“This Wonderful Life” at Barrington Stage Company
Posted by: Dan Shaw
Posted on: Thursday, December 04, 2008
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Full Article
Tom Beckett photographed by Kevin Sprague
Could there be a better moment for a Christmas play about a despairing banker who considers suicide because his savings-and-loan is about to go under and, with help from an angel, rediscovers the meaning of life? Timing is everything in theater as in life, and Barrington Stage Company (BSC) has a knack for picking plays with up-to-the-minute themes, although the current holiday show, This Wonderful Life (by Steve Murray and conceived by Mark Setlock), is an adaptation of It’s A Wonderful Life, Frank Capra’s sentimental 1946 chestnut starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and Donna Reed as his wife, Mary.
This Wonderful Life (which premiered in 2005 at Portland Center Stage) is a deconstruction of the black-and-white film, a post-modern re-enactment of the movie by a single actor who plays some 30 characters and offers occasional wry commentary on the more absurd aspects of the film such as the tiny Bedford Falls High School having an Olympic size pool beneath the gymnasium’s floor. (As you probably recall, there’s a scene where George and Mary dance right into the pool as the floor gives way.)
As directed by Andrew Volkoff (who’s become BSC’s go-to guy for one-man-shows having staged I Am My Own Wife last summer and Fully Committed in 2007), the actor Tom Beckett makes This Wonderful Life an affectionate satire that gently mocks the cornier aspects of the film while nonetheless celebrating its morality and good-heartedness. He pulls off the minor miracle of making you forget that there is not actually a full cast of actors on stage, and he is abetted by an inventive set and snappy direction. Beckett is at his finest when he has to play two characters having a conversation, and he is especially compelling as the tough-as-nails bartender at Martini’s restaurant in the penultimate scene when George Bailey sees how desperate Bedford Falls woud be if he’d never been born. One can easily imagine a campier—and bitchier—production of this play, but it would probably not bring tears to your eyes as this one does.
This Wonderful Life at Barrington Stage Company Stage II
36 Linden Street, Pittsfield; 413.236.8888
Through December 20
