Starring in The Crucible through October 24
It's hard to recall that not-so-long-ago Barrington Stage Company was the underdog theater company of the Berkshires. Before moving to its own home in Pittsfield in 2006, it mounted plays and musicals in the cinder-block-walled auditorium of the Mt. Everett Regional School in Sheffield, which never stopped artistic director Julianne Boyd (who'd directed the Broadway hit Eubie! early in her career) from ambitiously staging productions that would rival those at any top-tier regional theater in the country. Over the years, she has managed to lure more and more actors with Broadway credits to the Berkshires, including Christopher Innvar, one of her secret weapons, who has done 12 shows at Barrington Stage since 2002 (and played opposite Audra McDonald on Broadway in 110 in the Shade in 2007.) Thus, it was clear to Boyd that she would choose Innvar to star as the morally-challenged John Proctor in Arthur Miller's Crucible, the classic American play about the Salem witch trials, which was also an allegory about the McCarthy trials and red-baiting of the 1950s.
Innvar has proven to be a versatile actor who defies type-casting whether he's playing Cyrano de Bergerac or one of Noel Coward's dandy snobs in Private Lives. In BSC's 2009 production of A Streetcar Named Desire, he vanquished memories of Marlon Brando and made Stanley Kowalski his very own with a portrayal that was "threatening, nasty, and sympathetic." Last summer, he convincingly played a groovy, 1970s British architect with a wandering eye in Absurd Person Singular. "Chris is a strong, charismatic actor with great emotional depth," says Boyd. "He's also a very grounded, giving actor who leads this company of 18 actors by example. He is, in my opinion, the perfect John Proctor [photo above with Jessica Griffin]. This role may be the most challenging he's done at BSC, and Chris rises to the occasion magnificently." Innvar admits he was nervous about taking on the role of Proctor. "He's a man who's tortured by his one big mistake," says Innvar, who radiates a gentle aura offstage. "I wasn't sure I wanted to bite it off." Innvar is the accidental actor who did not pursue theater until after college. "I have a business degree from Syracuse, and I was working for a long distance phone company in New Jersery when I opened up a community newspaper and saw a listing for an audition for The Hobbit," he recalls. He got the role of The Wizard, which was the beginning of the end of office life for him. "I enjoyed the camraderie of doing a play; it reminded me of sports," he says. Soon, he was studying at Circle in the Square in Manhattan, and making his Broadway debut in Les Miserables. He has also taken the intensive study program at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox and frequently peforms at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. Like many actors, Innvar harbored a fantasy to direct. Last spring, he and Boyd chose Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man for his directorial debut. It was a breathtaking a tour de force. "Julie and I have a similar artistic sensibility," says Innvar, who is looking for a play to direct on Barrington's Stage II next summer. "Julie has created a community here at Barrington Stage with artists such as William Finn and Mark St. Germain," says Innvar. "It's almost like belonging to a repertory company. Now being in Pittsfield feels like being home."
