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Bloomsday – 2001 (June 16) review by Frances Benn Hall.

Ever since 1941, when Merce Cunningham gave me my first copy of Ulysses, I have celebrated Bloomsday. On June 16, 200l, my Irish luck placed me at the gala opening of Coriolanus in the new Founders’ Theatre at Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox, Mass.

Would that James Joyce and Stephen Daedalus could have shared my compact yet spacious box overlooking the stage, could have walked with me on the terrace at intermission, and that we could have toasted each other with champagne in the vaulted lobby at midnight.

The talented and indomitable Tina Packer has done it again. This production of Coriolanus, now running in the Elizabethan space carved miraculously from a former gymnasium, not only bent to her directorial skills but soared into history. June l6 long will be remembered by the enthusiastic audience fortunate enough to have shared this important moment.

Coriolanus last season in the Stables was hailed as one of the best in the company’s long history. The current Coriolanus, making dynamic use of the unusual possibilities the new theatre affords – with its boxes encircling the stage – brings spectators near the actors in intimate involvement and allows the director to use levels to enhance the stage picture and visually enrich the plot.

The balconies on four sides of the stage and the cushioned benches in the pit, flanked by wide aisles, not only bring the audience closer but permit the actors to perform on multiple levels.

Shakespeare knew, and Tina Packer knows, that even in the midst of tragedy there are diversions in which the groundlings in the pit (and we in a contemporary audience) can delight in a moment of laughter that releases us when tension has run high.

This production has them when suddenly actors become statues that can be lifted and moved. Moments later the mood can change dynamically as a battle is fought in slow motion that is a subtle and moving dance.

In the three-strand plot of this rarely produced tragedy, Coriolanus must cope with and eventually fail in three areas:

his dependence on his controlling mother’s goals for him,
• his love/hate relationship with a military rival,
• his over-weaning pride that makes him scorn the starving citizens of Rome.

The director’s notes in the program, summarizing the background and plot, make it well worth while to be in one’s seat ten minutes early to have time to read them. In this ensemble cast all roles are played with such skill and brio that all deserve praise. Outstanding in the longer roles are Dan McCleary (Coriolanus), Dennis Krausnick (Menenius), Jonathan Epstein (Aufidius), Elizabeth Ingram (Volumnai), and Lisa Wolpe (Tribune).

Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s most difficult roles. We cannot love him; his pride is too great, his trust too suspect, his final agony never becomes ours. Although alone on the stage at times, he rarely lets us share his thoughts. In the last act, his enemy and rival calls him “boy” and he is shocked almost into awareness. McCleary handles his complex role with skillful nuances of voice and action.

Krausnick’s Menenius is one of the surprising new developments in this season’s production. As Coriolanus’ aged patrician friend, he hones his character on the long belly anecdote in the first act and brings amazing comedy into the play as a whole. His versatility is apparent in his tragic rejection by his onetime protege, a moving scene wherein his vocal versatility is outstanding.

Jonathan Epstein has over the years become one of the company’s most praised and respected actors. As the hated rival warrior, his smallest gesture – the touch of a hand or the shading of a speech – can speak volumes. He also slips into a number of lesser roles brilliantly.

Elizabeth Ingram, as the widowed mother of Coriolanus, brings such skill and shading to the role that one cannot imagine it played otherwise. She has instilled such monstrous values into her son that tragedy is inevitable. She is a character we can hate and deplore. Her long role is pivotal and played with careful variations of voice, face and gesture – simply wonderful!

Lisa Wolpe as Tribune is dynamic. A moment later she is stately as Rome’s patron saint. She can also be a Roman beggar or an enemy soldier. Her voice is clear; all lines tellingly delivered.

Jack Lee (who alternates with Hachi Ramos as Coriolanus, young son) was charming in an early domestic scene in which he mimics his doting grandmother who is intent on ruining him as she has his father and is delighted to hear that he abuses butterflies.

Indeed the whole cast is splendid and each could be singled out for praise. Tene Carter is as compelling as Coriolanus’ meek, dutiful wife as she is when she sports a pitchfork as a starving citizen. Michael F. Toomey as tribune and the newcomers to the cast also serve it well.

The simple set, subtle lighting, and the background music composed by Tanglewood musicians all contribute to make this a rewarding evening in the theatre. Go. This opening is a significant one in Berkshire theatre history and bodes well for the future of Shakespeare & Co.. Perhaps a few Bloomsday’s from now we can glory in the opening production of the new Rose Theatre that is to bloom on the site.

July 5, 2001 performance, reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The Winter’s Tale has always been my favorite of the four late romances that round out Shakespeare’s career – plays in which the father/daughter and lost/found themes are so poignantly expressed. Unfortunately, the strange and uneven production that has opened at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, despite some strong performances, blurs and distorts the play’s beauty, making the seemingly miraculous reunions in Act V less than they deserve to be.

Although the final scene groped for closure, it could not recapture a mood and theme that Shakespeare has introduced in the opening scene: that of lamb-white innocence and necessary growth. The melodramatic acting of the first half of the play, followed by wild farce in the second half, prevent seemingly simple lines from ringing with the resonance they deserve – lines such as: “It is required you do awake your faith,” and “Dear life redeems you.”

The plot of the play is a simple one, though it spans a generation, and the two very different halves of it are linked by Time, a literal character which is evoked by the circling clock and moon of the setting – elaborate, variously and ingeniously lit, and often effective.

Leontes, King of Sicilia, suddenly “drinks the spider” and sees unreasoned and unmotivated jealousy at the bottom of his cup. He accuses his guest and longtime best friend, Polixenes, King of Bohemia, of being his wife’s lover and father of her unborn child. Polixenes, warned by Silician lord Camillo that Leontes seeks his death, flees to his own kingdom. The faithful wife Hermione is banished to a prison in which she bears an infant daughter. Paulina, a lady of the court, brings the child to Leontes, who orders it to be taken and abandoned on a distant shore and for his wife to stand trial before him.

Meanwhile, he sends to Delphi for an oracle, which is delivered in court at the climax of the play’s first half. The oracle’s voice of truth is: “Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the King shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.”

Leontes accepts the truth too late. His wife, who swoons and is carried out of her trial, is reported dead. So is his young son Mamillius, whose simple lines from an opening scene, “A sad tale’s best for winter,” ring hollowly. And the abandoned baby is beyond recall.

That these awful events can end in forgiveness, reconciliation, and joy, is a part of Shakespeare’s mature genius shown in this play. It was long considered unstagable and is now thought to be one of his masterpieces, requiring subtle staging and acting.

The second half of the play opens in Bohemia where the abandoned baby is found and raised to radiant girlhood by an old shepherd and his son. She is wooed and won by Florizel, son of Polioxenes. It is in this second part, at a joyous sheep-sheering party, that some of the most beautiful language of the play occur, and where Shakespeare’s themes are made clear in Perdita’s (the lost one literally) language of the flowers.

Much must yet occur in the plot before the young lovers, of course temporarily star-crossed by past events, can arrive and all can reach the safe haven of Sicilia where the final recognitions and reconciliations may take place. It is in this ending that Shakespeare shows his greatest skill as dramatist.

Though the father/daughter theme is a strong one, the wife/husband one overshadows it. Wisely he knows that both played onstage could diminish his climactic ending.

Perdita and Leones scene of recognition occurs off stage between scenes, told to us by others, not because Shakespeare could not write it differently but because he knew this way was better, leaving the stage clear for the final unfolding miracle of an ending.

This is a folk tale, full of good and evil, punishment and redemption. To love it, one must be willing to heed Coleridge and “suspend our disbelief.”

In this flawed production that leans too heavily on melodrama and farce, there are a number of strong and outstanding performances. Kate Burton (Hermione) creates an air of purity, a stillness about her always. She speaks her lines with beautiful calm dignity, capturing the poetry. Always central when on stage, she moves with grace, commanding our attention.

As Perdita, the lost one, Laura Benanti is excellently cast. She bears an uncanny resemblance to her mother when the two are reunited and plays appealingly in love scenes with Florizel (Joel de la Fuente). Her lines about the significance of flowers are a highlight of the sheep-sheering festival, delivered with simplicity, gaity, and poetry.

Her young lover, de la Fuente, is best in a marvelous speech in which he lists Perdita’s charms by comparing motion to stillness.

As lady friend to Hermione, Paulina (Kristine Nielson) manages in the chaos of the first act melodrama to stand firm and unmelodramatic. She adds fierce human dignity to the scenes in which she helps control events and through her strong and self-denying character plucks peace from adversity. That her personal loss, the husband Antigonus (Tom Bloom in a small but well played role) is unable to be rectified is one of the ironies for which there could be no balm. Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by bear.” could not be erased.

Dylan Baker as Camillo, the Sicilian lord who escapes to Bohemia with Polixenes, is stronger when not pushed into farce and he delivers his lines effectively.

Stephen DeRosa as the pickpocket rogue Autolycus delights the audience with his songs and antics. And the bevy of youngsters at the sheep-sheering dance with zest and brio.

The old shepherd (Bill Smitrovich) handles his short role well, making his character a believable one. The child Mamillius, (Torrey Brenner) is poignant in his first act scenes. However, his appearance at the play’s end, added a director’s touch that one doubts Shakespeare intended and which detracted, rather than enhanced, the total effect.

The Winter’s Tale is a delicately crafted play that depends on subtle handling At times this production touches it, at others obscures it. While the settings, costumes and lighting are extravagant and colorful, at times they distract and call attention to themselves rather than to the play they are meant to support.

The audience seemed pleased with the production and other reviewers may laud it. Perhaps some of the opening night’s excesses of melodrama and farce will be smoothed out. It is a beautiful play and one of the rewards of the evening was to see that Kate Burton can handle Shakespeare as well as she handles Ibsen. She never lets us down in Willimstown.

December 17, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

If you can get a ticket for A Christmas Carol, now playing on the Unicorn Stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival through December 30th, grab it! Now in its fifth season, and 5th version, Eric Hill, director, adapter, and a talented actor has so deeply developed his role as Scrooge that he totally inhabits it. And Charles Dickens’ tale of a miser redeemed becomes something much more.

The minute shades of the man have been given as much development as one would expect in a Shakespearean lead. Here, Dickens’ grouchy hero evolves into a giddy, benevolent human being.

Meanwhile, Hill has given his large and talented cast ample opportunities to develop and display their abilities in the gloomy, but elegant set, designed by Carl Sprague; a dour gray London replete with want and ignorance, but also with determination and even love and joy. The ninety minute production involves a cast of around thirty with ages ranging from eight upwards to experienced actors with impressive biographies. They all work seamlessly together, as the plot, whirled along by the supernatural characters who lead Scrooge through past, present, and future Christmases charm us with song, or sweep us into their grief.

The many scenes are woven together and the production flows effortlessly from the first solo by a young boy (whom I cannot identify from the program, but who sings beautifully) to the last moment when the child Tiny Tim (Henry Taylor) sends us home with the message: God bless us everyone.

Outstanding moments for me included: Bob Crachit’s grief when he returned from the cemetery of a future in which there was no longer Tiny Tim to carry on his shoulder, a role played by Mark E Rosenthal; Ralph Petrillo’s Ghost of Christmas Present, with his gusto and seeming indifference to the pitiful children Want and Ignorance; one of E. Gray Simons III several roles including that as co-director; Marley in chains grappling with Scrooge, wearing a marvelous costume by Jessica Risser Milne; the strong family sense of love in adversity in the Crachit home lead by mother Kim Taylor whose second twin, Rufus, was an appealing younger Scrooge in a flashback. The BTF is lucky to have another family group aboard in this show as the Stantons have been in the past.

The lights that fell like rain drops over the stage and ceiling at times, the sound brought in bells and gongs, the buoyant dances that accompanied the gay uplifting moments, proved that skilled theatre technicians were at work to ensure that the play ran smoothly and convincingly. It was clear that the actors loved what they were doing and wanted to please us.

All this contributed to a lovely feeling of joy and good will and of having been present at a performance well worth having shared, one in which Hill’s theatrical talents showed brightly. Go, and carry Tiny Tim’s wish with you out of the theatre: “God bless us every one.”

• Berkshire Theatre Festival
• PO Box 797, Stockbridge, MA 01262
• Box Office – 413-298-5576 ext. 33
• website: BerkshireTheatre.org

Sept. 24, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, on the schedule at Shakespeare and Co. through November 7, 2010, is on one level full of the suspense, intrigue, and slapstick one associates with a spoof of an Agatha Christie mystery. However, the play is a play within a play, set in a theatre and the two reviewers, sent to view and comment on it, are very much a part of the play itself. Indeed, it is their involvement with what occurs on the stage, complicated with their own self-doubts and angst that brings in an almost Beckett chill underlying the constant roars of laughter that the play evokes.

Everything in the play is in someway double. The set ting is the theatre in which we sit but it is also the vast drawing room of the lonely English house on the moors round which lurk both fog and murder. The reviewers are on the job. So are the actors. But we are in a weird world. A phone on stage may be ringing for a reviewer in the stalls.

The eight actors who thread through this maze of delight are delights in themselves. The zest into which they throw themselves is not only praiseworthy but almost beyond the call of duty. They not only move furniture with alacrity but at times hurl themselves down upon it, or under it or leap over it with such gusto that one feels that perhaps Stoppard should have included in his cast the call for “is there a doctor in the house?”

Director Croy has ssembled a talented and dedicated cast who throw themselves into every moment of the play—even the pauses. And there is a moment when a pause is part of the dialog!

Birdboot (Josh Aaron McCabe) and Moon (Enrico Spada) are both critics, though Spada is a much more uptight one, second string for his establishment. Birdboot is delightfully extravert and overbearing—until he finds himself involved in the plot and participating in the wildest card game ever staged. Moon’s insecurity pulls him, bow-tie and all,onto the stage and into the brooding side of the plot which among other things, involves the power (or lack of it) for the critic himself.

Of the manor’s inhabitants, my favorite had the fewest lines but the most hilarious gait. Meg O’Connor as Mrs Drudge, the help, and how she did help, poor thing…dusting away, hearing on the radio the dire news, dusting away, blindly adding sugar to the tea. She was perfect down to her sturdy, unshapely ankles.

Dana Harrison as Lady Cynthia swept about the manor in her slender beauty. The manor was her domain and she ruled it, with vigor and seductiveness. Men melted at her kisses. As well they might Despite her fragile beauty and great seductiveness, she moved furniture with swirling agility and leapt perilously over it at will.

Alexandra Lincoln, second female lead and not as femme fatale as Lady C, did get to have the lovely moment twice of bounding thru the French doors, center back with the lovely “tennis anyone´ moment. She also threw herself with gusto into the card games which wildly engaged anyone willing or unwilling to play. (She even had a lovely romantic name –-Felicity, though neither lucky in the play in either love or cards.)

Scott Renzoni as the Major Magnus was wheel chair bound until the plot released his scotch plaid, and he could unwind the even ancient plots and undo the past. David Joseph got to die twice as the mysterious stranger, Simon Gascoyne. And graced center stage dramatically.

Inspector Hound (Wolfe Coleman) had one of the lovely lines concerning his brief presence. When suggesting someone call the police and being informed he was the police, he responded, “Lucky I’m here.” Stoppard can do so much with three words!

By the end of the brief ninety minute play, all tangles were quickly unbound (or not). This is a charming play. Go.

August 2l, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Edward Albee as playwright has a delicate balance with me personally. I find his plays original, dynamic, hysterically funny and at the same time incredibly distressing. I am, personally, an Albee fan with reservations and a certain wariness in seeing one of his plays.

I discovered Albee, playwright quite by accident around 1960 when, living in Lenox, I drove down to Washington Square to meet my friend Alan Schneider (we both got our MA’s in theatre at U of Wisconsin) and see the Beckett he was directing that afternoon at the Provincetown Playhouse, Krapp’s Last Tape.

But Alan was more excited about the second half of the afternoon’s program which he had not directed. It was by an unknown young man who had never had a play produced in US but finally got one done in Germany (in German) and now it was being done here in the US. This was a young man to watch. His name was Edward Albee.

The play was The Zoo Story. In it we meet the first member of that dismally disoriented family into which Albee was disastrously adopted. And we get the first of those long monologs—the story of Jerry and the Dog. Ending in the death of the dog, just as in the play under current discussion, we get the story of Toby and the Cat.

The plot of A Delicate Balance again concerns a family loosely based on Albee bio. Tobias and Agnes (Jonathan Hogan and Maureen Anderman) a middle aged couple seem to have accepted their life in suburbia, although for the past thirty years have had separate rooms, and their privacy has been broken by the almost constant presence of Claire, (Lisa Emery) Agnes unmarried and drunken sister who quite literally lives with them.

Quite suddenly the domestic scene is again shattered by the sudden return of the thirty year old daughter of the marriage, Julia (Mia Barron) who is giving up on her fourth at tempt at marriage and coming back to the parental nest. Only to find out that out of the blue the best friends of the house owners, Tobias and Agnes, Edna and Harry (played by Mia Dillon and Keir Dullea) have suddenly appeared in their living room announcing that some unspecified and indescribable fear has suddenly made them terrified to remain at home and so naturally they have arrived at the home of their best friends whom they knew would be delighted to take them in. Which the startled but accommodating Tobias and Agnes do. And Julia can arrive and go into hysterics because someone is sleeping in her bedroom.

Thus the delicate balance between what one is willing to do for ones relatives as opposed to what one is willing to do for ones best friends begins early and wages its domestic war through a marvelously funny, despite grim forebodings, three acts until it reaches a somewhat sort of finish with all left standing to fight again.

The play is brilliantly written and demands big stars in at least 3 (or 4) of its roles, and equity stars for the lesser two roles of the two friends. The current production under the direction of David Auburn is fortunate in its casting and has made sure that the current production swirls with humor, into which at moments, scarey moments, pull us into realizing just how precarious most family situations have the potential for becoming.

The six characters are clearly defined. Agnes is the mother. She may not approve of what goes on, but on the surface she is quietly in control, although capable of raising her voice (but never her temper). When things get really snarled, she almost calmly takes her screaming daughter and leads her quietly up the stairs to bed in a room that must take the place of the one from which she is screaming about having been evicted. Agnes as calmly as though the naughty child would not eat her carrots. Anderman handles the role with finesse.

Hogan as Tobias is central to the sniping and snarling domestic brawl that swirls through his living room. He treads the delicate balance between total disfunction and some normalcy in his home. And quite suddenly, but perfectly calmly he sits alone in a chair DL and becomes spell-blindingly central as he insists on quiet while he tells us his Tale of the Cat. His facial expressions, small gestures of body language, his thirty years of separate bedrooms, are there in a fascinating manner. There is sniping and sniping.

Claire is so volatile that she is hard to describe. She is as central figure as her sister is and is permitted much more leeway in terms of motor abilities. Claire is scarcely ever still, even when sitting down, even when lying on the floor with a bottle on her belly, even when she is playing the according or untangling whirled up hair. She is what many would describe as a caution. And is one. Emery is well cast and snipes away with glee in her role. Her explanation as to why she is not “a” alcoholic is extremely funny as well as terrifying.

Harry and Edna are totally convincing in their smaller roles. Dullea takes over the bar with calm poise of “being in the living room where he deserves to be as best friend all these years with Tobias:” and what could be more natural? And Edna is so at home that she is considering redecorating some of the chairs, and why not indeed if she is to remain there for the rest of her life?

So, in my own delicate balance on Albee, I would vote on seeing this performance. It takes the Virginia W. family group (always somewhat autobiographical) further along by adding members to the mix and although the former is better known (probably because of the movie), A Delicate Balance is a better play and definitely worth seeing.