Theatre Intelligence
The Wharton Salon: Bringing Edith Wharton’s Works to Life at The Mount
Preview by Bess J.M. Hochstein
Longtime Berkshire theater goers fondly reminisce about the days in the late 1970s when Tina Packer and her merry band of thespians took up residence at The Mount, where, in addition to Shakespeare, they performed theatrical adaptations of the work of the estate’s esteemed creator, Edith Wharton. That era ended in 2001, when Shakespeare & Company relocated to its current home, just down the road.
This week for the third summer, Wharton returns to her home, with a production of Autres Temps…, thanks to The Wharton Salon, brainchild of former Shakespeare & Co. member Catherine Taylor-Williams, right. Like her two previous productions – Xingu and Summer, Autres Temps… was adapted by Dennis Krausnick, who was also responsible for Taylor-Williams’ introduction to Shakespeare & Co. in 1996.
“While I was in Toronto I met Dennis, who came up to do a workshop,” recounts Taylor-Williams, who is Canadian. “I found his approach to Shakespeare very refreshing and personal. After that workshop I was pretty determined to come down and work with Shakespeare & Co. I came to the Berkshires just as they were about to leave The Mount in the summer of 2001, but before the move I house-managed their fantastic Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
That summer she also house-managed The Wharton One Acts at Spring Lawn, the mansion adjacent to Shakespeare & Co.’s current campus, where the troupe staged intimate productions before the Bernstein Theatre was built. Among the program of one acts, she says, “Normi Noël directed An International Episode. I was very moved by the production, loved the wonderful roles for women, and also thought that performing in a non-traditional theatre space with windows, daylight, and in such close proximity to the audience was so much better than a black box theatre.”
“From there I began to read Wharton’s short stories,” she recounts. Her first onstage role with Shakespeare & Co., in 2002, was in Wharton’s first novel, The Valley of Decision. “I loved Dennis Krausnick’s adaptations; they were so dry, witty, and wonderful. And I also saw how much the audiences loved them, and I remembered that.”
In 2007 Taylor-Williams was accepted into a prestigious arts management program at the Kennedy Center. “I had been working in the press department at Shakespeare & Co. in addition to being onstage for five years,” she says. “I knew I wanted to run a theatre company, but there was a lot I needed to learn about fundraising, marketing, finance, and planning for a successful company, so I took a year to immerse myself in that alone and build a solid management base.
“From Washington, I went to New York thinking that was where I should strive to make my mark. I worked for two years at the Atlantic Theater Company in development, and was a member of the 2009-2010 Producer’s Lab at The Women’s Project, a company that advances plays written and directed by women. But I wasn’t prepared for how much I would miss the Berkshires.”
In 2008 she began thinking about bringing the works of Wharton back to the author’s home. She found a receptive ear in Susan Wissler, who had recently been named The Mount’s executive director. Taylor-Williams launched The Wharton Salon in 2009 with Xingu, she says, “…because it was one of Wharton’s very rare comedies and it had seven women’s roles for all my favorite actresses.” Next up was Summer because, she says, “It was a Berkshire story—about coming of age in time with nature and the seasons, which is a big part of our lives here.”
This year’s production is based on a short story by Wharton first published 100 years ago in Century Magazine as Other Times, Other Manners—a title derived from the French expression autres temps, autres moeurs, later retitled Autres Temps… in Wharton’s 1916 collection Xingu. It tells the story of the scandalous Mrs. Lidcote, a divorcee who returns to New York from self-imposed exile in Europe, under the assumption that her daughter Leila, who is getting divorced and quickly remarried, is in need of support. Back in America, she finds that times certainly have changed… to some extent.
Taylor-Williams and Krausnick updated the setting to 1962, which, she says, required very few edits: “‘Sargent’s been to paint her’ changed to ‘Avedon’s been to photograph her for Harper’s Bazaar,’ etc. Really just cosmetics.” She also cast a real-life mother-and-daughter – Diane Prusha and Rory Hammond, both Wharton Salon veterans – in the mother-and-daughter roles. Corinna May, who plays cousin Suzy Suffern, was also in Xingu. (Prusha, May, and Hammond, l-r, in photo above by David Dashiell.)
With so many juicy roles for women, it’s only natural to wonder if Taylor-Williams is tempted to jump back over to the acting side of the stage, but, she says, “I am pleased and a little relieved to say I don’t think of that at all when I’m directing. Directing is very new to me, and there is a lot to learn, so I don’t have a lot of time to spend wishing I were onstage.
“Directing brings a very different type of joy. When the actors play a scene with precision, or something sad, funny or surprising happens, or when the designers create something extraordinary, or when the crew comes in and works all night putting up or taking down the set, it’s extremely humbling to be the one person out there witnessing all that passion and energy. But do I have Wharton roles I’d love to play? Ha ha. Sure.”
The Wharton Salon presents Autres Temps…
In the Stables at The Mount
2 Plunkett Street, Lenox, MA
August 17 - 28
Performance schedule:
Wednesdays and Thursdays, August 17, 18, 24 & 25 @ 5:30 p.m.
Saturdays, August 20 & 27 @ 10:30 a.m. & 3 p.m.
Sundays, August 21 & 28 @ 10:30 a.m.
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 08/17/11 at 10:21 AM • Permalink
Capitol Steps Puts the Mock Back in Democracy
Review by Bess J.M. Hochstein
Whether the debt-ceiling wrangling in Washington has you gnashing your teeth or near tears, take a deep breath—and prepare to laugh it out. The Capitol Steps have returned to Cranwell Resort for their fifth-consecutive summer residency, and our elected representatives have given them more than enough material to provide you with 90 minutes of laughter therapy, and many more hours of chuckling reminiscence.
Just reading the list of songs is enough to raise the corners of your lips before the show even begins. Anyone with any prior knowledge of the Capitol Steps— parodists impersonating political and other public figures, to the tunes of familiar pop and Broadway songs—will have an inkling of what to expect from such titles as Fun Fun Fun til Obama Takes Our Teabags Away, Right Wing Striking, and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?
But who would want to miss the cast’s lunatic mimicry of, say, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor in the Supreme Justices’ Ladies Room, singing out their passion for “Scalia” to the tune of Maria from West Side Story, or Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin having at each other with Don’t Go Fakin’ You’re Smart, to the classic Elton John/Kiki Dee duet, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Another unlikely duet has Muammar Khadafi pining to Charlie Sheen: “You Don’t Send Me Twitters.” And, speaking of Twitter, Anthony Weiner’s recent escapades come to the fore several times: first in a genius song about what appeared on one female cast member’s “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Screen,” and then, in the obligatory Lirty Dies, a mind-blowing monologue of jumbled words addressed to the “jades and gentlemen” in the audience that ultimately remind us to be grateful that we get to pick our leaders.
The show remains smartly up-to-date: There’s a side-splitting version of Hello!, the doorbell song from the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, featuring the full roster of Republican presidential candidates, and a noir-ish detective narrative based on the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal so fresh the actor relied on notes to perform it. And, a little less hot-off-the-headlines, the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell became fodder for fun in The Ballad of The Queen Berets.
The Capitol Steps troupe got its start in 1981 as a group of Senate staffers and amateur hams. Today multiple casts perform across the country. Over the years, they have recorded more than 30 CDs and can be heard on NPR’s quarterly Politics Takes a Holiday broadcasts. While several of the company’s current members have had experience on Capitol Hill, most are now performance pros, with serious stage cred, fast-paced comic timing, and, in some cases, remarkable voices. With just a few cheap wigs, simple props and costumes, a cued-in keyboardist, and laugh-out-loud lyrics, the versatile cast of five provides a full summer’s worth of laughter in one evening. In honor of Capitol Steps’ 30th anniversary, audiences this year are treated to a grand finale, We Didn’t Start Satire, a madcap romp from the Reagan presidency to the present, set to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire—three decades of scandals in three minutes. The state of our Union ensures they’ll have plenty more fodder for years to come.
The Capitol Steps at Cranwell
Now through September 3
Nightly @ 8 p.m. except Tuesday
Tickets: $49; call the box office at (413) 881-1636 or purchase online.
Current cast (subject to change):
Jon Bell
Mike Carruthers
Felicia Curry
Ann Johnson
Mike Tifford
Marc Irwin, keyboardist
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 08/02/11 at 03:55 PM • Permalink
Review: “Sylvia” at Berkshire Theatre Fest
David Adkins and Rachel Bay Jones in "Sylvia" at BTF.
When A.R. Gurney’s play Sylvia debuted in 1995 at Manhattan Theatre Club with Chalres Kimbrough, Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker, the New York Times critic wrote: “Not since Abie’s Irish Rose has there been a play as critic-proof as Sylvia, at least for anyone who has ever owned a dog, loved a dog, wanted to wring a dog’s neck or wished the dog would take a long weekend.” Well the extraordinary cast and their extraordinary performances certainly helped. Still, Sylvia is quite simply a near perfect comedy (and much more universal than Gurney’s drawing room plays about dysfunctional WASP families) and Berkshire Theatre Festival has given it a near-perfect production.
The story is simple: A man in the midst of his mid-life crisis finds a stray dog named Sylvia in the park and brings her home, and she becomes in effect his mistress that he falls in love with right in front of his increasingly agitated wife. The conceit is simple, too: Sylvia is played by a young woman who has all the mannerisms of a canine, the wardrobe of a concubine and the thoughts ascribed to her by her master. It’s an irresistible love triangle, and an opportunity for the actress playing Sylvia to demonstrate her chops (and I remember thinking that SJP was definitely a gifted actress when I saw her play the role 16 years ago.) Well, casting directors should be lining up to see Rachel Bay Jones, who owns this production. Director Anders Cato doesn’t let her rest for a second, and her performance is captivating and hilarious. As her master/lover, David Adkins is suitably needy, lonely and lost, and his infatuation with Sylvia is entirely understandable. Jurian Hughes plays the neglected wife with a deft mixture of irritation and well-bred class. And Walter Hudson—who plays a macho dog owner as well as two roles in drag—adds a madcap touch of the absurd (though his New Age therapist role is a bit muddled.)
As critic-proof as Sylvia may be, it’s still a play that needs to be performed with 100 percent commitment and precision timing. Berkshire Theatre Festival has proven that the granddaddy of summer stock in the Berkshires knows how to make audiences deliriously happy on a hot summer night.
Sylvia at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Stockbridge, MA
Through July 30
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/25/11 at 12:01 PM • Permalink
Commentary: Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood
by Scott Baldinger
In 1966, when asked what he thought of the music of the Beatles, Richard Rodgers churlishly replied, “I find it monotonous…I don’t think there’s anything creative or original about it. Their music won’t last.” When told about this, Paul McCartney responded that he pretty much felt the same way about the music of Richard Rodgers.
They weren’t just sniping at each other, of course, but at the different popular music genres they each exemplified at the time. Well, 45 years later, it turns out that they were both wrong, as a recent excursion to two terrific venues at either end of the culturally blessed RI universe proved. At one, Vassar’s College Powerhouse Theatre in Poughkeepsie, there was a workshop production of Spring Awakening-composer Duncan Sheik’s new musical The Nightingale, the score of which was a constant source of goosebumps. At the other, in Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre, was the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s all- out production of The Who’s Tommy, the musical theatre version of their 1969 rock opera first brought to theatrical life 15 years ago by Des McAnuff and Pete Townshend. While The Nightingale is quite obviously still in its early gestation, and this particular staging of 
Tommy was understandably more modest than the McAnuff production, they were both exciting, sometimes thrilling, opportunities to hear how well strong theatre voices can serve a contemporary pop score. Contrary to Mssrs Rodgers’, left, and McCartney’s early prognostications, both musical theater and rock—at least the kind created by talents such as Sheik or The Who—have so much in common, it’s hard to believe that people once thought that one would be the death knell of the other. From the vantage point of nearly half a century of punk, garage, metal, hip hop and all other sorts of other head banging rock, one could easily say that Townshend, Sheik and McCartney himself—if he ever decided to throw himself into the musical theater ring—are the true keepers of Rodger’s warmly melodic flame. (A little 
piece of coincidental theatre intelligence: Michael Cerveris, right, who played the lead in The Nightingale, was also the memorable Tommy/narrator of the 1993 Broadway production. It was a pleasure to see him give a great performance one night and fondly recall another of his the next.)
Today’s musicial is a living, breathing, thoroughly contemporary popular art form, dealing with gritty reality (psychological trauma, child abuse in Tommy) and profound emotions (the closing of the heart in The Nightingale) even as it entertains. This is something that audiences in Poughkeepsie and Pittsfield were obviously as thrilled to experience as I was. The buzz is still within me today, and no doubt within them as well—whatever Richard Rodgers and Paul McCartney may have once thought about the incompatibility of rock ‘n’ roll and the musical.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/11/11 at 02:21 PM • Permalink
Review: “Moonchildren” Shines at BTF
Comedy is so much harder to get right than tragedy: making an audience laugh is more difficult than making them cry. The veteran actress Karen Allen, in her directorial debut at Berkshire Theatre Festival, gave herself a formidable challenge: to resurrect Moonchildren, a 40-year-old comedy about Vietnam era youth culture, and make it feel important and alive. Allen’s production of Michael Weller’s seminal Moonchildren (Clive Barnes likened it to The Cherry Orchard in his 1972 Times review) is so carefully calibrated and constructed that you would think that Allen had spent years under the tutelage of comic masters like James L. Brooks or Jerry Zaks. She has a gift for staging and giving actors the exactly right things to do at any moment, so that every scene is fully realized. Allen’s Moonchildren is absorbing, relevant and irresistibly funny.
“It’s like an episode of Friends set in the 1960s,” said my friend the sitcom aficionado as we sat laughing in the Unicorn Theatre at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge. He meant that as the highest compliment. Moonchildren is the story of a group of college students (think: Doonesbury) who share an off campus apartment in the early (pre-Nixon, pre-Woodstock, pre-Stonewall) days of the anti-war movement. They aren’t beatniks or hippies, but they’re the generation that saw all the rules change during their four years of college. It was the time before everyone talked about their feelings, a time when someone might keep his mother’s dying of cancer a secret from his best friends. It was the time when college students majored in philosophy and literature and did not obsess about planning their careers before graduation. It was the era that led to the “Me Decade,” when everybody began to be self-actualized and to talk openly about everything (see Weller’s 1979 play Loose Ends.)
Allen has a assembled a stunning cast of young actors (and a few older ones as well) and you could imagine several of them as members of the Saturday Night Live troupe. In the intimacy of the Unicorn, you can study their facial expressions and how skillfully they mine the comic potential of every scene. It’s a treat to see fine actors up close, especially Joe Paulik (Mike) and Matt Harrington (Cootie) who have a wonderfully antic chemistry; Hale Appleman (“good old Bob”), Aaron Costa Ganis (Dick) and Carter Gill (Norman) who make their mildly nutty characters seem authentic and sympathetic; Samantha Richert who threatens to steal the show with her portrayal of the kooky Shelly who’s most comfortable when she is sitting under a table (on an evocatively ramshackle set by John Traub.) It’s hard to imagine a better revival anywhere of Moonchildren. And it’s easy to imagine that Karen Allen has an exciting new career as a theatre director.
Moonchildren at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Stockbridge, MA
Through July 16
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/05/11 at 07:18 AM • Permalink
Review: “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Jessica Hecht and Sam Rockwell in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at WTF.
A Streetcar Named Desire—the Pulitzer Prize winning 1947 Tennessee Williams play that became the classic 1951 movie with Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh—dates back to the era when some films were made in Technicolor and others in black-and-white. Two summer’s ago, Barrington Stage offered us an extraordinary, traditional full-color production. Now, Williamstown Theatre Festival is offering us a darker, edgier version that feels like it’s made in black-and-white, which means, of course, that it’s dense with shades of gray.
Indeed, director David Cromer has taken a cinéma vérité approach; if this were to be made into a film, it would be shot with a hand-held camera. The audience sits on two sides of a set that seems to have been created so that sight-lines are deliberately obscured at various moments for every ticket-holder. “I think we are supposed to feel like voyeurs, like neighbors who don’t see everything,” suggested the woman sitting next to me. “It feels like real life.” One scene is illuminated by a single flickering candle so that you really do feel you are eavesdropping on an intimate conversation.
This is a naturalistic Streetcar that has none of the flourishes cherished (and mimicked) by generations of drama queens. As the working-class “Polack” Stanley Kowalski, Sam Rockwell is not the iconographic beefcake brute; he’s sexy in an unselfconscious way and so tightly wound that you feel the necessity of his explosive outbursts. As for Jessica Hecht’s fragile Blanche DuBois, she’s the southern belle sister-in-law who’s straining to hold onto a vision of her former self that we never really get to see. It’s clear she’s mentally unhinged from the moment she steps onto the stage, and the play’s tension comes from our wondering whether she’ll merely crack or if she’ll completely shatter. And Ana Reeder’s Stella Kowalksi is a formidable center of gravity, a woman valiantly trying to honor and love both her husband and her sister; but as the claustrophobic set makes clear, there is no room in her home for both of them, which is heartbreaking.
“I don’t want realism. I want magic!” Blanche says in the third act. “I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.” David Cromer has contradicted his tragic heroine. He has given us a haunting, bare-knuckled Streetcar without gloss, pretense or melodrama. It’s Tennessee Williams re-tooled for the 21st century.
A Streetcar Named Desire at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Williamstown, MA
Through July 3, 2011
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/24/11 at 12:55 PM • Permalink
“Spring Awakening” Team Returns to Powerhouse to Workshop a New Musical
by Scott Baldinger
If you were in Los Angeles, busy working with Burt Bacharach on a new musical (Some Lovers), having just returned from a project in London (a new version of Alice in Wonderland for the National Theatre), how would you feel about having to be in Poughkeepsie the very next day? If you’re Steven Sater, far left, the peripatetic playwright, librettist and lyricist of the Tony Award winning Spring Awakening, you’d be “very excited.” The reason: a workshop production at Vassar College’s Powerhouse Theater, of The Nightingale, a new full-length collaboration with Spring Awakening composer Duncan Sheik, near left, based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name. Speaking to Rural Intelligence by cell phone from a Whole Foods in Los Angeles, Sater says, “We had so many workshops for Spring Awakening off-and-on for eight or nine years, we’re totally familiar with that process.”
And wholly committed both to it and to the Powerhouse. This isn’t their first piece at the theater. Earlier, they worked on a play, Umbrage, and another musical, Nero, there. “It’s a fantastic place,” say Sater. “I feel like I owe them a great debt; they’re a real part of my artist development.” For the three workshop performances of The Nightingale (July 8 - 10), Sheik and Sater will be bringing up from New York City a seven-piece ensemble of instrumentalists and a “powerhouse” of a cast that includes Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd, The Who’s Tommy) and Harriet Harris (Thoroughly Modern Milly, Desperate Housewives) ; the director is Moisés Kaufman (33 Variations, I am My Own Wife).
However early in its gestation, the The Nightingale at Vassar should be a wonderful glimpse into the artistry, hard craft, and deep feeling that goes into creating a serious new work of musical theater As for what it will all sound like? Sheik’s music and Sater’s artsong-quality lyrics combine “the sweetness of morning” (as the late New Yorker theatre critic Edith Oliver once characterized Leonard Bernstein’s music and Richard Wilbur’s lyrics for Candide) with a duskily poetic pop sensibility. Spring Awakening was one goose-pimple-stimulating rock musical moment after another; The Nightingale will perhaps return to the tone-poem pensiveness of the team’s earlier acclaimed recording, Phantom Moon, although Sater says they’ll be juicing it up for theatrical effectiveness. “With Spring Awakening, we wanted to touch the hearts of troubled youth; in this one, we’re trying to bring down the walls that often surround it.”
The Nightingale
Workshop performances July 8 - 10
Powerhouse Theater
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/23/11 at 11:31 AM • Permalink
Review: A Dazzling and Delightful “Guys & Dolls” at Barrington Stage Company
Leslie Kritzer in "Guys & Dolls" at Barrington Stage; photo by Kevin Sprague
The television series Glee has proven that a passion for Broadway show tunes and 1980s pop songs can be invigorating, sexy and relevant. Week after week, Glee has shown that old-fashioned song-and-dance numbers can be infused with a contemporary sensibility to bridge the generation gaps, appealing to teenagers, their parents and grandparents. Now, director John Rando has given us a Glee-ful version of the 1950 musical Guys & Dolls that’s exhilarating, electrifying and enticingly erotic.
There are two love stories in Guys & Dolls, and they’re rarely convincing in the countless versions I’ve seen at summer camps, high schools, community theaters and on Broadway. (With all due respect to Nathan Lane who played Nathan Detroit on Broadway in 1992, I always thought he’d really rather be playing Miss Adelaide than her longtime fiancé.) But in this fresh production, you can feel the pheromones colliding onstage as if someone laced the water in the dressing rooms with Viagra and Benzedrine. Barrington Stage’s Guys & Dolls is not just hot, it’s on fire.
Casting is destiny in theater, and Guys & Dolls has an impeccable roster of actors. Leslie Kritzer (who was brilliant in last year’s The Memory Show at BSC’s Musical Theatre Lab) looks like an avatar of the showgirl Miss Adelaide—she might have popped out of a Pixar movie, and she manages to be deliciously synthetic and authentic at the same time. Her two schmaltzy nightclub numbers—“A Bushel and A Peck” and “Take Back Your Mink”—are laced with innuendo and the contradictions of mid-century mores. By the second act, when she sings “Sue Me” (with Nathan played by Michael Thomas Holmes) and “Marry the Man Today” (with Sister Sarah played by Morgan James), you realize that Kritzer just may be her generation’s Carol Burnett; she’s got an elastic face, a powerful voice, and the ability to get a laugh by just lifting an eyebrow. Michael Thomas Holmes is every inch her equal, and his take on Nathan makes him a sincerely lovable “no-goodnik,” and he delivers every line with gusto and flawless timing.
It’s a wonder that Matthew Risch (the devilishly handsome actor who plays the gambler Sky Masterson) and Morgan James (the beautiful ingenue who plays the missionary Sarah Brown) don’t rip each other’s clothes off right on stage. They don’t just have chemistry; they have lust in their hearts and loins. In other versions of the play, their romance seems far fetched, but here it feels like destiny.
The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent. Daniel Marcus, who plays Nicely-Nicely Johnson, is one of those character actors with the charisma of a leading man, and he makes “Sit Down, Your Rockin’ the Boat” a show stopper. Peggy Pharr Wilson plays General Matilda B. Cartwright as a missionary with a wandering eye and she has some of the best comic moments in the play. Indeed, Rando has underscored every laugh line without going ironic; he’s managed to update Guys & Dolls while still keeping it a family show.
Every element of the production is superb. Joshua Bergasse’s choreography is brash and breathtakingly energetic. Alexander Dodge’s sets are a wonderful pastiche: a moody, modernist Times Square, a realistic Save A Soul mission and an appropriately gaudy Hot Box nightclub. The costumes by Alejo Vietti bring each character to life, especially Miss Adelaide. Rui Rita’s lighting adds drama to every scene, and Darren Cohen’s musical direction has you tapping your foot every step of the way. As it has done for the past several years, Barrington Stage has set an unbelievably high bar for the Berkshires summer theater season. Guys & Dolls is the current gold standard.
Guys & Dolls at Barrington Stage Company
Pittsfield, MA
Through July 16, 2011
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/20/11 at 11:14 AM • Permalink
StageWorks: An Evening with Celeste Holm
by Betsy Miller
Imagine, at 19, making your Broadway debut, then a couple of years later originating the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma, stopping the show night-after-night with the song, Cain’t Say No. Imagine winning an Oscar for only the third movie you’ve ever made (Best Supporting Actress, Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947, above). Imagine being nominated two more times (Best Supporting Actress, Come to the Stable; 1949, Best Supporting Actress, All About Eve, 1950). Now imagine the 60-plus years since 1950, continuing to turn in interesting performances on stage and screen, including playing First Lady Florence Harding and even making a guest appearance on Archie Bunker’s Place.
Those are just a few of the career highlights that will be explored when StageWorks/Hudson spotlights the wonderful life of Celeste Holm on May 21. The appearance, a “funraiser” (and fundraiser) for the organization, will be hosted by the campy and incomparable Hedda Lettuce. Long a fixture in the New York female-impersonator scene, Ms. Lettuce brings some expertise in classic cinema to the mix. In Manhattan, “I appear at the Clearview Cinema on Classic Movie Night,” she explains. “I open with some stand-up, then improvise a bit and interact with the audience. I try to talk about the fine points of the movie, and then introduce it on the big screen.”
And that’s what Ms. Lettuce will be doing in Hudson. A half hour of Q & A is scheduled, giving the 94-year-old Ms. Holm a chance to share some of her favorite stories about her life in the theatre.
“I’ve done lots of research on Celeste—even visited with her in her apartment in the City,” she says. “My plan is to talk to her about her Broadway work and all the theatre she’s participated in—not just her film history.”
Says Lettuce, “Her style is so natural. That’s the quality that made her so great. She’s very down to earth. Her work shows that. She was the girl who complimented the star.”
As such, she would never be a character Lettuce would impersonate—her style is too natural to caricature. But swell to learn from. “She’s so knowledgeable in terms of theater and movie acting,” Lettuce says. “She’s very put together and curious about any actor who comes her way. It’ll be a great evening with lots of opportunities to learn more from her.”
And some of those stories may include another co-star for the evening, Frank Basile. In addition to being a respected bass-baritone who has appeared with The Metropolitan Opera, Basile just happens to be Ms. Holm’s husband. In a tribute to his effervescent wife, Mr. Basile is scheduled to sing some operatic arias, in addition to songs from the Great American Songbook that include some from the musicals in which Celeste has appeared.
“This event will be like taking part in a Master Class,” Hedda concludes. Broadway, movies, directors, musicals, producers, early Hollywood—even a glimpse or two of her wild sense of humor. It’s a great opportunity to learn All About Celeste.
Stageworks/Hudson’s “All About Celeste”
May 21, wine reception 7:30 p.m., show 8 p.m.
Admission/$45.00 and up
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 05/15/11 at 03:21 PM • Permalink
The Mystery of Irma Vep at Shakespeare & Company
February 4 - March 27
You don’t have to be a master of the anagram to figure out The Mystery of Irma Vep; a bigger mystery might be how two actors effect the quick-change magic to portray eight characters, including the ever-popular cross-dressed roles. This classic madcap, melodramatic mystery by Charles Ludlam, founder of the Ridiculous Theatre Company, is a frothy comedic cocktail blended from equal parts Hitchock, Victorian pulp fiction, and Gothic romp.
Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, MA
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 02/28/11 at 05:48 PM • Permalink
Habit at MASS MoCA
Thursday, February 24 through Sunday, February 27
If reality TV is not quite real enough for you, try Habit, which is being called an installation/durational event/realist play, but not reality theater, because it is scripted—though that may be hard to tell. Created by Berlin-based theater artist David Levine, Habit centers on a fully-functioning ranch house, complete with working plumbing and appliances, designed by part-time South Egremont resident Marsha Ginsberg, who found much of the furnishings at Habitat for Humanity’s local ReStore in Pittsfield. The actors inhabit the set and perform continuous loops of the script, but the action changes depending on their real-life needs: they cook when they’re hungry; they rest when they’re tired; and they may even take a shower if they want to. The audience can drop in at any time and stay for as long as they are engaged, which, at the piece’s first staging at Robert Wilson’s “performance laboratory,” Watermill Center, often turned out to be several hours. Choose your vantage point: peer in through the windows; circumnavigate the structure’s footprint; or make it into a reality-TV-like experience by watching the live, eight-camera video feed. This work-in-progress showing precedes Habit’s debut this summer at Toronto’s Luminato Festival.
MASS MoCA Hunter Center
North Adams, MA
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 02/15/11 at 09:36 AM • Permalink
Hot Tickets: Valentine’s Weekend Shows
Barrington Stage Company has become known for its pitch-perfect revivals of classic musicals (such as Carousel, Follies and Sweeney Todd) and its Musical Theatre Lab that has brought us original musicals such as Pool Boy and See Rock City. So it’s a sure bet that artistic director Julianne Boyd’s The Big V Day Cabaret will be a Broadway-worthy show featuring four gifted actors—Brian Justin Crum, Trista Dollison, Morgan Karr and Cassie Wooley (above)— and new tunes by members of William Finn’s Musical Theatre Lab, including Will Aronson, Bill Nelson and Nikos Tsakalakos, who will be a guest performer singing his “February in Vermont” at the Saturday night show.
February 11 & 12 @ 8 p.m.; February 13 @ 3 p.m.
Tickets: $25 - $30
The New Stage Performing Arts Center (upstairs from the Beacon Cinema) has become a vital spot in Pittsfield’s nightlife. It will be hosting an evening of cabaret, Lover You’re Killing Me! with Lisa Kantor, who was one of the gutsy “dangerous women” who performed to great acclaim last spring in Lenox. Accompanied by a five piece band, Kantor will belt out tunes with razzle dazzle and her keen sense of humor.
February 12 @ 8 p.m.
Tickets $18; cash bar
Venus in Wonderland is the title of the show that Gypsy Layne Burlesque is bringing to the ballroom at Jae’s Spice in Pittsfield. More than a contemporary striptease, the brainy and brawny show (which features the inimitable Karen Lee) salutes the women who’ve been brave enough to tease audiences for a century.
February 12 & 14 @ 8 p.m.
Tickets: $20
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is offering up a sweet temptation in the auditorium of The Clark: a staged reading of Neil Simon’s classic comedy, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, directed by Jessica Stone, who directed last summer’s innovative all-male production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at WTF.
February 14 @ 7 p.m.
Suggested donation: $10
Shakespeare & Company is serving up a special pre-theater brunch on February 13 in the lobby of the Elayne P. Bernstein Theater. The multi-course brunch, which includes bountiful chocolate desserts, precedes a 2 p.m. performance of Charles Ludlam’s zany The Mystery of Irma Vep starring Josh Aaron McCabe and Ryan Winkles in multiple roles.
February 13, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Brunch and show: $60
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/09/11 at 06:22 PM • Permalink
A Night In the Old Marketplace at MASS MoCA
Saturday, January 22 @ 8 p.m.
Composer Frank London, director Alexandra Aron, lyricist Glen Berger (who co-wrote the book for the Spiderman musical on Broadway), and an eclectic troupe of Klezmer musicians cap their week-long creative residency by resurrecting and re-imagining a century-old masterwork of Yiddish theater. This experimental, operatic reworking of a sprawling play written by I.L. Peretz in 1907 fuses Klezmer, jazz, classical, rock, and world music to present a magical multimedia mash-up of mischief and mysticism ensuing over one night in the marketplace of a shtetl.
MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 12/25/10 at 05:08 PM • Permalink
“Santaland Diaries” at Shakespeare & Co.
Now - December 30
From one of contemporary literature’s most celebrated humorists comes this delightfully unhinged tale of the dark side of Christmas. The Santaland Diaries is an entertaining one-man show adapted from the popular essay that launched author David Sedaris into the national spotlight. This charismatic and bitingly funny little tale is a depiction of what the modern holidays are really all about. Occasionally subversive, alarmingly clever, engagingly poignant and always side-splittingly funny, The Santaland Diaries is a true account of Sedaris’ time spent working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s. The one-man show stars Peter Davenport and is directed by Tony Simotes. (Not recommended for children under 13.)
Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/26/10 at 09:34 AM • Permalink
“Selected Shorts” with Jane Curtin
November 20 @ 8 p.m. at The Mahaiwe
Jane Curtin is one of the great comic actreses of our time. As one of the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players on Saturday Night Live, she appeared opposite legends such as Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd from 1975 - 1980. Instead of pursuing a film career like many of her colleagues, she continued in television and starred in two acclaimed sitcoms: Kate & Allie and 3rd Rock from the Sun.
When she’s not in Hollywood or on Broadway, she can usually be found at home in Sharon, CT. On Saturday, November 20, she will return to the Mahaiwe (where she did a satiric political revue two years ago on the eve of the presidential election) to read a Dorothy Parker short story as part of NPR’s Selected Shorts series along with Isaiah Shefffer and David Strathairn.
RI: How did you get involved with Selected Shorts?
Isaiah Sheffer called me a long, long time ago. We would listen to it in the car going back and forth to the city. He asked me and I did it, and it’s just the most delightful thing to do. It’s a wonderful thing to read a story—a beautiful or funny or touching story to a group of people who are there to listen, and it’s not about you. It’s about the story and the audience—it’s a communal effort.
RI: How do you prepare for a reading? Do you read it out loud to someone else?
No, no. I read the story to myself. Then I read it out loud to get the rhythms. And if you are really, really good you read it a couple of more times and then you go do it. It’s the same thing you feel when you read to a child. It’s beneficial for both parties. You do it with love and expression,
RI: How often do you do Selected Shorts?
JC: It depends. I’ve done Selected Shorts at The Mount and the Bardavon. If I don’t get the call every year I am hurt, but there are so many actors who love doing Selected Shorts, and you really need to match the right actor with the right story.
RI: You also record books on tape. Is that similar?
JC: It’s a totally different thing. The process of doing a book on tape is a huge endeavor. If it’s a really involved story with tons of charaters they would really love you to differentiate and yet there is always a time constraint. It’s hard.
RI: Do you watch Saturday Night Live?
JC: No—I stopped staying up that late a long time ago. I will see snippets of it on You Tube.
RI: Have you ever been back on SNL?
JC: I went back for some anniversary. I can’t remember the number because they’re have been so many. And I didn’t have a good time. I don’t like repeating myself. I don’t like going back. You know when you go back home you assume the role you had in the family? You become that person again. You can’t get out of it. And because so many years had gone by—it might have been 15—I had completely lost the rhythm and didn’t really enjoy the energy.
RI: What else do you have coming up?
JC: I’m taking time off. My daughter is getting married. I will emerge again in the spring.
RI: How did you end up in northwestern Connecticut?
JC : We had gone to the Vineyard several summers and decided that’s where we wanted to be. We put in an offer on a house and everything was going swimmingly until the owners received a higher offer and we were crushed and we thought, we’ll look somewhere else—ha ha ha ha!
And a friend of ours who had moved to New York from Georgia had never seen New England fall colors and we decided to go away for a weekend, and we ended up in Norfolk. On the drive up, the fall colors kept exploding in front of us and we ended up in Kent. And my husband and I both said, I could live here. And we continued on to Norfolk. And we realized that if we lived here and needed to get into the city, we could as opposed to being on the Vineyard when you can’t. So it just made perfect sense and we found Sharon, which I just think is the loveliest town of the word! We’ve been here for 30 years.
RI: What is it like to have a theatre like The Mahaiwe so close to home?
JC: It’s huge. FIrst of all the renovation they did on that theater is perfect. It’s just a little jewel. And so many different things can be produced there. It’s a wonderful addition to the area. We’ve always had access to the arts, but this is sort of Great Barrington’s imprimatur. It’s just beautiful.
RI: Besides the Mahaiwe, what are your other cultural hot spots?
JC: The jazz brunch put on by the Lakeville/Salisbury fire department. I love that!
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/18/10 at 10:48 AM • Permalink
Two Men Talking at MASS MoCA
Saturday, November 20 @ 8 p.m.
It’s no Dinner with Andre—and that’s a good thing—but Two Men Talking is just that; an unscripted, if well tread, conversation between two men who first met in 1974 as schoolchildren in South Africa. Paul Browde and Murray Nossel felt more like outsiders than other kids in their school: white, privileged, Jewish, and gay, growing up under apartheid. After the humiliations and casual cruelties of childhood, circumstance brought them together as adults in New York, both having lived lives in which psychology and performance intertwined, a dynamic that powers this quasi-theatrical experience that addresses racism, homophobia, harassment, and AIDS. Their work has moved viewers across the world, and audiences are invited to tell stories of their own, making each performance unique.
MASS MoCA, Club B-10
North Adams, MA
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 11/16/10 at 10:09 PM • Permalink
Painting Churches at Spencertown Academy
November 18 - 21, 26 - 28, & December 2 - 4 @ 8 p.m.
Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.
It has been more than a quarter-century since the Off-Broadway debut of Painting Churches, award-winning playwright Tina Howe’s moving, most well known play about the shifting family dynamics between an aging couple of Boston Brahmins and their daughter, an on-the-brink-of-success painter who has come north from New York City to help them pack up their townhouse for their move to a beach home on Cape Cod. She does, however, have a hidden agenda; she plans to paint their portrait to include in her upcoming show at a prestigious Manhattan art gallery. This oft-produced play is popular with theatre groups not only for its economy (its a three-hander) but also for taking on universal themes of the ties that bind with humor, pathos, and authenticity.
Spencertown Academy
Spencertown, NY
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 11/15/10 at 04:27 PM • Permalink
Fall Festival of Shakespeare
November 18 - 21
A rehearsal of Lee High School’s production of “Cymbelline”.
The Fall Festival of Shakespeare is one of the most moving, provocative, inspirational, irreverent and laugh-out-loud fun celebrations of Shakespeare’s works you will ever come across. For over two decades, director of education Kevin Coleman has continued to raise the bar for theatre in education by working with students in the Berkshires and Columbia Country. Having performed last weekend at their own schools, they take to the august Founders’ Theatre in Lenox for four memorable days.
Thursday, November 18
6:30 p.m. - Lenox Memorial High School - Love’s Labour’s Lost
8:30 p.m. - Chatham High School - Henry V
Friday, November 19
6:30 p.m. - Lee High School - Cymbeline
8:30 p.m. - Monument Mountain Regional High School - King Lear
Saturday, November 20
1:30 p.m. - Taconic High School - The Tragedy of Hamlet
3:30 p.m. - Mount Everett Regional High School - Much Ado About Nothing
6:15 p.m. - Mount Greylock Regional High School - Love’s Labour’s Lost
8:30 p.m. - Springfield Central High School - The Taming of the Shrew
Sunday, November 21
1:30 p.m. - Taconic Hills High School - As You Like It
3:30 p.m. - North Andover High School - The Winter’s Tale
5:00 p.m. - The Reverence (Traditional Elizabethan dance)
Founders’ Theatre at Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/15/10 at 01:47 PM • Permalink
“The Real Inspector Hound” at Shakespeare & Company
September 18 - November 7
The Real Inspector Hound, Tom Stoppard’s farce about a second-string theater critic, is just the kind of broad comedy at which Shakespeare & Company excels. Jonathan Croy directs a cast that includes Wolfe Coleman, Dana Harrison, David Joseph, Daniel Kurtz, Alexandra Lincoln, Josh Aaron McCabe, Meg O’Connor, Scott Renzoni, and Enrico Spada. Critic Peter Bergman raves about the “deft direction” by Jonathan Croy and says there’s “nothing this man doesn’t know about getting a laugh, and get them he does with a wonderful production of this odd play.”
“The Real Inspector Hound is truly an evening of comic anarchy,” wrote Larry Murray in Berkshire On Stage. “For all the literary illusions and allusions, there isn’t a better evening of entertainment you can have.”
Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/01/10 at 09:21 AM • Permalink
Nicki Wilson Sees Beyond the Berkshires
The Maids at Pittsfield’s New Stage through October 31
Ken De Loreto & Daniel Osman in “The Maids.” Photo by Ritch Holben.
“Pittsfield doesn’t suffer from Berkshire elitism,” says Nicki Wilson, who opened the New Stage Performing Arts Center above Richard Stanley’s Beacon Cinema earlier this year. A founder of the well-regarded Castle Hill Theatre Company for children, Wilson, who lives in Great Barrington, doesn’t suffer from Berkshires myopia. “We’ve taken our plays to Hudson, NY, and Salisbury, CT,” she says. For her current, daring all-male production of Jean Genet’s The Maids, she assembled a tri-state artistic team. The three-person play features two Berkshires actors—Daniel Osman who owns the legendary Dream Away Lodge in Becket and plays Solange, and Ken De Loreto of Southfield who plays Madame—and Columbia County’s David Anderson, who is the executive artistic director of the Walking the Dog Theater in Hudson and plays Claire. Directed by Thomas Gruenwald, who lives in Sharon, CT, the play has sets and costumes by Charles Tomlinson, who is Gruenwald’s Connecticut neighbor. “It’s my dream team,” says Wilson.
A native New Yorker, Wilson sees Pittsfield as a nexus for rural expatriates who crave an urban culture fix. “It’s really where everything is happening,” she says. “It’s more and more becoming a destination for the arts.” She’s certainly doing her part by making New Stage a venue for a variety of productions such as the WAM Theatre‘s version of Sarah Ruhl’s Melancholy Baby directed by Kristen van Ginhoven (November 11 - 28) and Castle Hill’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever directed by Laurie Ellington (December 3 - 19). “We were happy to host two events for Pittsfield’s LGBTQ weekend and Burlesque from Across the Tracks, too,” she says.
One of Wilson’s new champions is playwright Lonnie Carter—a resident of Falls Village, CT, who teachers dramatic writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts—who was bowled over by The Maids. “I couldn’t believe that this kind of play was getting a production with this caliber of acting in Pittsfield,” says Carter, whose works is frequently produced at top tier regional theaters like Victory Gardens in Chicago. Now, Carter has signed on to have his 2008 play Two Great Oceans produced at New Stage. “It’s a play he wrote when Obama and Hillary were running against each other and it’s about Frederick Douglas and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and who would get the vote first—blacks or women” says Wilson, who is jazzed to be bringing new voices to Pittsfield. “It will open in February for Black History Month and continue into March which is Women’s History Month.”
New Stage Performing Arts Center
55 North Street, Pittsfield; 413.418.0999
The Maids
October 29 & 30 at 8 p.m.
October 31 at 3 p.m.
