Is it coincidence or harmonic convergence that Barrington Stage Company and Berkshire Theatre Festival are both ending their main stage seasons with plays by Noël Coward, the most urbane of playwrights? According to the theater companies' artistic directors, it was the availability of key players that led them to Coward this August. Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage, says that when she learned that two of her favorite actors—Mark H. Dold and Christopher Innvar—were interested in doing Private Lives, she decided she could fulfill her dream of directing what many consider Coward's masterpiece, a comedy about two divorcées who can't get enough of each other while on their honeymoons with their new spouses. "I am not doing this as a museum piece," says Boyd. "They are not going to have cigarette holders! I am interpreting it for modern times. And I think having a woman director's perspective changes the play, too." Kate Maguire, the artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival, chose to mount Noël Coward in Two Keys because director Vivian Matalon (who directed last year's Mornings at Seven) suggested it. Matalon brings unique insight to the the pair of one-acts—Come into the Garden, Maud and A Song at Twilight—which were Coward's last works for the stage. "Vivian directed Coward himself in the plays in 1966," notes McGuire. Both artistic directors say the Coward plays have contemporary resonance for the region's audiences. "Coward wrote about society and the pitffalls of that life in the most amusing way," says McGuire, whose theater is located in what was once the Stockbridge Casino, the hub of Gilded Age social life, which was designed by the great Stanford White. Boyd notes that Coward wrote Private Lives in 1930 (in four days, unbelievably) and that it was an entertaining diversion and balm during very difficult economic times. "It was escapist and gay, in the old sense of the word," says Boyd. "Maybe subconsciously that's why I chose to do it now." Private Lives at Barrington Stage CompanyPittsfield, MA; 413.236.8888 August 7 - 24Noël Coward in Two Keys at Berkshire Theatre FestivalStockbridge. MA;413.298. 5576 August 12 - 30
