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
