The Berkshire Summer Theatre Season 2008
A Mostly Upbeat Report Card
By: Larry Murray - Sep 17, 2008
The volume of theatrical activity in Berkshire County from May until mid-September has been awesome, with more than thirty-six theatrical productions by the four major resident companies. This writer had the privilege of seeing most of them (I did not see everything at the Williamstown Theatre Festival) and came away more impressed than in any previous season.
The best of the summer has to include the musical revival of She Loves Me and the new drama Broke-Ology, both from the Williamstown Theatre Festival. A new slant on Waiting for Godot won my heart and mind at Berkshire Theatre Festival, as did I Am My Own Wife at Barrington Stage Company. The Ladies Man from Shakespeare & Company was a far funnier farce than WTF's A Flea in Her Ear.
This may be due to the translations used. Insights on Feydeau and his farces can be found in our interview with director John Rando and actor Mark Harelik earlier this season. Interview with John Rando and Mark Harelik
If it wasn't for the first act of The Violet Hour, that too would have to be included in my top picks, but Act One was far too long and lugubrious though the delightful second act mostly made up for it. If only directors could take scissors to such plays to make them tighter.
Nicholas Martin, and Anders Cato get the nod as best directors this year. Martin for his work on She Loves Me, even though he did the basic direction while still at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston where it played before coming to the Berkshires.
Cato earns kudos for his unorthodox treatment of Godot, which saved it from becoming another precious, untouchable, museum piece. You could sense the impending sanctification of this tradition-shattering play by the howls of outrage coming from a few purists. One critic actually told everyone to avoid it, and it was he who has been teaching that this is an existential, bleak play. Well, sorry. Mostly it is comedy and vaudeville. Bert Lahr, you know, the Cowardly Lion, was in the first Broadway production for crying out loud! So this is more about how people amuse themselves while they are waiting, not about Godot. Beckett himself said he wished he never used that name since it distracts people from the real play. It is about waiting, with philosophical brooding being strictly optional. Cato's direction was a breath of fresh air.
Also taking risks as directors are Eric Hill for The Caretaker and Martha Banta for Pageant Play, both at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. Both succeeded in making hard-to-believe material credible. Yes, in Pinter's The Caretaker, the story of two brothers taking a drifter into their home is highly improbable. And making the satirical caricatures of beauty pageant contestants and coaches realistic in Pageant Play was indeed a feat for both actors and director.
By far the best actors included both LeRoy McClain as Cassio and John Douglas Thompson as the lead in Othello at Shakespeare & Company. The most disappointing actor had to be Michael Hammond as a flat and bland Iago in that same production.
There were many amazing performances by women this year, with Kate Baldwin proving to be a triple threat as singer-dancer-actor in She Loves Me at WTF. Back at Shakespeare & Company. Keira Naughton delivered a wild and unforgettable hellion named Charlotte in The Goatwoman of Corvis County. There was a synergy between her and her co-star Thomas Kee as Randy that was electric.
In The Ladies Man, Elizabeth Aspenlieder once again proved that she is the leading comic force in the Berkshires, with as many faces as a Carol Burnett and an arsenal of tricks and pratfalls to rival Luci Arnez. Imagine, acting is just her night job! Many other actors showed their comic skills in what was a Berkshire summer of laughs. Jeremy Beck, Mark Harelik and Brooks Ashmanskas earned their comic credits in A Flea in Her Ear, as did Michael F. Toomey and Annette Miller in The Ladies Man. Flea's director, John Rando, earns special mention for his opening announcement in French and his closing satirical tableau of Les Miserables at the end. That man has class and a sense of humor.
Wendell Pierce broke our hearts in Broke-Ology as a father losing his health. Francis Battiste and Galus Charles did likewise as his flummoxed sons trying to live their own lives as conditions deteriorated.
At Berkshire Theatre Festival, Eric Hill comes in for double honors for both his work as director of The Caretaker, and as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.
Two actors did work this season that was especially distinctive and memorable.
The first was Vince Gatton in the one-man tour-de-force, I Am My Own Wife at Barrington Stage Company. In portraying the transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, he did not overly dramatize the role. It wasn't until some time afterwards, when I had a chance to view the hard to find documentary about her that I discovered that far from being flamboyant, Charlotte was quiet, polite, and if anything unobtrusive. Gatton's role retained the dignity and poise of this person who survived both Nazis and the Soviet Police State dressed as a man dressed as a women. (The BFA interview with Gatton.)
Randy Harrison is another actor interviewed here in Berkshire Fine Arts, and his role as Lucky in Waiting for Godot was the subject of intense scrutiny. The Berkshire Theatre Festival received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for two weeks of additional rehearsals, a true luxury. This gave Harrison extra time to develop his role as Lucky. He has only one speech, albeit very long, a challenging monolog that was the highlight of the production. It was the most intense reading ever given that role, and if you did not see it, it is gone forever, except in the memory of those fortunate enough to have experienced it.
If anything, Theatre Season 2008 was one big farce, with comedies in plentiful supply, including the Battle of the B's - both Berkshire and Barrington companies did plays by Noel Coward. BTF did Noel Coward in Two Keys, while BSC presented Private Lives. Both were very good and professional productions. Noel Coward in Two Keys has the edge since it is not seen nearly as often as Private Lives. Here the director can make the difference and Julianne Boyd at Barrington Stage must share the honors with Vivian Matalon at Berkshire Theatre Festival. And of all the assembled actors for both productions, it is Tandy Cronyn in Private Lives who had the tiny of role of Louise the French Maid which provoked gales of laughter from the audience. Julianne, more Tandy, please.
So far the work of Barrington's William Finn has not been mentioned. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which he and a host of other writers created returned to the Berkshires from Broadway and a national tour. It was great to see it back. Finn is also the mentor behind Barrington's Stage 2, the Musical Theatre Lab.
The good news is that the lab found a new home this year at the VFW on Linden Street. They have built a serviceable second theatre there, and presented three musicals this summer. While none of them are quite ready for Broadway, or even off Broadway, two of the three - My Scary Girl and See Rock City & Other Destinations - showed promise. The Mystery of Harris Burdick was a dud.
The worst thing about these productions has been the relative sameness of the music. Perhaps that is due to banging away at a tiny beat up piano that has little dynamic range, and pianists who know only one volume level - fortissimo - the end result is far from lyrical, romantic or varied. The very best moments came from See Rock City and John Jellison as Dempsey. "Grampy's Song" reminds us all what musical theatre is truly about - emotion and insight.
Scenery, costumes, lighting and sometimes sound are essential elements in a good production, and their designers often work under severe handicaps. The stages at Shakespeare and Company and the Berkshire Theatre Festival have no fly space in which to raise and lower set pieces, and very little wing space to store items that are rolled off and on stage. These handicaps put the Shakespeare Company Main Stage at a severe disadvantage, and with the exception of The Ladies Man their sets were very limited. For Othello seeing so many pipes and recycled columns really detracted from the play. That their new Elayne Bernstein Theatre did not do more to facilitate presentation seems an overlooked opportunity.
But "method" set designers did their obsessive work well. The Caretaker's set by Jonathan Wentz and Wilson Chin's for The Violet Hour were studies in detailed ephemera. Broke-Ology's set by Donyale Werle was so real that you felt like you were peering into the house next door.
The best (and worst) set design was that for She Loves Me, based on an incredible framework of structural steel that placed the orchestra atop it. The design by James Noone was both brilliant and technically daring. The mechanics that moved the large pieces forward and back often misfired during both She Loves Me and during A Flea in Her Ear when the bed failed to spin properly. In the former case it literally stopped the show for a second time, the first interruption being a smoke detector set off by the fog machine. Without doubt, the She Loves Me set was both the best designed, and the worst because of its malfunctions.
Several productions we saw were initially delightful and entertaining, and yet when measured by their memorability, did not have much sticking power. Candida and The Book Club Play at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Spelling Bee at Barrington Stage, All's Well That Ends Well at Shakespeare & Company and Three Sisters at Williamstown all were treats to devour, but left us with little substance.
Theatre is the most ephemeral of the arts. perishable and evanescent. Yet there are moments that make live theatre indelible and unforgettable. In a society where old television shows are a national touchstone and asinine advertisements act as the wallpaper of our environment, it is theatre that illuminates our lives and so often can leave us with a warm glow, an uneasy feeling, a valuable insight. Theatre can be an antidote to the cacophony of commercial America. Its zeitgeist can be both brainy and visceral, yet sometimes it ends up being a rehash of second rate television.
This is especially true here in the Berkshires where we have four truly professional companies doing wonderful work. We also have a number of community and college productions, a few outstanding, and a few that have a way to go before being able to meet the high standards that frequent attenders have come to expect. Did you know that each year more people attend live performances than sports events?
One struggling local company is Main Street Stage in North Adams which recently performed a respectable Romeo and Juliet and also presented the worst theatre event of the year, called "The Red Room."
The theatrical entertainment consisted of readings from scripts - nothing was memorized - and barely rehearsed ahead of time for that matter. The biggest gaffe of this particular Red Room - each one was different, I am told - was the musical "act" just before the intermission. The singer-guitarist sang a song whose lyrics consisted mostly of repreating the phrase: "Fuck you" in various permutations and certainly not the way to win friends and attract new audiences. The result was that with my horrified out-of-town guests in tow, we quickly fled the event.
Going to the theatre is like going to a ball game. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. One bad experience does not a season make, though it sure hurts the Main Street Stage "brand" which is pretty battered as it is.
So if that was the worst, and an abberation, what was the best, and how does the coming year look?
Certainly the change in leadership at Williamstown Theatre Festival was welcomed. With the arrival of Nicholas Martin, the future of that company is once again assured and very bright as is clear from this interview with Martin, as is that of our other resident companies.
The work of Kate Maguire at Berkshire Theatre Festival continues that company's long 80 year history of solid work. Change comes slowly to this company, but renovations are underway to transform their property into more of a campus. Their calendar is active until the end of the year, as they work toward becoming a year round resident company.
Julianne Boyd at Barrington Stage has managed in just two short years to refurbish an old vaudeville house, develop a year round schedule, and create a second theatre at the VFW.
Tina Packer at Shakespeare and Company is expanding too, with the Elayne Bernstein Theatre opened, and the rest of the Production and Performing Arts Center slated to be completed in 2009, donors willing.
Their production season and artistic output has grown along with their companies, and that is perhaps the best news of all for those of us who live in the Berkshires.