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Feb. 1, 2009 performance reviewed by Ed McDonnell

Elizabeth Aspenleider displays a prodigious gift for comedy and a genuine likability as she takes us on a breakneck tour of Haley Walker’s world in Bad Dates, a one-woman show at Shakespeare and Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre in Lenox, MA, running through March 8th.

Canadian-born Aspenleider, a fourteen-year veteran of the company, is consisently engaging and increasingly powerful as she hilariously raises a teenage daughter, runs a high-end restaurant, revels in her shoe collection, seeks a decent mate, and more – in no order whatsoever. Theresa Rebeck’s script is sharp and streamlined.

One way in which she takes us with her is to acknowledge and involve the audience directly. She looks to them for input on her shoe choices and for identification as she wends her way aloud through adventures with men past and present. She jokes and worries to us from the private warmth of her bedroom (the only set for the two acts is the bedroom). She returns to it exhaused and updates us. She shares her elation (not all the dates are bad) and her wry revulsion (an evening with “the cholesterol guy”).

The shoe lore alone is remarkable. If Aspenlieder’s decision to include us were only a gimmick, it still might be effective. But so deftly does she position and establish us as her comrades, and herself as a lighthearted “plugger”, that when an awful betrayal comes, by then we are right beside for that too; in a moment, the depth of Haley’s character suddenly is plain, and with her we feel the wrenching pain she suffers.

There will be a twist in the story which further enhances the fascinating picture of Haley. Note: at a certain juncture, most everything has been humerous. At the end of the first act there is an apparently fleeting shift in tone, an unsettling moment. This play is extremely fun, but illustrates something serious. Haley faces the fragmented world of her time, as do millions of others. Her individual mind and approach, formulated for the moment’s challenge over years of moments grim or joyful or baffling, are revealed as she seeks goodness or finds grave danger.

They are there in glimpses of the poignantly, completely human Haley: in high-speed agonizing over one outfit after another; in a brave declaration that “I’m in charge;” in a wistful reflection of sitting in a car feeling “potentially safe;” and, perhaps most importantly, when she remembers “needing to believe in HELP… ” This show can help one’s soul, in a couple of ways. Somehow it is suitable for late winter.

Adrianne Krstansky, new to Shakespeare and Co., directs Bad Dates, which will be presented in the new Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre through March 8, 2009 – show times are 2PM and 7PM.

Costumer Jennifer Tremblay and set designer Susan Zeeman Rogers have both done wonderful work.

December 13, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Once again that little gem of a theatre, the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Unicorn has proven the ideal setting for Charles Dickens‘ beloved A Christmas Carol. Promising to become a yearly event, with the 4th production already scheduled for 2009, the delightful play tells us the same story, but in a pattern ever new.

They just cling while a voice above them booms, “Are there no prisons? Are there no work-houses?”

The adaptation is still that of Eric Hill. And Hill brings us that curmudgeon Scrooge, so believable down to his last whisker, but Hill (who this year co-directs with E. Gray Simons III) is the only character who repeats his role from previous productions. And Hill, creative actor that he is, each year brings new shadings to the role that he inhabits with such authority and audience delight.

Carl Sprague’s magnificent grey London sets are the same, with a difference, since each performance over the years brings in changing patterns of the actors performing within them. In this 3rd year production the narrative role of Dickens himself seems to move more within the play as Ralph Petillo in the role weaves himself into the action, in a fine performance.

There are 40 roles in this big cast play. They are played by 26 actors, obviously with many doublings. One of the great delights is how all of them, so fittingly costumed by Jessica Risser-Milne in Victoriana garb (down to their very boots) or fantastic “Scrooge nightmare characters” are exactly on the mark.

And as every year, one of the delights is “the children” coming from schools all over Berkshire county, from the 4th grade to high school students, some the latter who appear convincingly in adult roles. It is impossible to list them all, but the especially designed program does so along with a marvelous group (numbered) photo in which all appear. Tiny Tim is #1 (Cameron Castonguay), who in the play handles his crutch bravely and delivers the last words to the audience as he, and Dickens, urge “God bless us, everyone.”

For me, the most moving moment in the play is always the same. Two ragged children cling helplessly to the Ghost of Christmas present. They are nameless, yet their plight is not. They are “ignorance” and “want” (played here by Marco Crescentini and Theresa Russell). They do not speak. They just cling while a voice above them booms, “Are there no prisons? Are there no work-houses?”

This scene never fails to move me to tears (and I always know it’s coming and steel myself for it). This year with our world in economic free-fall, I found the moment exceptionally moving.

So much of this play comes in the small moments, of which the intimacy of the theatre lets one become part. The way poor put-upon Bob Crachit (Andrew Belcher) winds his chilled legs about the legs of his stool. The way Abigail Ziaja slipped the bit of oh-so-right cockney into Mrs. Crachit’s speech. The wonderful character groupings as Scrooge transported to Christmas Future sees with what glee his worldly goods are disposed of by the needy. The graceful movement of the first ghost (Brandy Caldwell) and the hearty gusto of the second.

And there is lovely music, solos by children, music to which spirits move or ghosts appear. It is all interwoven in a way one scarcely has time to note. For instance, as one child begins a solo “Silent Night” the staging has been gradually encircled by tiny groups of mothers, each with child or children, who join in. And the words “Mother and Child” in the song are magnified.

As one can see, there is so much to delight in this Christmas Carol that a brief review can only partially contain it, so I urge you go. Take the children. It is a grand way to spend a couple of hours during the holidays.

Playing in the Unicorn Theatre Dec. 11-14, Dec. 17-22, and Dec. 26-30 at 7pm.
There will be 2pm matinee performances on Dec. 13, 14, 20, 21, 27, and 28.
A 10am matinee will be held on Dec. 15, 18, and 22. There will be no performances on Dec. 24 and 25.

Children $20, adults $36-$39.

May 18, 2002 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

see also: Review of 2009 performance of Golda’s Balcony.

see also: Our interview with William Gibson.

The opening performance of William Gibson’s Golda’s Balcony at Shakespeare & Co.’s Spring Lawn Theatre showed that theatre can be miracle. Taut and deft as Gibson’s The Miracle Worker of 45 years ago, Golda’s Balcony is a masterpiece, in monologue form; 95 supercharged minutes brilliantly acted by Annette Miller and directed with sensitivity by Daniel Gidron. This play seems destined to move on to Broadway and then into the text books.

The time is a hot, still, sultry night in 1973 and the Yom Kippur War is raging. Israel has been attacked on two fronts by Syrian and Egyptian armies, which are gaining ground. Meanwhile, there is an agonizing delay by the U.S. in replacing the planes and military equipment lost in the first days of fighting. Drastic measures are needed. The fate of Israel hangs in the balance. Golda waits, sleepless.

Along with her agonies, memories are woven into her waiting, as the play skillfully threads past and present. Her childhood in Kiev, the fleeing of a pogrom, adolescence in Milwaukee, and the near-sinking of the boat that brought the young Golda and her husband to Palestine all will be remembered vividly. The memories don’t come in chronological order and often they are shattered by pulls back to the crisis of the moment.

Golda’s world zig-zags across her balcony: Russia, Wisconsin, Palestine, kibbutz, public life, speeches, money-raising, trips to America, the balancing of husband, children, and family with the needs of other children and other families; and the wars, always the wars, and now what could become a final war.

Annette Miller evokes these demanding conflicts, and without impersonating Golda Meir, takes on her very spirit. She makes no attempt to resemble her physically; rather, upon entering the audience-lit room, simply tells us, “No false nose, no swollen legs.” She then sits, puts on Golda’s clunking shoes, and rising to cross to her desk, becomes Golda.

Miller plays out the agony of that night with dark, funny, poignant, and horrifying memories of other times and places in a small playing space with a desk, two chairs, a lectern, and a few maps.

We weep with her as a child on Cyprus hands her a paper flower because in his poverty he has not even a real one. We cheer with her when a heartfelt public address helps her to raise the money that will save the children of Cyprus.

We were amazed at the ease with which Miller shifts mood and tempo. We can weep with her, rage with her, and shout with her into the phone, “I don’t care if it is 3 AM, wake him!” when Henry Kissinger’s aide hesitates to put her call through.

We inquire along with her as she asks, “What is the price of survival? What happens when idealism becomes power?”

For power is possible, and ultimately avoided. There is a “second balcony” on which Golda has stood. She lets us look down with her on what lies beneath it. The ending of the play, wherein the tempo rises to a finish that brings the audience to a prolonged standing ovation, rests on that second balcony, and what it could, but must not, offer.

Daniel Gidron, who was born and raised in Israel, and received theatre training at Brandeis University, brings his experience and intuitive skills to the play’s direction. His handling of the complex script is sensitive to its nuances, tempo, and rhythms.

This summer we in the Berkshires will have an opportunity to share this experience. As for the play, it is likely it will go on and on and very probably end up on other stages with other actors. But none are apt to be finer than the version now playing in Lenox. You even may want to go twice!

Interview with playwright William Gibson on May 28, 2002, recorded at Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox, MA, by Dave Conlin Read

See also: Frances Benn Hall’s review of the opening performance of Golda’s Balcony at Shakespeare and Co.

DCR: Did “Golda’s Balcony” evolve from your earlier play entitled “Golda?”

WG: I wrote a play called “Golda” 25 years ago, and this is a different work. That was a big cast play, a very expensive production, and I was not very happy with it. I always felt that there was something about the theme of that play which I didn’t see clearly. I knew I had left alot of things unsaid that were important, but I didn’t know what they were.

This play, I knew what they were. I was much sharper. A lot of the experience I had in the writing of the other play…You know, I was in Israel two or three times, for weeks at a time, a lot of that remained unarticulated in me.

This play speaks much more articulately about what I should have know or seen back then, 25 years ago. I’m glad I saw it now and that it’d be enough to write it down.

DCR: Was there something in particular that brought it to the fore?

WG: Well, the whole question of nuclear armaments was unknown and unspoken of 25 years ago. It was known of course to the leaders of Israel, but it was not acknowledged publicly, and indeed it is still not acknowledged publicly. Everybody knows about it now because a guy who worked at Dimona for many years, and was taking photographs, left the country and sold the photographs to some english publication.

They were printed and nuclear experts in England and America looked at these photographs and said “absolutely, thery’re authentic.” From then on it became world-wide knowledge that Israel had a bomb. It had always been surreptitious knowledge, now it became public knowledge.

I saw that was really what I was after the first time, was What was the experience of having power? and nuclear power is the supreme form of power. So that is what animated me and the whole subject matter would turn on that.

DCR: On what it is to command that power?

WG: Yeah. Most of our lives – we don’t get on to a nuclear level – but the same question arises. We’re all interested in acheiving power, even in our family set-ups and so on. In the case of political leaders and in the case of the nuclear age, these questions are enormous. Why is everybody so concerned about India and Pakistan now? It’s because of the nuclear thing. If they just had conventional armies and conventional weapons, we would say “Oh that’s too bad, but it’s not going to involve the rest of the world.” But with this nuclear stuff, it’s a different kind of political consciousness.

DCR: Except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they’ve never been used…

WG: They’ve never been used, only by us. I want to keep it that way.

DCR: Do you think Golda Meir would’ve used them; does that question need to be asked?

WG: I think that if the Arabs were pouring across the border and into Tel Aviv and into Jerusalem…She says in the play, “You know, we’ve been building these for twenty years and it was only – the first bomb has written on it in Hebrew “Never Again,” it was the intent that they should be used if ‘need be’. And certainly, at that time, it seemed like ‘need be’ was here.

DCR: Would they be able to use them without realizing that it could spell the end of civilisation?

WG: Well, Golda says that one thing leads to another, you might end up with Russia against the United States after an initial exchange. Everybody is concerned about it still. The whole concern about Iraq now is what if they develop nuclear weapons? If they do you’ve got Israel and Iraq both nuclear-armed and there’s another India-Pakistan confrontation.

We’re scared to death, but we don’t talk much about nuclear weapons. Now everybody talks about weapons of mass destruction because we have these delivery systems and they can deliver anything. The world is in a dangerous state now because the new power has become so tremendous. Nobody a hundred years ago foresaw this kind of power, that human intelligence would have opened up the accessibility of nuclear power.

It became scientifically known to geniuses only a few years before we built the bomb. And the first fruits of that knowledge was to build the bomb. They were afraid that Hitler was going to build it too, so all these German-Jewish scientists that Hitler couldn’t stand and threw out of the country, built the bomb here! It’s an entirely new era.

DCR: The recollection in the refugee camp of the mother who smothered her baby to save the group hiding from the Nazis is one of the most moving passages in the play. Could that be extended metaphorically so that Gold Meir would make a similar kind of sacrifice that would lead her not to use nuclear weapons.

WG: Well, it’s one thing to smother your baby and it’s another thing to set off a nucler bomb and to have nuclear bombs set off against you, which are certain death sentences. Nobody escapes a nuclear bomb and that, I suppose, is the horror.

The 80,000 people who were killed at Hiroshima were not any more nunmerous than the 80,000 people who were killed in the fire-bombing of Tokyo or Dresden. And yet, they are regarded as unique and different from the fire-bombing deaths. You know, we wreaked an immense havoc on Germany toward the end of the war.

So, I think it is the potential threat – that stuff (fire-bombing) is limited, this stuff is limitless – they could render the planet uninhabitable.

DCR: So that is the central question in Golda’s Balcony, the horror of nuclear weapons?

WG: It’s the central trigger of the play. The real theme is what happened to Golda’s idealism? We all start with such noble ideals. The plays say, What happens when idealism becomes power? Ask that question of the Puritan revolution of 1642, which is infamous because they closed the theatres. Well, they thought they would reform the political society of England so it would be in conformity with primitive Christianity, they didn’t want all the folderol of high church, so they had a revolution, which John Milton was part of.

They showed their noble content by cutting of King Charles I’s head. What happened in the French revolution, also idealism revolting against the oppression of the nobility and so on? They ended up by cutting off the king’s and queen’s heads. What happened in the Russian revolution, another noble thing? They ended up by machine-gunning the entire royal family in a cellar. And they went on to institute a regime of tyranny that people say was worse than the Hitlerian tyranny. All these people were marvelous idealists, Hitler was one of the great idealists of the 20th century.

So that’s the thing, why does it happen all the time? Because, you have to think, that’s what we are. What happens is also what we are. What we protest against, when we protest, the protest is what we are. But the corruption is what we are too. You have to have a realistic vision of what human character is capable of and then, perhaps, you can come to terms with these big political decisions, which are not my area, but maybe with less naivete and less capacity for shocking surprises.

DCR: At the end of the play, does Kissinger say, You blackmailed us?

WG: Yes.

DCR: Do you think the US was unaware of Israel’s nuclear capability?

WG: Oh I think they knew it. It must have been built with our consent and our desire, to our benefit, that we should have a nuclear outpost. The question really was, would they use it? It wasn’t was it there? They knew perfectly well it was there, the question was, how do we keep them from using it? Because you can’t tell the end of that story.

Sept. 27, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The Canterville Ghost now playing at Shakespeare and Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre is based, very loosely, on a novella by Oscar Wilde in which an American family moves into an old English castle inhabited by a three hundred year old ghost whose antics to scare them away only provoke them into calmly offering him brand-name oil to quiet the creaking of his chains, and a commercial rug cleaner to remove the nightly blood spots from the living room rug.

They even scoff derisively when the poor ghost, who steals from the children’s paint box to create his magic horror, runs out of red and is forced to substitute green. (For Irishman Wilde, a witty little patriotic thrust.)

The poor ghost is driven to employing every scary device and costume he can concoct, all to no avail, until, in a gentle coda to the novella, Virginia, the youngest and thus most innocent child, pities him and bravely leads him to peace and release.

Wilde’s story has been adapted to into various versions over the years, including musicals, none of which this reviewer has read or seen, but it is possible none as been as fantastically modified as that now playing on the Bernstein Stage.

Director Irina Brook’s approach has been improvisational, reading from the Wilde script and letting the actors whirl off on their own. The process has created a script in which sub plots, extra characters, and drastic time changes have five actors whirl in a very broad, over-the-top, comedy full of song, dance, and slapstick.

The press-night audience seemed delighted. I fear my response was muted. I found it wild more than Wilde and found myself grateful whenever a bit of real Wilde rapier dialog found its way into the script.

However for me, the evening had two bright spots—the incredible performances of Michael Hammond, an actor whose talents I have admired for years, and the free-flowing attitude of director Irma Brook, full obviously of a love of theatre and its possibilities, even though the choices she made in this production did not work out for me.

Hammond, as the Ghost and the housekeeper Mrs. Umley, gives us two characters, each magnificently achieved. His agile and contorted body, his incredible facial expressions, are beyond description; his whipping in and out of characters, in and out of costumes, and in and out of speech patterns is a real tour-de-force. For a book-sacred actor of years of creating characters as “sacred” as Prospero and Iago, what he has achieved in this production is incredible. For me, he saved the evening. How he, physically, will have to sustain the mad pace of these varied characters for an extended run would seem to be a daunting task.

However, this supporting cast seem a willing crew, talented, if over the top, willing to sing, dance and cavort merrily through the play and throw themselves with gusto in creating something new, at times in a surprisingly creative way. And some of the dialog achieved a Wildean thrust.

As for Ms Brooks, although I could not go along with her take on Texans, and found the script too busy, she brings an exciting, fresh talent into the Berkshires, and I am eager to see what she’ll do next.

August 15, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Sir Noel Coward’s final stage work, Noel Coward in Two Keys, composed of a pair of one act comedies, is an unexpected joy. It is the final main stage production of the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s 80th summer season.

The two comedies, Come into the Garden Maud and A Song at Twilight both are set in the private suite of the Hotel Beau Rivage, Lausanne-Ouchy, Switzerland in the mid 1960s.

The plots are unrelated but the same four actors are cast in each play and only the hotel waiter, Felix (Gian Murray Gianino) appears in a the same role in both plays.

The two plays are of special interest because they mark the end of a fifty year career of writing for the theatre. They were produced in London for the first time in 1966, shortly before Coward’s death, under the direction of Vivian Matalon who also directed them in Manhattan in 1974 and who has directed this production.

Coward’s distinctive style, crisp dialog, witty repartee, clear, spare prose, and distinctive, mainly witty sophisticated characters, are all present in these plays, but, writing at the end of his career, he has added something more. While they remain comedies, they are deeper and a bit darker than those plays of gay banter and physical mayhem, such as Private Lives, written decades earlier, and these later plays concern more mature characters.

In the lighter of the two plays, Come into the Garden Maud, Verner Conklin (Casey Biggs) and his wife Anna, (Mia Dillon), rich, middle-aged Americans, are “doing” Europe. Amiable, laid-back Verner would prefer to be back in America and has no interest in the social ambitions of his spouse, a flighty self-important, social-climber.

But an old friend of Anna’s, Maud Caraganania, the charmingly energetic Maureen Anderman, drops by briefly on her way to drive off to Rome and see her first grandchild. And lives are changed forever.

A Song At Twilight stars the same three characters in a more complex plot, still witty and sophisticated but concerning the public baring of long kept secrets in their lives. Each of the three also play a character far-removed from that he or she played in the opening play.

Biggs is a celebrated esteemed British author, regal, if grumpy in his smoking jacket. Dillon is again a wife in this play but instead of a nagging empty-headed one, she is a loving but realistic German woman who has protected her husband for twenty years.

And Anderman is a regal, successful British actress, known and loved in the Western world, and about to publish her autobiography. She appears on the scene trying to manipulate a startling revelation of materials long hidden concerning the characters’ private lives.

To reveal more of the plots, especially that of the second play, would be a disfavor to audience members rather unlikely to have seen either. The second is not a tragedy but by the end it is deeply serious and its subject matter is significant, coming from Coward at that particular time.

Brilliantly acted by the three participants, the current production is a moving tribute to Coward. Matalon’s direction is impeccable.

Of special importance, considering the subject matter, it is significant that in the London production Coward himself played the role of the writer, a character who is so enchantingly Noel Coward, a writer, who during his career had to cope with a strict moral code in the British licensing of subject matter.

Just as his own songs have ornamented his plays, so do the two titles of these two swan song-plays seem to me to be Coward having his last fun with words, scoffing at prudery and coming out with just a song at twilight.

I found him and them enchanting. You will too.