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July 29, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town shows us again, no matter how many times we have seen it, or even directed it, as I have, just why this play is important—especially when the play is presented in such a finely nuanced manner, faithful to the original, as with this Williamstown Theatre Festival production.

Wilder himself complained that critics had been led astray on his seeming innovations of a bare stage on which a chair could be a tombstone (an innovation only for American realist theatre; Yeats and French dramatists had been doing that for years).

For Wilder the importance was in the simple (but ever present references in the script to ther dimensions of time and space and the recurrent words “hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, pointing to the vastness in which the events of each life flowers, lives and dies. The universality and importance of each small event in which each life is lived.

It is that quality of the enormous vastness and the simple day to day life of ordinary people that is so honestly captured in the play Nicholas Martin, director, has led his talented cast through. An affirmation of life, presented faithfully, joyfully, and sadly—so gently but accurately presented that a line like ‘Where is my birthday girl?” can break the heart.

The cast is stellar on all counts. Campbell Scott as Stage Manager so audience friendly and confiding, strolling the stage casually, weaving it all into its daily patterns (with only a reminding concerning cell phones to jerks us mildly to recognition of an earlier time when that line was not in any life or script). Brie Larson, central in this “Emily’s Play.” Taking that lead only when her turn to do so and shining especially in her sudden outburst at the soda-fountain, and, of course in the final act when her awareness finally takes hold. Jessica Hecht and Dylan Baker as moving parents, but both too busy with their daily lives too much of the time to have time to really see the children they love fiercely but too seldom time for expressing to them.

And the whole Gibbs family into which Emily marries, too young, and is wrest from (again too young) Mrs. Gibbs (Becky Ann Baker) with her modest dream of Paris if she sells the antique never full-filled; Dr. Gibbs (John Rubinstein) opening the play with his delivery of the twin babies as life goes on. Will Rogers as the inarticulate baseball hero son in the Gibbs family who loves Emily so fervently. And Emma Rosenthal as daughter Rebecca who receives the letter with the address into infinity and has the short remarkable line “And it got here just the same!” .

Be assured the current Our Town at Williamstown Theatre Festival gets here all the same too. With more glories than can be praised in a short review. Wilder, who once long ago appeared as the stage manager at Williamstown, would be happy with his message ringing loud and clear, and grateful to all the others in this vast talented cast who made it possible. Go.

2010 Williamstown Theatre Festival schedule

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July 25, 2010 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

This reviewer is still reeling with delight and praise for Shakespeare and Co.’s production of The Winter’s Tale. Joyfully, the play continues through September 5, and I urge people of all ages, including children, to revel in this stream-lined production, running only three hours including one intermission.

The miracle that sets right in this production, the one problem that has for me plagued previously seen productions over the years, is making moving and believable the too-sudden jealousy of Leontes. Shakespeare moves swiftly into his plot, giving time for little motivation. The Queen (Elizabeth Aspenlieder) is so happily innocent in her playfulness and bountiful pregnancy.

Epstein and his insightful director, Kevin G. Coleman have solved this magnificently by inserting the presence of the child, son Maxmillius (played alternately by Parker Bell Devaney of Colin Young) into a strong bonding presence in Leontes’ world. If all else is false, surely, even fleeting doubts concerning this one link of love show his heart, his feeling for family. So he will banish all, but not the son. (Though fate will punish him even here: “A sad tale is best for Winter.”)

Shakespeare’s four final plays, the romances, all bear a strong shattered family, long lost but in the end reunited, a daughter–father relationship is always present, and the grace of the return of the long lost daughter may include a supposedly dead mother. (T. S. Eliot’s beautiful poem Marina celebrates such a moment in Pericles )

Just as Epstein, in both his unreasonable anger and repentance is moving and totally convincing, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, so charmingly radiant and ponderous in her pregnancy and innocence is so moving in the first act, suffering her indignities in dignity until they undo her literally, is in the play’s second half so magnificent in her immobility one cannot see her breathe, but one can and does weep.

If you want a plot outline, go early, the program includes one. Otherwise, if you do not know the play, understand only that the first act is tragedy in Sicily and the second mainly comedy in Bohemia – until it spills back into Sicily for a happy, weepy ending. It is a lovely play when played with the grace and joy of this production.

The star-studded cast is mainly of Shakespeare and Co. actors long with the company, and leads and second leads all played by Equity members, supported by fine actors, usually playing several roles and donning many costumes. Outstanding character interpretations include those of Jason Asprey as Autolycus, whose comic abilities, gestures, and gusto enliven Bohermia; Malcolm Ingram, comic old Shepherd or Gailor, stellar work; Johnny Lee Davenport, especially in king in his own land; Corinna May as the ever-faithful Paulina who never deserts and can work the occasional miracle. And Wolfe Coleman, Ryan Winkles, Justin Aaron McCabe and Kelly Galvin are outstanding in supporting roles

I always approach this play with worry, having never quite found it to work. This production does. So beautifully that all I can really say is, Go, it should delight.

July 17, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The Berkshires have been rocking with all sorts of humor this summer, and for a very special kind, done by six versatile actors, one need go no further than to the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, where Ferenc Molnar’s wickedly wicked The Guardsman tops the BTF schedule through July 31, 2010.

All the actors are not only accomplished actors in their own rights, but in this play they get to play actors being actors in a situation that lets them soar into flights of theatrical extrvagance that involve not only stunning costumes (David Murin) but employing nuanced pauses, split-second timing, and extravagant gestures of flamboyance or ennui.

The plot conerns An Actor (Michael Gill) who, doubting his wife’s fidelity, creates a dashing character of a Russion guardsman in which to parade past her window and entice her to an assignation to prove his mistrust of her. The wife (Jayne Atkinson) is also An Actess, and therein lies the dashing hero’s downfall. Two can play at this game, and they do.

The marital pursuit to enwrap involves three scenes, meticulously and lavishly designed by Alexander Dodge – the three acts opening and closing with the opulent living room, over-decorated with painting from floor to ceiling, cut flowers, grand piano, where The Actress can play a bit of Chopin swooningly or nostalgically, and photos and trunks for traveling actor gear when needed.

But the attempted seduction occurs at the opera in a box and opulent anteroom, which is the scene for act II before their return full circle to their own apartment where the plot can unwind. Despite the two intermissions the play os briskly and rewardingly presented in less than three hours and seems shorter.

All six of the actore (lower case) are TALENTED ACTORS, all working in unison in a manner that is a joy to behold. Director John Rando has done them and himself proud.

The Guardsman began its American career in 1924 in Manhattan and is remembered as the play in which for the first time the Lunts played opposite each other and decided to be husband/wife team for the rest of their lives.

Atkinson and Gill are also a married duo who seem to know so much about each other that they act off each in an instinctive way. In some way each seems attempting to overtop the line delivered by the other, with one laugh evoking another.

Atakinson also has brilliantly funny scenes with Mama (Mary Louise Wilson) and Liesel, the maid (Tara Franklin) in which the other two women aid and abet in her chicanery. Mama has been with the Actress for years, coping with her moods. THe young maid has been with her long enough to have learned all the tricks of her mistress and connives gaily with her. Franklin is especially adept in creating a maid character completely different from that in which she shone last season at BTF in Ghosts.

In tribute to their starring co-ators, Richard Euston and Stephen DeRosa each takes on two minor but significant roles. Euston as The Critic shines especially in the first act in a long scene with the Actor in which he inhabits a chair with bodily movements so bizarre and lithe he has to be seen and cheered. DeRosa is at his best as A Creditor, haggling for an unpaid costume bill for the magnificient costume in which THe Actor woos his own wife.

This is a deligtful play in which the Lunts, starring the first time in duo roles, were speeded on a long career as co-stars. One could hope that the futures of these actors, already well on the way, will continue too with such challenges and glory.

This play is a six-star winner!

July 9. 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

He’s done it again! John Douglas Thompson has once again, at his early age, created a role that only enhances his reputation as one of the greatest actors of Shakespeare in modern times (easily vying with Gielgud and Olivier) but outstripping them. His performanc in the role of Richard III at Shakespeare and Co., under the insightful direction of Jonathan Croy, brings to the stage the most original and mercurial character of Richard that will for many in the audience be long remembered as a touch-stone with which to compare any Richards they may see in the future.

The play is the most popular of Shakespeare’s histories and the playing of the lead character, a villain to outdo all villains, even Shakespeare’s own, brings engaging challenges.

I have over many years pursued Richard wherever I could find him; travelling to Shakespeare theatres at Stratford, Connecticut as well as that on the Avon River in England, and in Stratford, Ontario. No Richard, for me, has ever moved me to such depths of admiration. This is personal and strong praise, and this production and its star-studded cast will draw praise from critics far more astute than I. Be assured that it deserves their approval.

I advise you to go a bit early and read the note on fugal form in the program which will inform you that this take on Richard and the whole play is a unique one. You then will not wonder (and later marvel) as the first act proceeds, to see how Richard cloaks his hostility and ambition in what seems an over-playing of an almost stock character buffoon, that at times is hilarious, cloaking the intentions that lie beneath it.

Much of the first act evokes laughter, high paced activity that even rises to the point of audience participation in shenanigans and much racing up and down aisles. One wonders how can this play, this Richard lll, reach its intended end – one foreseen in the opening lines of the play because of where the character plays them.

After a danced introduction to the play as a whole, the stage empties and the slumped figure of Richard, who has lain there—down stage center—rolls over and lying there faces the audience with those famous opening lines: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.” His lines not only dismissing the dancers and gaiety but his own bitterness toward the brother who sits on the throne that he yearns for.

The stage position also affirms the one that we, the audience, know he will occupy, defeated and dying at the play’s end – lying again down stage center. This seemingly small bit of direction, makes possible what at times seems impossible, the arc that Richard will carve through the play to reach that ending. One in which we feel pity and a strange compassion for a bitter, crippled, unloved man who at least had feelings for England if none for anyone else.

The magical side of the staging and acting of this play includes in the first act scenes of serious dramatic intensity involving those who living in an England where finally the last rose of the “war of the roses” has been picked, but an England in which Shakespeare brings to his stage The Women.

Although the play has been streamlined, the strong group of women who bring their bitterness into the present, have been played with dramatic intensity. These roles too are ones women actors vie for. Here they are played with bitter brilliance. They have lost sons and the sons of sons to the wars. They have fought more than women of their day often could fight for the crown for a husband, a son, even in the case of mad Margaret, for the throne itself. They have all lost and will lose again. But their voices are loud in condemning their abuse and grievances.

Most outstanding is Elizabeth Ingram as mad Margaret, aged widow of the dead Henry VI from whom the throne, which even she tried to personally climb, has been filled by the weak Edward. Ingram not only speaks beautifully but she sweeps onto the stage with commanding presence, making all before her quail and retreat. (Shakespeare was cavalier with time and adds Margaret to his cast although she was long dead by the time the events in the play occur. However she adds significant power to the themes of women and children sacrificed to the struggles for the throne of England.)

Annette Miller, mother of the weak ruling son Edward who occupies the throne in the troubled aftermath of the end of the York/Lancaster struggles, is also imposing. She is also mother of the doomed Clarence, and of the physically repulsive, even to her, crippled Richard. As mother and grandmother to a host of others, she brings her concerns for family onto the stage with a defiance of her own.

As Elizabeth, wife of the reigning queen, but with children not only from her current marriage, children who will die in the tower (the little princes who break our hearts) but children from a previous marriage, Tod Randolph has more involved plot agenda. Her best scene, one demanding greatest skills is in Act 2 when Richard forces her into sacrificing her daughter Elizabeth to be his wife. (In act one Richard has wooed and seemingly impossibly won a wife beside the corpse of her dead father-in-law; by act 2 he has not only married her, slept with her (to her disgust) but had her conveniently killed.

But women are not the only ones threading their moving and dramatic scenes through Act one. There is Clarence, Richard’s betrayed brother and the scene of his death manages to intermingle deep tragic intensity with grim humor. Rocco Sisto is compelling in the role. His rendering of the famous “Methought what pains it was to drown” brings tears to the eyes. And is immediately shattered by the botched humor of the two clowns who have been hired to kill him and do so.

This play is studded with theatrical talent: Jason Asprey as Stanley (and several other characters). Johnny Lee Davenport as the ineffective King Edward but slipping boisterously into that of the Mayor and other roles. Nigel Gore, Buckingham, loyal to the end, though betrayed by Richard at last.

And bestriding all, John Douglas Thompson, an actor who cares so deeply for the characters he plays that he invests them with a kind of gold that I find it hard to describe. The theatrical journey he makes from his first supine bent body to his lying dying at the end of Richard’s journey, is an amazing one to have made. And he makes us believe in it all the way. The physical and vocal and emotional skills demanded of the actor, literally handicapped by lame leg and hunched back, are beyond those usually demanded of an actor.

Everyone connected with this production deserves praise. Everyone who admires great theatre should see it. Whatever conception you have of Richard, you will carry the memory of this production with you for a long time.

Shakespeare and Company schedule for 2010 season.

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July 1, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is now bringing down the house at the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s hilarious, outrageous, and joyful staging of the Steven Sondheim musical. The ever twisting plot concerns the machinations of a wily slave Pseudolus (Christopher Fitzgerald) who to win freedom agrees to entice a young virgin from the next door brothel, imprisoned awaiting the sea captain to whom she has been promised, to instead end up, still virginal, in the arms of his master’s love-smitten son Hero (Bryce Pinkham) a willing accomplice, but a naïve wooer.

With his master, Senex (Jeremy Shamos) away, only to return unexpectedly and pant after the virgin himself Pseudolus is reluctantly aided by the head slave, Hysterium. In this zany plot, what is even more amazing is that the straight women’s roles are played so convincingly and so straight that they could be females in the roles. The virgin Phylia (David Turner) is so restrained in movement, so innocently aware and accepting of her supposed destiny that, especially in her song Lovely, becomes just that. And the mother of Hero, Domina (Chivas Michael), looking for her errant husband is a masterpiece of a male actor so taking on the role that it is pure realist comedy, never camp.

Graham Rowat as sea captain Miles Gloriosus, strides the stage manfully and dangerously. He is a couple of feet taller than most and easy to spot. Others swish in and out of secondary roles with agility and conviction. And all convey the sense of having as glorious a time as the ever-applauding audience is having. Sondheim’s musical style, chosen for the pitter-patter of the dialog, was zestfully rendered. Many of the songs, such as Comedy Tonight and Everybody Ought to Have a Maid, have become woven into the fabric of American music and are always a delight to hear again.

Director Jessica Stone has served her cast well, and Williamstown Theatre Festival has rewarded her with a magnificent stage setting in which to mount her miracle. The front curtain is etched with a rough sketch of decayed ancient Rome, huge arches, tall columns, all half there, all crumbling. But as the on-stage orchestra (skillfully in a pit that is navigated by actors and dancers and at times incorporated into the play itself) opens the play, the curtain does not rise but the ruined columns, the chipped towers, the half-arching arches get filled in by an invisible hand until Rome is complete again. Then the curtain can rise and the play begin.

And it does with a lifting of a second curtain. Then we see the great farce set. Three Roman mansions, each with a second story and windows, and even a roof on which an actor can emergy. Instead of the three “doors” necessary to a farce, this set has triple that. Actors climb columns agilely; virgins come out doors to enter other doors and reappear on a roof as the play speeds along in and out of the three great Roman buildings, each painted in a different glowing major color and all conveniently near to each other.

The opening night audience went absolutely wild at the play. Each song was clapped and cheered, and the final standing ovation went on a long time. A short review cannot begin to describe the glories of this production and the response of the audience to them. Early press releases that explained the casting decisions and defended their effectiveness and necessity, turned out to be accurate. The play could be hysterically funny without resorting to female impersonation for laughs only. An all male cast could convincingly produce this farce. Shakespeare knew this, of course, and never let himself be hampered by it.

To recapulate. The show is held together by the resourceful Pseudolus who is scrappy, crafty and a man who never gives up. He is abetted by the reluctant Hysterium, who is an up-tight character until he must, to save the plot, throw himself with vigor into the role of dead-virgin. Hero is delightfully naïve, Phylia obedient and docile and appealing. Hero’s father is delightfully smitten with the virgin and active in his pursuit of her. David Constable is a swaggering pimp. A wonderful cast!

And last note on Plautus, whose ancient Roman farces inspired A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He was a nobody. But he had a good mind, and some how a good education in the sense of knowing Greek and Roman farce plots he could borrow from. He walked the streets with his mill, grinding corn, he played bits in minor shows. Then he decided to be an author himself and just as his servant in this play win his freedom. He wins his own freedom—success and the reward was Roman citizenship, which granted the right to give himself a three part name, so he chose a funny one: Titus Maccus Plautus, meaning “splayfoot clown.” Theatre history books honor his tremendous output and his popularity has resulted in more of his manuscripts being preserved than those of any other Roman dramatist.

Plautus plots at times help end a tangled mismash at the end of a Shakespeare play such as Twelfth Night with its reconciling of lost children and parents making way for harmony for all. As for the Plautus masterpiece now being given such a grand performance at the Williamstown Festival. Go!

2010 Williamstown Theatre Festival schedule.

June 26, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Almost a hundred years ago, Ezra Pound (whose personal and political life took on disastrous turns later) had profound influence on the creative arts by blasting the message: MAKE IT NEW. Which is exactly what writer/composer Jason Robert Brown has done in ingeniously shaping his haunting musical, The Last Five Years, now playing gloriously at the Berkshire Theatre Festival where Ezra’s “make it new” vibes pulse in every aspect of the musical and its production.

The musical is mesmerizing and dynamic, sad and hilarious, accessible yet fractured in the telling of its love story, with sad ending of two young people Jamie, (Paul Anthony Stewart) a budding but untried author and Cathy (Julie Reiber) an aspiring actress.

On a plot level, they fall in love, marry, and after five years, part . On a performance level is it far more. Under the sensitive and impeccable direction of Andres Cato, the story unfolds, as composed, with songs alternating, those of Cathy sadly beginning at the end and working backward, while those of Jamie begin and move forward.

To further interweave the pattern, although the songs are alternating solos, moving gradually toward each other, from the beginning not only are both actors on stage, but the stage itself is a room from which there is no exit. From the start of the play the five piece orchestra, with grand piano up R and four piece band UL are on stage as are the two actors. Each can move about the space, live his/her own joy or grief in song but never distracting from or responding to the words of the other singing.

This pattern of backward/forward movement of plot material leads in the middle of the play to the one moment in the play when the two time frames briefly coincide and the two meet center stage, to exchange rings, to marry, to hope.

But the relentless press of time itself lets Jamie gradually realize that his success (he gets his book published successfully) does not help the marriage, and that he is unable to keep the faltered marriage alive.

And Cathy,having realized little dramatic fame, and having found it impossible to cope with yearnings for a baby and being a successful artist, can find little hope in a dreary summer part in an impossibly awful summer stock company in Ohio. She is on a downward slope from hopes she had when she fell in love, yet even still she fights to encourage herself, to go on. Knowing it is too late.

Both still love each other. But it can no longer work.

So, when they both reach the five year end time period, Jamie admit must admit that as much as he has loved her, and while he loves her still, “I could never rescue you,” she knows it too. It was in her first sad song. So they part, both grieved by the failure. And the audience is moved to tears.

Jamie, based admittedly on his creator, has the most dynamic and physically active songs. His opening number engages the audience immediately with its vitality as he, young Orthodox Jewish boy steeped in tradition, begins his elation at finding out that he is madly in love with a goyishe whom he soon idolizes as “Shiska Goddess”, and who will inspire him in his longing to become a famous author. His young boyish character develops gradually through the play and he finally reaches the heart-wrenching decision:
“I could never rescue you.”

Cathy knows too. She has quietly let us know the same thing in her first song…and in her second “Still hurting” she tries to deal with her hurt with hopes of moving on in her career. “Still climb up hill.” But until the bitter end, she hopes. Her role is less “showy” but as equally nuanced as his.

And both handle the moods and shifting rhythms of the music admirably.

Designer Lee Savage has created a beautiful set—a trap enclosing time and space but lit by six great windows through which the actors can gaze in hope or despair. Jeff Davis’ lighting is subtle and effective.

Pianist Rich Bertone at the great lonely piano leapt agilely from mood to mood and tempo to tempo of the score. He was ably supported by his fine four piece onstage orchestra. Indeed, they all so flowed into the time/timelessness of the performance, one did not observe them.

Weaving this production together was director Cato. It is an unusual evening in theatre and distinctly worth experiencing.

Berkshire Theatre Festival 2010 schedule and ticket information.