Dan’s Diary: Reasons to Dress Up
We have a sentimental attachment to the annual IS 183 costume ball: It was the first event we covered “live” for Rural Intelligence so we think of it as our anniversary party, too. While this year’s dance party on March 6 has a theme—Radioactive Bodega—that is somewhat puzzling, it is also a challenge that should make it just a visually stunning and amusing as Rock the Opera in 2008 (left) and the Hair Ball in 2009. If you like to dress up in a more conventionally glamorous way, the Berkshire International Film Festival is having a “Red Carpet” Academy Awards party at the Beacon Cinema on Sunday March 7. With the Beacon’s high definition screens, you’ll be able to analyze every borrowed diamond necklace and beaded dress in a way that you can’t at home, and you’ll have a crowd to gossip with over drinks and dinner all evening long.
Radioactive Bodega Dance Party
March 6 at 8 p.m.
Pittsfield, MA
Berkshire International FIlm Festival Oscar Party
March 7 at 7 p.m.
Pittsfield, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 03/01/10 at 09:20 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Olympics Come to Pittsfield
The Beacon Cinema is living up to its promise to be a team player in Pittsfield’s revitalization. From February 17 - 28, every night from 8:30 - 11 p.m., the Beacon will be showing the Winter Olympics in one of its theaters with stadium seating. Admission? Free. Owner Richard Stanley says that he was “looking for a way to showcase the Beacon’s all digital projection system and give the audience an example of its unique capabilities.” He added: “Digital projection allows us to not just be in the movie business but truly in the entertainment business. What better way to share that with an audience than with a fun and free event like the Winter Olympics? Can you imagine downhill ski racing or snowboarding on a 40 foot screen? You just can’t get that experience at home.”
Beacon Cinema
57 North Street, Pittsfield, MA; 413.358.4780
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/15/10 at 07:36 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Sounds of Summer 2010
If you missed out on getting tickets to see James Taylor & Carole King at Tanglewood, you still have time to get the best seats for other Tanglewood concerts and for Bard Summerscape, the world-class arts festival in nearby Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. On Sunday February 14, Tanglewood tickets go sale online at 8 a.m. and by telephone at 10 a.m. The 2010 season begins and ends with tapings of radio shows: Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion on June 26 and Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey (making an encore appearance at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival) on September 4. The official opening night of the season is July 9 with James Levine conducting Mahler Symphony No. 2, and it continues through August 29 with appearances by conductors such as Seiji Ozawa and Kurt Masur and musicians such as Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax.
If you’re signed up for Bard Summerscape’s email newsletter, you can already buy tickets which go on sale to the general public on February 16. Berg and His World is the theme for the 21st annual Bard Music Festival on August 13 - 15 and August 20 - 22, which honors the Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885–1935). The Summerscape offerings include dance (Trisha Brown, July 8 - 11), theater (Judgment Day by Ödön von Horváth, which was written in 1937 in Nazi-occupied Berlin, July 14 -25) and opera (Franz Schreker’s The Distant Sound, July 30 - August 6.) As a lighthearted counterpoint to all this heady fare, Bard will once again host the Spiegeltent with late-night dance parties, children’s events, and eclectic cabaret performances.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/10/10 at 07:32 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: It’s Too Late Baby Now (Sort Of)
It’s like our version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona: the stampede to get the best seats to James Taylor’s annual concerts at Tanglewood. And it’s a bull market this year for his Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King, which plays Lenox on July 3 & 4. Even before the general public ever had a chance to purchase tickets in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, the dues-paying Friends of Tanglewood who have early buying privileges have apparently bought every seat, so only lawn tickets are now available and they are expected to sell-out very quickly. So if you have your heart set on being part of James Taylor and Carole King’s historic concerts at Tanglewood, you should set your alarm for 8 a.m. on Sunday, February 7, when online ticket sales commence at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s website. You can sleep in if you’re on the wrong side of the digital divide, because phone orders will not be accepted until 10 a.m. that day through Symphony Charge at 888.266.1200.
As for the rest of the Tanglewood 2010 season, which includes the return of Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur, Mark Morris, Prairie Home Companion, Audra McDonald and James Levine, tickets go on sale for the general public on Februay 14. But if you want to get the best seats, you might want to become a Friend of Tanglewood right away so you can buy tickets now.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/01/10 at 07:23 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Lauren Ambrose & The Leisure Class Packs the Lion’s Den
With its low ceilings, small tables and intimate scale, the Lion’s Den at the Red Lion Inn is a classic cabaret, and it was literally packed to the rafters for Monday night’s second Berkshires performance of Lauren Ambrose and the Leisure Class, a gypsy-like, New Orleans style jazz band with a life affirming performance style. Was it worth getting there two hours early to secure a seat for the no-cover show? My table unanimously agreed that it definitely was (and discovered that one order of nachos makes a leisurely dinner for two.) Ambrose, who became famous as Clair Fisher in HBO’s Six Feet Under and is now the Accidental It Girl of the Berkshires, was quite simply radiant, but she never upstaged the boys in the band:Andy Bean (banjo, plectrum guitar, vocals), Matt Downing (double bass), Lyon Graulty (saxophone, clarinet), Brian Kantor (drums), Evan Palazzo (piano, accordion).
The Leisure Class is a true ensemble. The audience was a multigenerational mix of long-time rural residents and émigrés from big cities, whom Ambrose saluted in the contemporary torch song “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down.” When she sang the line “New York I love you but you’re freaking me out,” you understood why a young woman who has already starred on an HBO series and on Broadway would choose to live in the Berkshires instead of Manhattan or LA. It was clear that she felt genuinely herself with the crowd in the Lion’s Den. (She’s bringing the show to the big bad city on Thursday, January 21, when The Leisure Class plays Joe’s Pub.) The only disappointment of the evening: The band did not do a third set (they claimed they’d played their entire repertoire), but they did perform an appropriate Martin Luther King Day encore—a jazzy, version of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 01/19/10 at 12:03 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall . . .
Even in the off season, Tanglewood dominates the cultural and economic life of the Berkshires. “For the Berkshires to thrive, we need Tanglewood to survive,” says BSO trustee Nancy Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Red Lion Inn, who is head of the Tanglewood Business Partners. According to the 2008 Boston Symphony Economic Impact Report, Tanglewood is the single largest tourist attraction in the Berkshires with approximately 350,000 annual visitors. Innkeepers, restaurateurs and shopkeepers depend on concert-goers for their livelihoods, which explains why so many of them packed the ballroom on November 21 at the Cranwell Mansion in Lenox for the announcement of Tanglewood’s 2010 summer schedule. “I’m going home to blog about this right now,” said one ebullient Lenox innkeeper. “We have to let our regulars know who’s playing so they can book their rooms now.”
As in recent seasons, the biggest draw at Tanglewood is expected to be James Taylor, who will be appearing with his old friend Carole King on July 3 & 4, which will be the end of the American leg of their “Troubador Reunion” World Tour that is named after the Los Angeles club where they both played when they were first starting out. In the past few years, Tanglewood has had no better friend than Taylor, who has designated the July 4 show as a fundraiser for Tanglewood. (Tickets go on sale February 7.) Taylor and King made a surprise appearance at the Cranwell announcement, and the ballroom erupted in grateful, loving applause.
After Taylor and King made their exit, BSO managing director Mark Volpe quipped: “The good new is that the BSO will be at Tanglewood, too.” Indeed, it will be a milestone summer in Lenox—John Williams’s 30th season, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus‘s 40th birthday, the Tanglewood Music Center‘s 70th anniversary and the 125th anniversary of the Boston Pops. What’s more, the legendary conductor Seiji Ozawa will be returning to conduct concerts on July 24 & 25, and the calendar is filled with performances by Tanglewood alumni such as Garrison Keillor, Mark Morris, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Dawn Upshaw, and Pinchas Zuckerman. And for the Jazz Festival, John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey have been booked to do an encore taping of their Radio Deluxe program.
Tanglewood is not the only arts organization that is trying to tantalize its audience with coming attractions. Last week, Barrington Stage Company announced that its annual main stage musical will be Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which will star Jeff McCarthy and run for five weeks (June 17 - July 17). It will be directed by artistic director Julianne Boyd, who’s proven herself adept at directing musicals with dark themes such as last summer’s Carousel. And Jacob’s Pillow has already announced that it has commissioned three world premieres for next summer by the choreographers Monica Bill Barnes, Kyle Abraham, and Camille A. Brown (left), which indicates that historic Jacob’s Pillow is committed to championing new talent and making artistic innovation a priority.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/24/09 at 11:30 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Barrington Stage is the Stepping Stone to Broadway
For songwriters who yearn to hear their songs on a Broadway stage someday, you can’t get any luckier than knowing Bill Finn, the musical theater guru of Barrington Stage Company. For the fourth year in a row, Finn has put together an evening of Songs By Ridiculously Talented Composers and Lyricists You Probably Don’t Know But Should . . . (September 4 & 5) in which (mostly) unknown songwriters with Broadway aspirations have their work sung by several actors with Broadway credits . This year Finn found six extraordinarily talented actors who can deliver songs in character without costume changes or props, but with wit, charm and intense feeling. Musical director Matt Castle (who played Peter in the 2006 Broadway revival of Company) accompanies them so masterfully you’d be happy to listen to him play the piano alone all night. And the for the finale, you’ll get to hear a clever ditty called “Independence Day in Pittsfield” that is sharp, funny and joyous, and makes you think that Pittsfield is what New Haven and Philadelphia used to be—the stepping stone to Broadway. If you’re a musical theater junkie, try to make it to the second performance at Barrington Stage on Saturday, September 5, because you’ll hear the glorious sounds of the American musical theater’s future.
Barrington Stage Company
Pittsfield, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/05/09 at 08:26 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Scenes From A Connoisseur’s Cookout
The Herculean challenge Emily Newman & Jeremy Stanton set for themselves would have been difficult enough to pull off in perfect weather. But Saturday, August 22, was another one of those days when torrential rains appeared out of nowhere, which complicated every aspect of serving a five-course dinner to sixty people in a tent behind their farmhouse on Main Street in Southfield, MA. The Stantons thoughtfully curated the meal so it would be a locavore feast intended to showcase their talents and raise seed money for The Meat Market, the butcher shop specializing in locally-raised meat, which they plan to open in Great Barrington in the spring of 2010. The party decor was designed as painstakingly as for any Martha Stewart Living shoot, so it was no surprise that photograper Kit Latham, a Martha Stewart veteran, and his girlfriend, Michelle Quigley, volunteered to record the event for the Stantons. They shot hundreds of pictures of the party and its preparations beginning at noon and continuing until midnight. Latham and Quigley offered to share their photographic bounty with Rural Intelligence, and you can see more of their work if you Click Here. And if you ever get an invitation to dinner at the Stantons, be sure to say “yes” without hesitating. They are not only extraordinary cooks, but they are gracious and unflappable hosts.
Jeremy purchased the 85 pound leg of organic Murray Grey beef from Jerry Peele at Herondale Farm in Ancramdale. He designed and fabricated the rotisserie contraption at Balgen Machine in West Stockbridge.
Though they were soaking wet from the rain, Emily and Jeremy never stopped smiling and made guests feel as if they were dining at a five-star restaurant, which included valet parking.
Much of the dinner, including corn-off-the-cob with polbano chiles, was cooked over a hardwood fire.
The Stanton’s in-town farm has a vegetable-and-flower garden, 29 hens and one rooster.
Rubarb cocktails and rosé were served in the living room, which had been cleared of its furniture.
A buffet table for the cocktail hour featured the types of salamis that Jeremy plans to make for The Meat Market and liver pate he commissioned from Erhard Wendt of The Williamsville Inn in West Stockbridge.
Jeremy, who runs the Fire Roasted Catering Company, fabricated his grill at Balgen Machine in West Stockbridge
Jim Newman, Emily’s younger brother, was one of the volunteers who hand-cranked the rotisserie for seven hours; Emily picked peaches from the tree in their yard,which were served with basil crème anglaise for dessert.
The Stantons huddle with their team before guest arrived in the tent for the next four courses.
The Stantons paid as much attention to the table settings as to the food itself.
Greens from Laura Meister’s Farm Girl Farm in Egremont were the pillow for ravioli stuffed with rooster from North Plain Farm in Great Barrington.
The ravioli arrives in the tent.
The guests were a mix of full-time and weekend residents from Connecticut, Masschusetts, and New York.
Master chef Gerhard Schmidt helped prepare the dinner and carve the leg of beef; umbrellas protect platters of sausage with pickled beets and braised cabbage as they are brought to the tent to be served family style.
The kitchen staff’s view of the party.
Every course was accompanied by a different beverage; small glasses of apple eau de vie, which Jeremy aged in American oak barrels, was served with dessert.
Jeremy toasted the farmers who made the meal possible, who in turn raised their glasses to him.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/26/09 at 06:20 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: “A Streetcar Named Desire” Is A Great Ride
You don’t see Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire produced very often because it is almost impossible to cast. (Read The New York Times’ Ben Brantley on the 2005 New York production with John C. Reilly.) After all these years, it still needs an actor who will make you not think about Marlon Brando, who played the brutish Stanley Kowalski on Broadway in 1947 and in the 1951 movie. More importantly, it requires a mesmerizing actress who can convincingly play the tragically charming Blanche DuBois, which may be the best role ever written for a woman by an American playwright. Luckily, Barrington Stage Company artistic director Julianne Boyd found three-time Tony nominee Marin Mazzie (left) to play Blanche. Within the play’s first ten minutes, Mazzie has the audience spellbound, and she rides the role at full gallop, taking us along on her doomed, achingly poetic journey.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Streetcar is more than an exquisitely written and atmospheric period piece set in working class New Orleans, which chronicles class consciousness and unconsciousness in the deep south in 1947. It is also a play so raw and primal that it feels like it could have been written last week. It has an honesty you don’t find in many contemporary plays that attempt to deal with sexuality in a more stripped down and confrontational fashion. It depicts “brutal desire,” to use Blanche’s term, with chilling candor.
As Stanley, Christopher Innvar looks surprisingly brawny in his sleeveless “wife beater” T-shirt. He conveys the erotic charge between Stanley and his tormentor, Blanche, and his wife, Stella, who is played with agility and delicacy by Kim Stauffer. Innvar manages to be threatening, nasty, and sympathetic. When he quotes Huey Long—“Every man is a King”—you comprehend Stanley’s intense pain at being ridiculed under his own roof.
Brian Prather’s deconstructed set is moody and transporting, and the live musical passages that have been inserted between scenes evoke the steamy aura of New Orleans. But, ultimately, it is Mazzie’s make-or-break performance as Blanche DuBois that gives the evening its power and poignancy. There are moments when you understand why Blanche has been the role model for generations of drag queens (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” and all that), but Mazzie pulls in the reins before ever letting her Blanche go over the top. She’s the quintessential southern belle—riveting, ravishing, and ravished. You never forget that she is a human being beneath her affectations, and Mazzie makes her heartbreaking.
A Streetcar Named Desire (through August 29) was a big gamble for Boyd, and she aced it. As a follow up to the first two Main Stage productions, Carousel and Sleuth, Streetcar has made the summer of 2009 a championship season for Barrington Stage Company.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/12/09 at 10:54 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: WTF Lights A Fire Under “The Torch-Bearers”
You might consider The Torch-Bearers at Williamstown Theatre Festival theater-for-theater’s sake. The play itself—a 1922 chestnut by George Kelly that has been “adapted” by director Dylan Baker—seems like an excuse for artistic director Nicky Martin to fill the Main Stage with a dozen accomplished actors (most of whom have Broadway credits.) The play is about a group of quasi-enlightened amateurs in Philadelphia in 1922, who are determined to put on a play but don’t really have the talent. The irony of watching Tony-award-winning actors playing actors who can’t act is a kind of meta-theater. The two best-known men on stage—Edward Herrmann and John Rubinstein—prove that fine actors, like fine wines, get better with age: They deliver their lines with snap and polish, and Rubinstein makes the last 15 minutes of the play rip. Philip Goodwin gives a delightful performance as one of the actors in the troupe with a light-in-his-loafers walk that is not only wry but also laugh-out-loud funny. While the effusive Andrea Martin, who plays the busybody prompter, got the loudest cheers when the cast took its bows, I thought Katherine McGrath was the glue that kept the show together in the unsympathetic role of Mrs. Pampinelli, the theater troupe’s imperious director. As one expects from WTF, the stagecraft is extraordinary with a set (by David Korins) that comes apart and transforms into another one magically before your eyes. In an era of one- and two-man shows, it’s a treat to see a stage full of actors who infuse fresh life and energy into a rather old-fashioned play.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/05/09 at 07:12 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Lightning Strikes Williamstown Theatre Festival
What’s going on with the stagehands at Williamstown Theatre Festival? At both True West and What Is the Cause of Thunder?, the stagehands, who are dressed like bellhops at chic boutique hotels, take a bow at the curtain call. The sets, lighting and sound for both productions are exquisite with WTF taking full advantage of the state-of-the-facilities at Williams College ‘62 Center for Theater and Dance. At the revival of Sam Shepard’s True West on the Main Stage (which closed on July 26), the set and effects threatened to overshadow the play itself. But the world premiere of What Is the Cause of Thunder? on the smaller Nikos Stage has production values that are perfectly in sync with this thoughtful, quirky and clever play.
Playwright Noah Haidle has a dangerous and delightful mind. The title of his play suggests that he wants to play with our heads. The cause of thunder is no mystery—it’s the shock wave created when a lightning bolt superheats air along its path—but still when we hear a clap of thunder many of us feel that God must be angry and that the heavens are in turmoil. We choose fiction over fact, and so does Haidle’s Ada, the veteran soap opera actress in Thunder who can no longer distinguish between the melodrama of her day job and her real life. (Though, one might ask, isn’t one’s day job real life?) Thunder is a multilayered satire that affectionately pokes fun at daytime serials, while also raising more profound questions about the nature of selling out to the entertainment industrial complex (just as True West did next door) and the narrow line many of us walk between our true and imagined selves.
Haidle could not hope for better casting. Wendie Malick, who starred on the TV sitcom Just Shoot Me, is a gifted comedian and she plays Ada with subtle irony so that you believe that she is a great soap opera actress (and that the concept is not an oxymoron.) She is the diva of daytime and you respect her on one level even though she is so ridiculous on another. Malik pulls off this balancing act by commanding the stage and owning the role. (I hope when this is produced in New York that she is not passed over for an actress with a bigger name.) Happily, she is matched in talent by the ambidextrous Betty Gilpin, who plays mutliple roles—Ada’s real life daughter, Ophelia, and various characters on the soap opera, including her twin daughter. Director Justin Waldman never lets the women over act, ensuring that this smart satire never crosses over into puerile parody.
One of the most gratifying aspects of this production is that it is clearly a work of theater (hence the bow for the stagehands who are always visible when the scenery designed by Alexander Dodge is being moved.) It’s hard to imagine this play being adapted for TV or the movies—it feels essential that the actors feed off the audience’s laughter. What Is the Cause of Thunder? brings together all the considerable resources of the historic Williamstown Theatre Festival in a way that makes you think that maybe the thunder overhead is really God’s applause.
What Is the Cause of Thunder?
Through August 2
Williamstown Theatre Festival
Williamstown, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/27/09 at 11:16 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Every summer, Berkshire Theatre Festival mounts one or two important and historic plays that I have never seen or read, and I am always grateful to BTF for filling in the gaps in my education. Nowadays, as large-cast musicals become prohibitively expensive to produce, we should rejoice whenever they are staged with verve, wit, and passion, which is exactly what director Ralph Petillo has done with Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (through August 15). He has made the most of every comic moment in this high/low musical comedy with its bawdy jokes and transcendent score, and this production makes clear why this is such a beloved show. The cast is made up mostly of college students which gives the evening its classic summer-stock sensibility, and they sing without body mikes in the 99-seat Unicorn Theatre, which gives the evening its intimacy. The cast is obviously having a good time, and so is the audience. The all-too-innocent Candide (sung with great gusto by Julian Whitley) discovers that all is not for the best “in the best of all possible worlds,” as he was taught by his master Dr. Pangloss. Candide loses his innocence as he travels the world in search of Cunegonde, his one-true love (played with self-assurance and cheeky attitude by McCaela Donovan.) When Donovan sings ‘Glitter and Be Gay,” she makes sure it fulfills its show-stopping potential. “She’s sensational!” said Andrew Volkoff, the Barrington Stage director, who happened to be in the audience the night I saw the show. If this were the best of all possible worlds, there would be an orchestra instead of two pianos, but the times demand that not-for-profit theaters make the most of their resources, which is what BTF has done splendidly with Candide. It’s exactly the sort of exhilarating entertainment you want on a summer’s night, and I drove home happily, humming Bernstein’s tunes and feeling—as I so often do as a full-time resident of our region—that I do live in the best of all possible worlds.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/16/09 at 05:31 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Rainy Day Restaurant
You know how it is: It’s another rainy day, and your plans are shot so you think, Let’s go out for lunch. Caffe Pomo d’Oro in West Stockbridge is an ideal spot because it is light and airy even on the grayest day. You can watch the lightning and clouds collide with the mountains through the oversized paned windows and a skylight helps lighten the mood. Chef/owner Scott Cole has been happily feeding locals and summer people in this reclaimed train station for 16 years with a European-style menu that relies on the best ingredients available. Sandwiches (such as salami with roasted red peppers and provolone, $8.95) are served on yeasty Rock Hill Bakehouse bread, and the gazpacho ($5.50) is like drinking in the essences of a local vegetable garden.
On weekends, there can be a wait for Cole’s justifiably famous pancakes served with Ioka Valley Farm maple syrup ($7.50) and oatmeal offered with an array of toppings ($.7.50). There’s expertly made lattes and a wide variety of loose teas, which makes Caffe Pomo d’Oro a great place to linger until the clouds pass. Of course, the restaurant is just as delightful on a sunny day, when you can sit outside at umbrella-shaded cafe tables.
6 Depot Street, West Stockbridge; 413.232.4616
Summer Hours: Daily 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/14/09 at 10:32 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Greatest Generation’s Favorite Musical?
Though I’d argue with Time Magazine’s contention that Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel is the greatest musical of the 20th century, Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, has given Carousel the kind of stunning production that only a great musical deserves. Boyd’s profound affection for the show is evident in her empathetic and emphatic staging of a show that deals with the difficult issues of domestic violence and suicide. She has cast actors with powerful and delightful voices who perfectly embody their characters: Aaron Ramey, who plays Billy Bigelow, the nasty antihero carousel barker, brings down the house when he sings his “Soliloquy.” Patricia Noonan is achingly convincing as Julie Jordan, the vulnerable, stubborn millworker who falls for him.
As in Rodgers and Hammestein’s 1943 Oklahoma!, which was still playing across the street when Carousel opened on Broadway in 1945, the secondary roles are the fun ones: Julie’s best friend Carrie Pipperidge (Sara Jean Ford) is Carousel’s version of Oklahoma!‘s Ado Annie, and Enoch Snow (Todd Buonopane) is the Will Parker character, and they make you smile whenever they are on stage. Jigger Craigin (Christopher Innvar) is a variation on Ali Hakim, and Nettie Fowler (Teri Ralston) is a New England version of Aunt Eller: you can’t listen to the songs “June is Bustin Out All Over” and “A Real Nice Clambake” without thinking they are going to segue into “The Farmer and the Cowman.”
Carousel‘s DNA is integral to postwar American musical theater; after all, it was written when a teenage Stephen Sondheim was hanging out at Oscar Hammerstein’s country house in Pennsylvania and one can trace the dark elements in many Sondheim shows to Carousel‘s boy-meets-girl-but-no-one-lives-happily-ever-after story.
It’s said Carousel was the first musical to seamlessly integrate the songs and text of a musical, and every element of Boyd’s production meshes beautifully, if darkly. Robert Mark Morgan has given her an 1890s New England seaside set that feels like an Edward Hopper painting; and Joshua Bergasses’s chroreography of the deconstructed carousel horses prompted the audience to burst into applause. Scott Pinkney’s lighting is sensitive, moody and spot on. Holly Cain’s costumes make every production number look as perfectly composed as a Norman Rockwell painting
Boyd has spared no expense with this production with the exception of the non-existent orchestra. There are two piano players instead, and they sound so right that you never find yourself missing the violins or clarinets, even though many say Carousel has Rodgers & Hammerstein’s most orchestral score. (The Boston Pops performed it two summers ago at Tanglewood.) When the lights came up after the final curtain, I was surprised to find myself in the Berkshires, because everything about Barrington Stage Company’s production of Carousel made me feel like I’d been on Broadway.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/29/09 at 05:27 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up . . .
If you’re a musical theater buff, you know that “Gray skies are gonna clear up/Put on a happy face” is a lyric from Bye Bye Birdie, which was the song in my head as I walked into the soggy parking lot after seeing TriArts‘s exhilarating production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (through July 4.) It’s a perfect show for summer stock with one caveat: You need an exceptional comic actor to play Pseudolus, and, fortunately, TriArts found Omri Schein, who should be on any Broadway producer’s short list of understudies for Nathan Lane.
From the iconic opening number, “Comedy Tonight,” until the finale, Schein’s schtick never loses steam or appeal. Given that this is a 1962 show, it’s not surprising that Schein seems to be channelling the Borscht Belt comedians (Phil Silvers, Milton Berle et al) who were a mainstay of television in the black-and-white era. Indeed, the entire musical feels like an old-fashioned variety show—an extended sketch from the folks who brought you Carol Burnett. (Of course, Forum was written by Burt Sheevelove and Larry Gelbart who cut their teeth writing for live TV in the 1950s). But what makes Forum timeless are Sondheim’s songs with their witty lyrics and clever word plays. Many of these songs have become cabaret classics like “Everybody Ought To Have A Maid,” and “I’m Calm” and they are sung with gusto by a cast that includes many good-looking students from NYU Steinhardt. They make the farcical situations work at every turn because they have been exactingly directed by John Simpkins, whose vision is underscored by Jennifer Werner’s lickety-split choreography. With TriArts artistic director Michael Berkeley leading a seven-piece orchestra, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum has been given a production that’s bright, cheery, and giddy. Even if it’s raining outside, everything glows and glistens inside the Sharon Playhouse.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/24/09 at 05:50 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: You Don’t Have To Be Jewish . . .
To paraphrase the old Levy’s Rye Bread ad from the 1960s, You Don’t Have to Be Jewish To Like Golda’s Balcony. You don’t need to be a Zionist or a Socialist or a Feminist to appreciate the political and personal struggles of Golda Meir, who was born in Russia, raised in Milwaukee, emigrated to Palestine, and became Israel’s unlikely prime minister from 1969 to 1974. Annette Miller’s muscular yet nuanced portrayal of Meir at Shakespeare & Company (through July 3) may be more revelatory if you’re not watching through a political prism: you’ll see Meir not only as a symbol but also as a woman.
Miller brings Meir to life with every ounce of her being, and you can feel the weight of the world on Miller/Meir’s shoulders, as the prime minister deals with the 1973 Yom Kippur War and reflects on her journey from collective life on a kibbutz to being alone (more or less) with life-and-death powers. Unlike other characters Miller has played in one-woman shows at Shakespeare & Company (Diana Vreeland and Martha Mitchell), Meir does not come across as an egomaniac. Miller makes her an optimistic, principled battle-ax—a woman who dreamed of peace and wondered whether war was the means to that end even as she demanded more weapons from Nixon and Kissinger.
In the playbill, director Daniel Girdon quotes from the play and points the audience towards its universal philosophical question: “What is the price for survival? What happens when idealism becomes power?” Golda Meir was an extraordinary historical figure, and Miller’s performance makes clear that there is a grave burden in being simultaneously a pioneering world leader and a mother and grandmother. At the post-show discussion, most of the audience was talking about Israel. But I was thinking about Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Margaret Thatcher, Andrea Merkel, Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi. I was wondering about their struggles and what it would be like if women ruled the world.
You Don’t Have To Believe in God . . .
There’s a big philosophical question to ponder when you leave Freud’s Last Session at Barrington Stage Company, which has gotten such good word of mouth that BSC extended its run by a week (through July 3). This world premiere of Mark St. Gemain’s play (which had its first reading two years ago at BSC) is the story of a 1939 meeting between the dying Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and C.S. Lewis, an Oxford professor and ardent Christian (who would later become world famous for books such as The Chronicles of Narnia.) As London is threatened by bombs, the two men are threatened by each other’s positions on God and yet they delight in battle. “We cannot survive without enemies,” says Freud, who is played with decaying dignity and wry humor by Martin Rayner. Mark Dold’s Lewis has the earnest eagerness of the newly religious, and he finally wavers in his certitude. “If God is good, He would make his creatures perfectly happy. But we aren’t. So God either lack goodness, or power, or both.”
Like Golda’s Balcony, Freud’s Last Session does not demand that you know your history but it does presume you have intelligence and curiosity. It lets you peer into two of the great minds of the 20th century and understand how important it is to believe in something and respect opposing points of view. You won’t walk out of Freud’s Last Session with answers, but you will have plenty to ponder on the drive home and on the morning after.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/22/09 at 04:49 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: A Youthquake at Music Mountain
On Sunday afternoon, two teenage girls with apples-and-cream complexions who looked like they were dressed for their high school prom, opened the 80th season at the Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Falls Village. Madalyn Parnas, an 18-year-old violinist, and her sister Cicely, a 16-year-old cellist, who are known as Duo Parnas, performed with the legendary pianist Peter Serkin, who was a child prodigy himself and made his professional debut when he was 12 in 1959. The intimacy and incomparable acoustics of Music Mountain’s Gordon Hall (a tongue-and-groove panelled room with screened doors that feels like it could be the rec hall at well-maintained summer camp in Maine) allowed you to not only hear the girls’ extraordinary musicianship but also experience the joy they feel in performing. They smiled a lot as they worked through Frank Bridge’s Three Miniatures for Piano Trio #4 - 6, Shubert’s Piano Trio in B Flat Major, Opus 99, and Brahms’s PIano Trio in B Major, Opus 8. Cicely even flipped back her hair dramatically a few times while playing, a flourish that made her seem like a classical music-world rock star.
Not surprisingly, most of the audience looked like they could be the girls’ grandparents—or great-grandparents. The performance by the Duo Parnas might have been an opportunity to lure a new audience to Music Mountain—“Take Your Grandchildren to A Recital Day”? These girls radiate vitality, sensusality, and charisma. (They also have classical music in their DNA: Their grandfather cellist Leslie Parnas was a founder of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and their uncle Richard Parnas was the principal violist for the National Symphony Orchestra for 35 years. And they have more history on their side: Madalyn plays on a violin made in 1687 by Gioffredo Cappa, and Cicely plays on a 1790 William Forster cello.) At the post-concert reception in one of the old colonial houses on the Music Mountain campus, they demonstrated effortless charm as they arrived (right) to mingle with their fans. One wished it had been a room full of high school and college students who were lining up to meet them and hoping, perhaps, to get their cellphone numbers or emails. If you want to see the extraordinary Duo Parnas in our region this summer, buy tickets now for their August 22 concert with Christian Steiner at Tannery Pond.
Gordon Hall at Music Mountain in Falls Village, June 14, 2009
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/14/09 at 10:05 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Berkshire Playwrights Lab Champions New Drama
Although the Berkshires’ four leading theater companies—Barrington Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival—all produce new plays along with classics and crowd-pleasers, only the Berkshire Playwrights Lab is devoted exclusively to new work by both established and emerging playwrights. To kick off its second season at The Mahaiwe, BPL held a benefit featuring eight new one-act plays on May 30; the funds raised will support a season of seven free Wednesday night readings in Great Barrington (beginning June 10 and continuing until September 16.) The benefit performance last Friday began with a snappy welcoming sketch (with many insider references) performed by BPL’s founders and artistic directors—Joe Cacaci, Jim Frangione, Bob Jaffe, & Matthew Penn—which was followed by eight short plays by writers including Eric Bogosian, Larry Gelbart and Joan Ackermann. The high points of the evening were David Mamet‘s Family (with David Rasche and Tom Bloom directed by Joe Cacaci), which suggested that no one alive writes ping-pong dialogue like Mamet, and Shauna Earp’s Down Where the Roses Cling, a film noir-inspired drama directed by Peter DeAnello with razor-sharp performances by LeighAnn Gould and James Barry (who gave a great peformance last season at BTF in The Caretaker and will be in The Einstein Project this summer at BTF.) Afterwards, the audience joined the cast and crew on the Mahaiwe stage for wine and dessert organized by the benefit committe’s chairs, Laurily Epstein and Helice Picheny. BPL’s free Wednesday night readings at the Mahaiwe will take place June 10, July 1, July 15, July 29, August 12, August 26, and September 16.
At the post performance reception: Maisie Deely & James Barry; Vashti Poor and James Bill; benefit committee members Stephanie Hedges & Laurily Epstein
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/02/09 at 10:57 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Memorial Day Tent Sales, Tag Sales & Antiques
This is the weekend when you look around the house—perhaps for the first time since last fall—and start to notice that the guest room needs a new coverlet and that your iced tea glasses are looking worse for wear. Memorial Day is a time to get your house (and closet) in order for the sumer season, and this year (alas) the bargains at the tradtional tent sales are bound to be better than ever. Joan Osofsky has put up a tent outside Hammertown Barn‘s flagship in Pine Plains for her two-day sale on May 23 & 24. On Saturday from 8 - 9 AM, she is holding an early-bird buyers’ fundraiser for the Pine Plains Hose Company (and you write the $40 check directly to firemen.)
• The Pine Cone Hill sales are legendary as we reported last fall and feature all of Annie Selke’s products (photo), including Dash & Albert rugs. The sale runs May 21 - 25 from 10 AM - 4 PM at 55 Pittsfield Road (Route 7) in Lenox.
• If you always eye Tashas Polizzi‘s fabulous fleece creations at T.P Saddleblanket & Co. in downtown Great Barrington, now you can buy them at great discounts under the tent at Campo De’ Fiori in 1815 N. Main Street (Route 7) in Sheffield, which will be selling seconds and overstocks of house and garden accessories.
• Some people think Homeward Bound in Great Barrington has the best party-clothes in the Berkshires, along with stylish housewares and furniture. Some of it will now be reduced up to 70% from May 21 - 25 in the parking lot across from Kmart Plaza.
• Cypress Bathrobes makes sheets and towels for the world’s best hotels, including Porches in North Adams. They wlll be selling hotel quality linens under a tent behind the Great American Hot Dog & Hamburger Stand on South Main Street in Great Barrington on May 23 - 24 from 9 AM - 4 PM.
• Wild Birds Country Store (across from Guido’s in Great Barrington) will have birdfeeders, birdhouses, outdoor furniture and more at 30 - 70% off regular prices.
Getting to go inside the wonderfully restored Simon’s General Store in Ancram at the crossroads of Routes 82 and 7 is part of the fun of the Ancram Preservation Group annual Memorial Weekend Tag Sale on May 23 and 24; the special early-buying sale is Friday, May 22 from from 6 - 8 PM. WIne & Cheese will be served; $15 for members; $25 for non-members.
Although the 33rd annual Rhinebeck Antiques Fair is not about bargain shopping per se, it is one of the great country antiques fairs in our region at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds on Route 9, and it runs May 23 from 10 AM - 5 PM and Sunday from 11 AM - 4 PM, and it’s held entirely indoors so you can enjoy it even if the weather turns stormy.
Lynne Bragonier has put up a tent in front of her Agapanthus in Lakeville (right), and she has outdoor furniture (teak benches and chairs, all-weather wicker, metal garden tables, etc), lighting (Juliska and more) and dishes, glassware, table cloths and napkins.
And don’t forget to check out the flea market in Hillsdale on May 23.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/20/09 at 06:49 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Jarvis Rockwell—The Son Also Rises
When I innocently walked into the gallery at 73 Main Street in North Adams on Saturday morning, I was drawn by an enormous, stepped pyramid covered with thousands of plastic action figures and small rubber dolls. I was captivated and charmed, because this work of art had an anthropological quality that seemed to say, Look at this #!@&?! world we human beings have created. I walked over to one of the giant wall collages—a grid of ephemera such as motel room keys, business cards, campaign buttons, miniature liquor bottles—and a courtly grey-haired gentleman who looked vaguely familiar started explaining the piece. “It’s like a city, but another view of the city,” he said. “We’ve created quite a society. We have surrounded ourselves with lots of junk.”
I noticed the sign on the wall: Maya III by Jarvis Rockwell, and wondered if this was the son of Norman Rockwell, whose studio I had visited, coincidentally, four days earlier. Indeed it was, and Maya III is a variation on the piece that Rockwell made for MASS MoCA’s Game Show exhibition in 2001. Though he did not want to talk about his father, Jarvis said that he shares his father’s interest in ordinary life—a sociological aesthetic. “My father used to say this was the century of the common man,” says Jarvis, who has assembled figures from toy stores, fast food chains and theme parks around the world into a multicultural portrait that, in a sense, is the son’s version of Golden Rule.
There was only one small piece in the gallery, a beautifully framed shadow box with three rows of cigarette butts neatly glued to cardboard like a piece of conceptual art. “I collected the butts from the ladies at the bank who smoke in the alley,” he explained. The piece was not only the story of their lives, it seemed to be the story of mine (or at least the 15 years when I smoked.) I had to have it, and Jarvis, who seem surprised that I would want it, agreed to sell. Now the untitled piece hangs in my house, my own little piece of the Rockwell legacy that honors ordinary Berkshire lives.
Maya III by Jarvis Rockwell
73 Main Street, North Adams; 413.664.8718
Wednesday - Friday 11 AM - 6 PM Saturday 10 AM - 6 PM; Sunday 10 AM - 4 PM
One view of the figures used to assemble Maya III
Another view of Maya III
Jarvis Rockwell with one of his giant collages that capture the spirit of the city
A detail of one of the collages.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/05/09 at 09:19 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Daffodil House
Every town has one or two. If you’re lucky, there may be half a dozen houses with breathtaking fields of daffodils, which make you take scenic detours this time of year. In Salisbury, CT, one of the most stunning roadside attractions belongs to Inge Heckel, the former president of the New York School of Interior Design, who inherited her daffodils when she bought her 1797 house a few years ago. “I consider myself their caretaker,” says Heckel who remembers seeing the daffodil field some 40 years ago when she first visited Salisbury. She was told that the family who owned the house from 1939 to 1995 planted 1,000 daffodils every fall—you do the math—and Heckel has planted some more bulbs from White Flower Farm. “We had to fill in some spots!” she says, adding that she has counted 19 varieties on her property. Does she fertilize her fields? “No, no, no, no!” she says emphatically. “I just leave them alone. We don’t mow the field until the end of July—never earlier!”
The Daffodil House, April 29, 2009
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/30/09 at 06:15 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Berkshire Museum’s Stimulus Plan
The venerable Berkshire Museum is one of those secret gems in plain sight. Located in the heart of Pittsfield, it is an eclectic family-friendly museum that is especially family friendly for the entire month of May when admission will be free to all. “It’s our version of an economic—and cultural—stimulus program,” says Stuart Chase, the museum’s ebullient executive director. “We hope to encourage visitors, especially those who’ve never been here , or who last visited the museum as children, to come and check us out.” On Tuesday mornings in May, Chase will give special behind-the-scene tours of the museum’s storage rooms on a first-come, first-served basis (for only six guests over the age of 10). “I think people will be quite pleasantly surprised to see all that’s here in downtown Pittsfield,” says Chase.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/27/09 at 07:50 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Is Now A Good Time to Buy Art?
It’s sometimes hard to believe gallery owners who tell you now is a great time to buy art, but you should pay attention when two of the world’s top collectors say buy.
Raymond J. Learsy and Melva Bucksbaum, who spend weekends in Sharon, CT, will be giving a talk at The White Gallery in Lakevlle on Saturday morning for anyone who wants to understand what makes great collectors tick—and pull out their checkbooks. “I’ve always felt that the art market marches to a different drummer than financial markets,” Learsy recently told ARTnews, where he and Bucksbaum are perennials on the magazine’s list of 200 Top Collectors. “People who are really interested in art are a little bit like smokers. You just can’t give it up. It becomes intrinsic to your life and you go and delve into resources that you might not have thought you had to continue collecting.”
The couple (pictured above in a portrait by the painter Francesco Clemente) are known for their philanthropic approach to collecting and supporting young artists. “They buy according to their hearts, and they have good ones,” the painter Pat Steir told The New York Times. Indeed the Times suggests that they are sui generis—“a little-discussed breed of collectors, the kind who blend a private passion for art with an invigorating public altruism. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the heiress who founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1931, was one. So, it seems, are Mr. Learsy and Ms. Bucksbaum.”
“The Art of Collecting Art” with Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy
Saturday, April 25; 10 AM
The White Gallery
342 Main Street, Lakeville, CT; 860.435.1029
Free but reservations required because seating is limited.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/20/09 at 08:27 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Hometown Pride
Tolstoy famously said, “All happy families are alike.” You might say the same for all the small-towns in our region, which each have their indispensable library, heroic volunteer fire department, and spirited Memorial Day parade. Indeed, small towns are like extended families and in my town of Falls Village (population 1,200) the annual spring musical of the Falls Village Children’s Theater is like a joyful family reunion. (Full disclosure: I am on the FVCT board.) The not-for-profit company invites every child in town to participate in the production for free if they are willing to rehearse every Saturday and Sunday for three months. The parents pitch in to build sets and sew costumes. This year, 30 kids—ages 5 to 17—have put on a rousing rendition of Alice in Wonderland. The show is free (donations accepted) and great entertainment for young kids. There are two more performances: Saturday, March 28, at 7 PM and Sunday, March 29, at 2 PM, at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 03/28/09 at 08:03 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Cultural Border Crossings
In case you hadn’t noticed, one of our goals here at Rural Intelligence is to get you to cross county lines and ignore state boundaries. It’s eaiser said than done. For many people, it’s not just psychology that gets in the way but also the driving which can be stressful at night. So we applaud two arts groups— Crescendo Berkshires (rehearsing left) and the Aglet Theatre Company—that are reaching out by holding back-to-back performances in both Litchfield and Berkshire counties this month. The Crescendo Chorus will mark the 200th birthday of Felix Mendelssohn with recitals on March 21 at 7:30 PM at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington, MA, and will repeat the program on March 22 at 4 PM at Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock, CT. The Aglet Theatre, which was founded a few years ago by Macey Levin and Gloria Miller as a salon at the Chaiwalla tea room in Salisbury, performs plays and staged readings from fall to spring, On March 21, Aglet will present a staged reading of Amy’s View by David Hare at the Bok Galley at TriArts in Sharon, CT; on March 28, it will present Amy’s View at Berkshire Theatre Festival‘s Unicorn Theatre. We love that these groups make culture more convenient.
