviously Donna McKechnie in a role she should have reconsidered after the read-through, for this American musical star does not even have one song to perform. After the sturm-und-drang of Getss' character's inner torment, the canker on stage begins with some one-handed notes on the piano, a half lyric sung in a half-interested manner and the thing is on its way to its inexorable conclusion, halfway up the stairs. The Finish. Bravo. Ooops: sick encore. More bravo. Audiences, it seems, especially the staff of the theater in the rear rows, will stand up and cheer for almost anything just because it's over. I shouted to the woman two rows in front of me to sit back down, but she ignored me. Standing ovations, folks, need to be reserved for things that are phenomenally good, not things that have come to an end. Try to remember that the next time you are confronted by drek-- a Yiddish word meaning this presentation. And, by the way I counted seven people who pushed their way out of the center section of the orchestra during the show. When did you last see that happen in a Berkshire theater?
This season at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Artistic Director Jenny Gersten has managed to annihilate Tennessee Williams' masterpiece "A Streetcar Named Desire," to destroy the centuries-old impact of a door slam in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," and now to downgrade to the rank of amateur the brilliant songs of Rodgers and Hart in dismal arrangements by Mary-Mitchell Campbell. Thank God their season is over! She might have taken down the entire canon of theater. Not that she is alone in this quest. She has had the help of many who have allowed her fine old summer theater to become a laughing stock and a much-pitied venue.
Let me share with you the official public relations description of this show from the press release I have received no fewer than five times in the past two weeks: "Crooner Johnny wistfully recalls his lifelong love affair of chorus girl Miss Jones, who is embodied by five women, each portraying a different stage of her life. As Johnny and Miss Jones take 'Manhattan' under a 'Blue Moon' while 'Falling in Love with Love,' you can't help but think 'Isn't it Romantic?' -- even if sometimes 'The Lady is a Tramp.' These and so many other unforgettable songs -- filled with infatuation, longing and enchantment -- will sparkle like a glass of champagne on a sexy summer evening. 'All you need is a ticket, come on, big boy, ten cents a dance.'"
If anything other than some of those songs exist in this presentation on the Main Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, it would be considered a miracle. A. He doesn't croon. B. There is nothing wistful in this show. C. What love affair? Prove it! D. There are no different stages of her life portrayed; each woman is just a mirror of her other selves in some limbo somewhere in someone's rank imagination. E. No. Nothing here is romantic, including the dark, dreary, depressing arrangements of some of the best songs ever written. F. Sparkle? In the dimmest, drabest lighting possible? No. F. Sexy? Not in those dresses and not in that undershirt either. G. Ten cents? Make that change back in the hand, please.
Scott Pask designed the incredibly ridiculous set. Ann Hould-Ward embarrasses herself with the costumes. Jane Cox needs to go back to illumination school after this lighting plot and Dan Moses-Schreier, sound designer, needs to look at the pots on his board and decide which way is louder, which way is softer. Paul Huntley's weird wigs are not up to his usual standard and Mary-Mitchell Campbell plays a fine piano -- somewhere, I suppose.
The cast of women includes Diana DiMarzio, Lauren Molina, Jane Pfitsch, and Jessica Tyler Wright all of whom, clearly, have done what was asked of them. They can all relax again in two weeks when this is all over. This production in association with the McCarter Theatre Center will hopefully die here in Williamstown and never show its face in Princeton, N.J.
T.M.I.? Or not enough? Take the risk if you dare, but if anyone is organizing a protest march over the banal and base treatment of Rodgers and Hart, or the talented actors who have been set out before audiences only to lose their reputations and standing in their fans eyes or the fine playwrights whose works have been misrepresented this summer, let me know. I'll change my schedule and carry a banner.

"Ten Cents a Dance" plays in Williamstown at the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance through Aug. 28. You can look up the box office number yourself and, by the way, no production photos were made available by press night. Use your imagination.

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"

2011-08-12T02:44:53Z

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum," book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. At the Weston Playhouse.

With the Roman comedy, part farce and part burlesque, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum," songwriter Stephen Sondheim took an enormous step forward and a partial step backward. While still a student at Williams College, he wrote a musical version of the Roman play "The Frogs," which was destined to be performed at the indoor pool at Williams. Professionally he had written the lyrics for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy," two of the landmark musicals people still talk about and produce, both of them more than 50 years old and basically still new and fresh. In 1962, he brought the current show at the Weston Playhouse to the stage for the first time with a cast that included Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, David Burns and Ruth Kobart. They left indelible impressions on those who saw the show.

]]> What we have been discovering about "Funny Thing" is that it is as timeless as "West Side" and "Gypsy." Its story is delicious and the dialogue never grows old or tiresome. The songs are still fresh and make us laugh or want to hug someone just as much now as they did before, in the olden times. What is equally refreshing is watching and listening to audiences seeing this show today. Gone is the "need" for relevance, for psychological manifestations, for the importance of political correctness. In this show the men are horny and the women are in control. The central character is a manipulative devil who never gets his comeuppance, although he comes close to it. Disguise and laughter go hand in hand, just the way they used to and no one is killed, maimed or even reduced to a rubble pile of tears and remorse. We just have fun! Fun! What a concept! A musical that is just fun! I don't seem to be able to say that enough.
Up in Vermont, the director, Tim Fort, has assembled a cast and a production team that truly understand what fun is all about. A newly installed orchestra pit is the object of the overture and may include in all performances (seeing only one it's impossible to be certain) the participation of an audience member. Larry Pressgrove makes good use of this new space producing an even and balanced sound from his five-person pit orchestra. Above and behind is the intriguingly utilitarian set by Howard C. Jones that continually surprises as it lends itself to more and more farcical material. Nancy Leary provides an odd cross-over costume concept with bicycle pants, sneakers and togas mixed and matched while Michael Lincoln's lighting design is a broad-strokes style with slashes of color and occasionally epic shadows keeping the eye focused on specific spots on this theater's unusually small stage.
Fort's leading man, David Bonanno, is an excellent Pseudolus, although he started out seeming to be too young but quickly grew into the role. He has an exceptionally good singing voice, a face that seems to twist into a variety of shapes and feeling of flavors. He moves indelicately back and forth between vanilla and black raspberry...it's hard to explain, but he seems to be more a sensory experience in this role instead of just a person. There is a curious element to his work here that just produces an aura of ice-cream sundaes.
As his young charge, Hero, one of the oddest looking actors I've seen in the role, Logan Lipton, gives us a petulant young man with a perpetual pout who presents piquant yet precise postures as part of his acting technique. He poses, but is not a poseur; he is acting his role and that is the part of a young man out of step with his time and his needs trying to understand his own urges. He does it well and though it makes the role different, that difference is less shallow and more contemporary.
He loves Philia, played by Marissa McGowan who is not as silly and insipid an individual as we've seen before in this part. It amazes me to see how different a role can be when taken from another angle, and this Philia is both lovely (as she sings) and heroic, rather than lovely and colossally stupid. She sings beautifully.
Less successful for me was Sharon Wheatley as Domina, Hero's mother. Too young and attractive for the role, her makeup could make her more severe, but her emotional take on her second act song needs more variety and strength to make it really work for me. A case, perhaps, of indelible memories of the first Domina, Ruth Kobart.
Her husband is the charming and silly Geoffrey Wade. Their excellent neighbor is played by Munson Hicks who makes Erronius a charmer in spite of himself. Marcus Lycus, another neighbor, is played to the silly hilt by Allen Kendall. David Benoit is a peculiar choice for Miles Gloriosus, but he makes the role work and that is never easy when playing an egotistical S.O.B. He comes off as a man with charm, deeply hidden but still there.
Tom Aulino is a very funny and rather endearing Hysterium, the servant who cannot make anything work or anyone behave. The rest of the company fall in line with the principals and the show as a whole seems seamlessly perfect.
Last year's production in Williamstown seemed absolute and unbeatable. This year's Weston edition of the show seems marvelous and unbeatable. Where will I see this play next year and how will it seem - no answer and no need. If you require a bit of fun and a time out of the sun plop your buns down in Weston. It's a funny thing.

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum" plays at the Weston Playhouse on the town square in Weston, Vt., through Aug. 20. For information and tickets contact the box office at 802-824-5288.