Dave Read

June 26, 2008 performance reviewed by Edward McDonnell.

There are wonderful things inside Chris Van Allsburg’s head. Originally trained as a sculptor, he began illustrating and writing books. Since the 1979 release of The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, he has created fifteen others, including Jumanji, Ben’s Dream, The Wreck of the Zephyr, and The Polar Express. He has received numerous awards, including the Caldecott Honor Medal and the National Book Award.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick appeared in 1984. It consists of fourteen different drawings – moody, compelling, disturbing, shadowy – well, you decide: as countless middle school students and teachers can tell you, The Solutions of the Harris Burdicks are to be found inside the beholder’s head. The story goes: a man named Harris Burdicks brought these drawings to a publisher, then promised to return the following day with the stories that accompany them. He never came back. He was never seen again.

As presented in the Barrington Stage Company production, under the direction of Joe Calarco, these beguiling puzzles seize and hold the audience immediately. The pictures are brought to light one at a time along with fragments of stories spoken and sung by neighborhood residents. The first is that of an empty, massive hulk of a house and the night the light in the top floor went on. The mood is lightly suspenseful, foreboding, with music to match. There is no “horror” in the picture or the story; more of a campfire tone. Halloween is even mentioned.

Then the house flies away.

With the introduction of a supernatural element into what had been merely the beginnings of a shivery atmosphere, the play begins to move.

A boy skipping stones into a pond stands wondering as the pond skips a stone back to him.

A boy meets a wonderful girl and they raise a child, a wonderful happy boy named Archie.

Then, while the innocuous piano continues throughout, and we begin to feel acquainted with the decent but unremarkable side of these lives, the real horror comes, quietly, in the daytime, as real horror can when it wants to: just as we begin to know his uniqueness and childish zest for life, twelve-year-old Archie disappears.

In the neighborhood there is regret, suspicion, unspeakable pain.

The father of Archie’s playmate, overcome with paranoia and obsessively protective, lashes out at others, condemns himself.

We all eyeball the furtive loner, even as we enjoy his quirky song about the exterminator life.

There is a poignant scene where Molly, the little girl who knew Archie, plays with caterpillars alone and notes that “nobody smiles anymore.”

In scenes that follow, we have some hope for Archie, we watch some developments that bring up more mysteries, and reality continues to stretch, open and close. As whimsical and fantastic unfold alongside aching tragedy, a primary question might be, “Maurice Sendak meets Ted Bundy? Can they do this? Is this going to work?”

Suffice it to say that director Calarco, working at a perfect pace to maintain and intensify curiosity and allowing us to trust this peculiar material, does succeed.

His actors are all effective, individually and (more important) as a tight team. If there were a standout it might be Catherine Porter as the mother wrestling with the greatest loss imaginable, or Romain Fruge as the father who responds to it with emptiness.

Burdick is a one of a kind experience and very well worthwhile.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was developed in the BSC workshop a year ago.

July 5, 2008 performance (matinee) reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Williamstown Theatre’s new Artistic Director, Nicholas Martin, has opened the summer season on the Main stage with a knock-out production of She Loves Me that puts into play the absolutely marvelous stage-house of the theatre and all its equipment.

The vast height of the stage makes possible an on- stage orchestra up above the action taking place below. The revolving stage makes effortlessly possible the shifting setting of the numerous scnes especially that of the a perfume boutique in Budapest in 1934, (including exterior, interior (with front shop area, back shop area) while the rigging, far up in the fly area, supplies time changes from June to December as Fall leaves rain down or winter flurries fly.

And that is only the beginning. Windows descend from the fly area, partially masking the orchestra, but only putting them behind glass, for outdoor boutique scenes. And that revolving stage can also whirl in a night club. Other one-shot small scenes such as a hospital room (DR) or the heroine’s bedroom (in which of the funniest scenes of the play occurs) can erupt briefly from the wings before the revolving stage whirls us back to the boutique.

All these scenes are marvelously decorated and appointed by set designer James Noone, magnificently lit by Kenneth Rosenberg and Philip Rosenberg, and inhabited by a talented cast, joyously performing a little gem of a play.

She Loves Me is musical theatre at its best. And the actors, singers and dancers on the Williamtown stage for this performance are so perfectly cast, so buoyantly joyful in their production that a standing ovation at its ending seems scarcely adequate.

The plot seems on description harmlessly familiar and is deceptively so. The time is 1934 in Budapest (making it possible for Robert Morgan costume designer, on seemingly unlimited budget) to shine. Boutiques equate with richly garbed female customers expecting to be wooed by fawning clerks.

Among the fawning clerks are the shows leads, and their own concerns. Head clerk George Nowack (Brooks Ashmanskas , and new employee Amanda (Kate Baldwin) can’t stand each other in the flesh. However t hey are hopeful correspondents in an anonymous pen-pal venture.

This may sound like a familiar plot, but the antics that involve their non-meeting, disillusionment and eventual compatibility are anything but .

Their “romance” works itself out in a marvelously antic duet, “Where’s my Shoe” and culminates in George’s solo “She Loves Me” alone on a vast empty stage that he fills with wild action and dance interwoven with romantically gentle song. A bravo performance.

Jessica Stone as Ilona, head female clerk., is perhaps second female lead but vies as first with amazing solos in both acts. The store’s owner, Mr. Maraczek (Dick Latessa) and the wonderful bike-riding Arpad (Jeremy Berck) who rises from delivery boy to junior clerk Both inhabit their costumes and their roles with conviction. Jason Babinsky has a delightful solo as head waiter in a zany café scene in which too much occurs to be described but all of it choreographed .to perfection.

And then there are the five creatively inventive females who double in roles (and costumes) in and out of the entire play as customers and as femmes fatale in the café.

Musically the show provides solos, duets, quartets and big ensemble numbers. The one ending the second act includes the zaniest take off on the frantic activities of customers concerning the twelve days before Christmas, that is so delightful one wishes they could instantly repeat it so one could roar at it again.

Nicholas Martin, not only taking on the artistic director mantle this summer, has also found time to direct this delightful play. All in all a happy homecoming that bodes well for the summer of ’08 in Williamstown.

(Photo credit: T. Charles Erickson; used by permission of WTF.)

June 27, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Once again the intrepid Tina Packer has shown her ingenuity and originality in dealing with the Bard’s plays, and her staging of All’s Well That Ends Well now playing in repertory through August 31 at the Shakespeare and Co.’s Founders’ Theatre, Lenox, MA, has turned an ugly duckling into a swinging, singing swan.

(L-R) Virginia Ness,Peter Davenport, Grace Trull, Douglas Seldin, Brittany Morgan

All’s Well That Ends Well is one of Shakespeare’s problem plays in which the plot (as written) is a weak one, based on a saying that is ambivalent, at best. The audience is left to decide whether or not the marriage of the warring lovers can possibly “end well.” This production, through the skillful casting and playing of the two lovers, leaves no doubts.

Packer achieves her effects, not only by the skillful casting of all the talented members that make up her large cast, but by choosing to open the play in troubadour France. As written, the play has only one song, she and composer Bill Barclay have added fourteen more musical numbers performed by a five piece onstage orchestra, cast members, and often danced to choreography by Susan Dibble.

What is playing on stage at the Founders’ is indeed a musical version of a play by William Shakespeare.

The plot involves an unlikely pair of lovers. Helena (Kristin Villanueva) is a poor orphan living on the bounty of the Countess of Rossillion (Elizabeth Ingram) and secretly in love with the Countess’s son Bertram (Jason Asprey), who is socially far above her. However, she is determined, and when Bertram goes off to Paris and is welcomed into the court of the dying King (Timothy Douglas) Helena, who has learned medical lore from her recently deceased father, goes to Paris, cures the King and is offered one wish.

Of course the wish is for a husband. All the gallant blades of the French court are lined up for her choice, and she traverses the line (in couplets, otherwise rarely used in this play) politely rejecting all, until Bertram, accidentally in line, is chosen.

Bertram objects violently but is unable to convince the King to change his promise to Helena. An off stage wedding ensues. However, Bertram enters announcing his rejection of the match with words that will echo down through the events that make up the (improbable) events in the second half of the play.

Bertram will recognize the marriage only

“When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a ‘then’ I write ‘never.’ “

He then takes off for war in Florence and poor Helena returns to the Countess in the south of France.

However, Helena is determined, if temporarily saddened and almost defeated. She dons the ragged garb of beggar and goes off to Florence. There, aided and abetted by a group of local women, she accomplishes the seemingly impossible feats Bertram has insisted upon, and the play can end gaily, happily, jubilantly, and musically.

The cast is star studded with the handsome talented Asprey slipping easily in a role so different from his villainous but memorable one in “Much Ado About Nothing” or his recent brio one as Hamlet.

Ingram is convincing in her central and compassionate role, every gesture or vocal nuance so right. Villanueva, petite but feisty, is engaging as the loving but determined Helena, especially appealing in her vocal delivery and her dogged determination. Timothy Douglas as an ailing King of France, feebly sinking to a chair is, touchingly central.

In a large supporting role, that of Parolles, the cowardly foppish villain of the play, Kevin O”Donnell delights whenever on stage. While Brittany Morgan is appealing and graceful as Diana, playing the chief role of the women in Italy who come to Helena’s defense.

And then there is LAVACHE, (Nigel Gore) in a role that in Shakespeare was that of a clown in the Countess’ court. In Packer’s version, he is a world weary troubadour and present on stage much of the time, a key figure singing a plaintive solo, or boisterously performing in group numbers, the music mixing folk songs recalling Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or energetically employing the rest of the talented musicians in the on stage band. The music of varied moods accompanies original pieces moving the plot along as well of poems and lines from other Shakespeare plays.

Jacqueline Firkin’s countless costumes are color coordinated (everyone in black and white for a mourning time in the countess’s court; all rustic among the peasant women). Many cast members play several roles, and each dons several costumes. What a flurry that must cause backstage; during one song Asprey leaves the stage and keeps returning with suitable costume additions, all charming and delightful as are so many of the touches in this charming and captivating play.

The three different locales for the action are ably provided by Susan Zeeman Rogers towering flats that flip swiftly from the white walls and flowing curtains of the Countess country home to the elegance of the King of France’s throne room in Paris or the helter-skelter vivid colors of the Florence scenes.

What with Bertram escaping to the wars, much elegant sword play is in effect thanks to Ryan Winkles.

Everybody, including all those engaged in this saucy and surprising All’s Well deserves praise including names unmentioned but whose skills made it flourish so delightfully.

Tina Packer, Bill Barclay and all the rest have convincingly proved that All’s Well That Ends Well ends very well at the Founders’. Shakespeare should be pleased.

June 20, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Andres Cato’s intuitive direction of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, now playing engagingly at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, gives one the uncanny feeling that in a previous incarnation he moved in Shaw’s world, perhaps hoping he had been swapped in the cradle and was somehow Shaw’s son.

In each of the Shaw plays that Cato has recently directed at the BTF, including Heartbreak House, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, he has caught the precise tone that the wily playwright intended.

Candida, following close on the heels of Shaw’s Arms and a Man, is an uproarious comedy involving mad-house physical action that escalates to farcical levels for two and a half fast-paced, hilarious acts before, in mid-act three, the entire tone changes with the three main (warring) characters in a scene in which pace, tempo, and mood totally change and Shaw has his say about a world in which Ibsen’s Doll House is turned upside down.

The plot (the action of which all occurs on one day in the Victorian world of 1894) begins innocently enough. The Reverend James Morell, (Michael Gill) confident in his role as beloved pastor and orator awaits the return of his wife Candida (Jayne Atkinson) from a three week absence in the country, shared with her children and a shy young poet, Eugene Marchbanks (Finn Wittrock), whom they have both befriended.

The day should be a glorious one. It’s glories are soon shattered when the young poet as soon as he is alone with Morell announces his love for Candida. And challenges him for her. As the conflict escalates, Eugene demands that there must be a showdown in which Candida must choose, and Morell’s character is shaken by a situation he found at first ludicrous but which threatens his total confidence in his world.

And swirling through the day until the evening when matters finally can be faced and settled are the presence of Morell’s secretary Proserprine Garnett (Samantha Soule), madly and secretly in love with her employer, as lovingly typing his letters as she is helping wash up in the scullery.

Also erupting unexpectedly into the day is Candida’s father, a bombastic, unscrupulous businessman of incredible girth, Mr. Burgess (David Schramm), who is a trial run for a future Shaw creation – (Eliza’s father in Pygmalian) – who can only determine that all occupants of the house are mad and attempt to pacify them. Equally bewildered by the turbulence of the household, but adding to its confusion, is Reverend Alexander Mill (Jeremiah Wiggins), Morell’s assistant.

Central to all the confusion, and at first amused by it, eventually forced to indignantly end it, with a terse, “I am up for auction it seems,” is the suburb Candida, one of Shaw’s greatest creations (whom I am grateful, momentarily, to be old enough to have first seen played by Katherine Cornell). Atkinson embodies the role beautifully from her first glad return in act one to her bemused but half-hurt understanding the needs and strengths of both men as the play ends.

Gill evolves from the handsome, self-confident husband, into a shaken, but possibly a bit wiser husband whom one feels will recover once the shocking day is behind him. A subtly played role.

Miss Prossy, the adoring secretary, will appear on the morrow possibly with a hangover from the champagne that contributed to her marvelous character betrayal in act three.

And Eugene, the young poet, who after all is still only 18, will go off into the night secure in the belief that a genius such as he may be clumsy in the drawing room (in this production perching bird-like on furniture and swooping about a bit too unbelievably), but that the romance of being a poet is secure in his heart. For all his youth, he has been manly, if insecure, in drawing rooms, and vocally he has handled his side with conviction. Like a pre-Raphaelite hero, he vanishes into the night.

As for Candida’s father, he is a pompous windbag and will never change. He is as self-satisfied as we are in his handling of his role.

Hugh Landwehr has transformed the BTF stage into a handsome Victorian living room, one that scrupulously includes each item Shaw calls for, down to the child’s chair by the hearth (so needed for subtle character definition at times). And, of course, the wall paper is William Morris.

Olivera Gajic’s costumes are perfect from the high-top shoes of the men to the apron Candida dons to clean lamps.

We are so fortunate here in the Berkshires that the BTF brings Shaw to us and that in this summer of gasoline woes it is not necessary to drive to Canada for superb Shavian productions since we have a such joyous one here in our own backyard.