Local theatre was...

Local theatre was an important aspect of our reporting on events that draw visitors to the Berkshires when we set up shop 20+ years ago. Since the passing in 2014 of Franny Hall, that desk remains empty (but available).

Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co.

August 25, 2012 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co. is a STUNNING production, one of the most exciting new plays to have premiered in a challenging Berkshire summer season. John Douglas Thompson, the play begins as solo performance. The time is March 1971 and Louis Armstrong, greatest jazz musician of the 20th century, is backstage at the Waldorf preparing for what may be his last performance. The man is aged and ill. As he sinks into a chair, he puts reaches not for his golden horn but gropes for his oxygen inhaler. Gradually, talking to himself he copes with his infirmities.

Thompson is Armstrong. And then, without warning he becomes Joe Glaser, his mob-connected manager, and tone and especially language with the F word entangled in most sentences and his over-bearing personality smashing through, rule the stage. Thompson is suddenly taller, dominating.

Then just as suddenly Glaser is gone. But one has feeling of two men on stzage. Yet on the stage is only Armstrong, limping, pill taking, trying to cope with the costume change required for the next Waldorf “set” for which he must leave at the end of this ninety minute play, which no longer seems just a play but an action in which we are involved. And to further complicate, but clearly easy to follow, a third character, Miles Davis appears on stage, briefly.

Armstrong does not play his golden horn. This is not a musical play in that sense, although it is a very musical play. One that manages to sweep us into Armstrong and the music with which he dominated his generation.

The simple set on which this magic takes place is the thrust stage, the only scenery the long back-wall mirror, the light bulbs that define it indicating character shifts. Various little groups of furniture compose the acting area. Simple but striking.

Thompson is so dynamically each character he assumes, one is at loss to find magic words to define his talent. Whatever it is, it is so mesmerizing that even if some audience members may feel shocked by language, or feel they should be, the final applause was so rapid that the audience was standing by the time the lights were back on.

This is an unusual play. About Louis Armstong. Some come because they at least remember he recorded Hello Dolly. Some come because they admire Thompson the actor. Whatever, the stage is steeped in talent. Love it or hate it. The experience is well worth it.

Review of The Tempest at Shakespeare and Company

July 28, 2012 Matinee reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

It is with joy that one can cheer Olympia Dukakis’ and Tony Simotes’ version of The Tempest now playing at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox. They have taken risks that could have been disastrous. These included not least the changing of the sex of the leading character, the time in which the events in the play occur moved to the 20th century, and the locale changed to a Mediterranean island. None of this mattered. Instead, for the play, it added only joy and deliverance. Anyone not familiar with Shakespeare’s original version could well have believed that the play was exactly as written and originally played.

As staged in its current version, the magic words are still there, the marvelously limned characters still speak them and the stage is awash with discovery and a strange joy. The setting is simple, the stage relatively bare, one tall bare tree sufficing for many glorious opportunities. Other slight bits were effortlessly risen from the floor or whirled in by the actors. Stage-filling musical numbers whirled in opposing groups with their agenda—demanding changes or plotting to recover territory lost.

In the midst of it all, the innocence of the juvenile love scene between Miranda (Merritt Janson) and Ferdinand (Ryan Winkles) was played with such naivete that one could literally feel behind it the will of Prospera (Olympia Dukakis) hoping it to evolve into the daughter she loved becoming Queen of Naples.

In costuming one delights in that of the anemic Caliban, (Rocco Sisto) his skin washed to baby-like contrast to that of any other on stage. Shakespeare gave him the (at times) the innocence of those marvelous lines, the isle full of noises of which he cried to dream again. Director Tony Simotes gave him the stage location from which to deliver them. Of such moments is a beautiful play made.

Music seemed to wash over the whole play, and the stage again and again was filled with groups of valiant women abetting Prospera or other groups plotting conquest and ruin.

Every actor could, and should be mentioned and praised and is so in this brief hurrah as is praise for those in the theatrical arts contributing to this inspired joyous production. Each could be singled out such as Ariel (Kristin Wold, light as a feather) or Gonzalo (Apollo Dukakis ever ready with sane, calm observation) or Jonathan Epstein as the uproarious Stephano, butler to the King of Naples (Thomas A. Rindge, a deserving loser.) These and more deserve mention.

As for Olympia Dukakis, she knew what she wanted the play to say and saw that the play and her lines said it with controlled intensity. Her mother love in which she told her daughter of her previous life vibrated through the play in all the scenes that followed. Musing on the play as he drove me home, my son remarked, “And to think that when it was played in Shakespeare’s day, if the character had been changed to Prospera, it would have been played by a man.” And that boggles the mind. Rejoice that in the current production we have Olivia Dukakis playing it.

A Thousand Clowns at Berkshire Theatre Festival

July 21, 2012 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Rarely can one say of a play that includes a cast of six that each character is perfectly cast and that zany as each role was, tore through the antics on stage with such brio that one loves him and is moved by his antics and his attempt not to accept but to cope with “reality.”

Director Kyle Fabel is responsible for the perfect casting, interweaving and maneuvering the marvelous actors who whirl through Herb Gardner’s A Thousand Clowns on the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Fitzpatrick stage, where a prat fall is nothing, only a prone position is an expectation.

The play is an endearing poignant comedy. Every character in it is real. And human. Flawed but hanging in. Agile, hysterical, trapped in situation and personality.

The plot centers around Murray (C J Wilson), a day dreamer who walks off his job as joke writer for for a kids TV show about a Chipmunk and in so doing risks losing custody of his young precocious nephew Nick (Russell Posner), and in come more clowns, the social workers to join those already on stage.

Murray who sets it all in motion keeps the plot a-boil with his dry humor, one liners, his over powering need to keep his apartment full of lovingly collected junk and his more over-powering love for his twelve year old nephew who has a few foibles of his own. He is trapped between his hate of sham and his love for others and is one hundred percent human.

Nephew Nick attempts to bring sanity into his uncle’s zany existence. It is he who attempts to blind-side the social workers, but Nick too has his problems trying to protect his uncle and be marching in that uncle’s zany band at the same time. In this cast he must be agile and resourceful and fills the bill.

As for the social workers, Sandra (Rachel Bay Jones) being female, feline and given to tears and agile with the movements of a household pet and James Barry as Albert, buttoned tight into his clothes and his life, provide grist for the hysteria mill.

In smaller roles Murray’s bother and agent Arnold (Andrew Polk) who attempts to introduce reality into Murray’s foibles but who is himself caught in the grubbing for money with awful TV mishmash, and especially Leo (Jordon Gelber) whom we first meet through his voice being thrown into a wastepaper basket. He has the awful physical girth to be terrifying as Chipmunk and is terrified of being drummed out of Murray’s life. This is a fun and funny play.

All of these magnificent actors hurtle physically through the events that occur during the mad house that this play concerns. The props alone must have kept half a dozen apprentices on hand every minute backstage. And the stage had to whirl back and forth as zanily as the plot, to a different locale, or just to a different décor as the romance came and went. It was as whirled about as often as the charactrs were staring at the ceiling.

This is a wonderful, hilarious play, beautifully presented; so glad I went!

A Chorus Line at BTF

July 7, 2012 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Berkshire Theatre Festival‘s production of A Chorus Line is a dynamic reenactment of its original performance that involves so many specialists, in the fields of orchestra, choreography, lights, sound, and costumes that we can merely list them and aver that they are all deserving of high praise.

This short speculation concerns the part played by Eric Hill as Director and what possibly was included in his involvement, and considers evidence of his working with the dancers in character interpretation. It also gives opportunity to discuss some of the scenes that moved me and to list a few names of performers whose work I admired.

The scenes chosen are ones in which a chorus member, desperate to be chosen, bares his soul, and in doing so makes one consider WHY these “children” for they are mainly still young, endure constant rejection at auditions as they try to hang onto a career choice that is perilous at best.

Asked to talk about themselves, they are confused, reluctant, rambling and avoiding, but in their self-confessions are woven into songs and dances that begin with childhood and move through growing as a struggling dancer. Nili Bassman as Cassie has a story that breaks the heart as she pleads for a chorus job, she who has been a star, a lead, demoting herself from past stardom no begging to be in the chorus line. She needs a job. She needs to eat. She knows the stardom is behind her.

Paul (Eddie Gutierrez) near the play’s end, brings into appalling focus how painfully and confusedly he has struggled with his sexual identity, especially in relation to his father, and his adolescence, and shares with us the moment when his father almost accepts him.

Sheila (Dana Winkler), Bebe (Julienna Katz) and Maggie (Karley Wilcocks) are fleet and lyrical and poignant in their memories of how it all began, when as tiny little girls they had fathers interested in their small ballerinas, and how “everything was beautiful at the ballet.”

In dance, song and story, the show is threaded with dancers who share their joys and dreams but let us realize, perhaps for the first time, how much it has cost them and how willingly they have sacrificed. The musical numbers that evolve from these confessions are as varied as the experiences, all choreographed with precision and style (or humor if needed). And, of course, this alerting the audience to a side of life in the chorus line that we possibly never considered, the sacrificial one, is important.

However the real joys of the play are the marvelous skills of the dancers, the musicians, and all who make this such a glorious evening at the theatre. And behind all that, the skills of the theatre artists who make it all possible. Go. And watch out for the hats. Because hats matter gloriously in what I think of as “the silver surprise” when we thought we had seen it all and were clapping furiously.

Review of The Importance of Being Earnest at Williamstown Theatre Festival

June 30, 2012 matinee reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest now playing at Williamstown Theatre Festival is a smashing success. Director David Hyde Pierce’s weaving the joys of Wilde’s one-liners with the accents of Damon Runyan’s mobsters in a delightful English setting (where in 1932 mob members have migrated to escape mob problems in the good old USA) works magnificently. And having the versatile and competent Tyne Daly play Lady Bracknell is icing on the cake. It is a role all the great 20th century English actresses have played to our enchantment.

Tyne Daly in a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Having given that glorious rave, one must admit that the first act was flat. The Wilde dialog was there but brought almost no laughs or response from the audience. The two male leads seemed underplayed and even the dominating entrance of Lady Bracknell and her daughter not enough. And then, after intermission, the curtain came up on the glories and praises that prompted the opening of this review.

The setting as in the script had changed to the country and the skies were blue and the roses blooming in the garden where Cecily (Helen Cespedes), spirited and delightful and very sure of herself, and Miss Prism (Mary Louise Burke), a zitsy family retainer, take the play immediately to its Wilde level where the pedantic clergyman Rev. Chasuble (Henery Stram) carries it along.

No sooner are he and Miss Prism gone, the stage is activated by the challenging arrival of Gwendolyn (Amy Spanger) to spar spiritedly with Cecily over who Earnest might love, only soon livened by Algernon (Louis Cancelmi) on a Bunbury trip, pretending to be John’s brother, to fall conveniently in love with Cecily. And of course suddenly levels are elevated further by the arrival of John Worthing, (Glenn Fitzgerald) dressed in deep mourning for a non-existent brother and, dynamic on his own turf, demanding Algernon leave.

Act 3 set inside the house at the country estate is even more dynamic and hectic. All the tangles of act 2 are resolved and the actors are all in splendid form. But the real glory of Act 3 is Tyne Daly. She dominates casually, it would seem, from her chair. But she has within her a heart of steel. She makes it look easy. That is her glory. It is nice to have her in the Berkshires.

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Review of King Lear at Shakespeare & Co.

June 24, 2012 2PM performance Reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

King Lear, playing through August 19 at Shakespeare and Co. under the direction of Rebecca Holderness, offers some surprises which will delight or confuse playgoers. One of the Bard’s longest tragedies, it has been slightly cut and plays in three hours keeping the double-edged plot intact.

In the opening scene of the play, Lear (Dennis Krausnick) banishes his only honest and loving daughter Cordelia (Kelly Galvin) and in a division of his kingdom gives all to his two deceitful and fawning daughters, Goneril (Corinna May) and Regan (Kristin Wold).

In the more prosaic subplot, the Earl of Glocester (Jonathan Croy) unwittingly banishes his loving and dutiful son Edgar (Ryan Winkles) and believes the lies his bastard son Edmund (Peter Macklin) tells him.

These two acts of the gullible old men are each fatal. Out of them grows the civil war in which both will die. The civil war that dominates much of the action introduces one of the major changes in the current presentation of the play. The action takes place not in ancient England, but in Russia in 1906, a time in which the Tsar was deposed and slain.

This change is marvelous in its own way in that it offers the costume designer (Govane Lohbauer) the opportunity to clothe the warring men in magnificent uniforms of contrasting colors, and to costume the women in furs, velvet gowns, and jewels. Set designer (Sandra Goldmark) will get mixed reviews.

The set is surreal with bare ladders, multiple small levels, a trap door, door outlines to signify indoor scenes, and great white curtains that are employed in various, and at times ingenious, ways. Again, something in this performance to love or be doubtful about. For this reviewer it did not work as Dover, especially in the heart-wrenching scene between blind Gloucester and his loyal, although banished, Edgar.

However at times the set was used delightfully. Kevin C. Coleman, as Lear’s Fool, used every inch of it in a will-o-the-wisp flitting up and about. And the curtains made even more devastating the scene of the blinding of Gloucester. There was even, in that anywhere set, room for stocks in which Kent, another trustee banished and played magnificently by Jonathan Epstein to be shackled.

Whatever audience members will make of the changes the most interesting to all will be the opportunity of experiencing the playing of Lear by Dennis Krausnick, who has in the last ten years of his busy theatrical life been working on developing his concept and acting style for the character of the king. (Radical changes in locale and time periods are often, indeed even this summer at other theatres, on display.)

Krausnick’s playing literally strips the king bare. The sad small line, “I pray you, undo this button” must be cut although even in its absence perhaps builds the interpretation. This production gives us a character with whom the actor has lived and thought for years. It is one conceived as a self-willed king of great strength but who in his dotage cannot cope with anger and frustration. For this reviewer the set did not give him enough for the storm scene and the marvelous lines in it. And one wanted more contact with the dying Cordelia, again perhaps the set?

Obviously this is an unusual Lear and one well worth seeing. It is studded with strong cast members, each moving with grace or treachery or malice. Holderness has at times made bold choices. And her play is well worth seeing; the interpretation of the role Krausnick plays is an unusually vigorous one.