Archives for June 2008

Review of All’s Well That Ends Well at Shakespeare and Co.

June 27, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Once again the intrepid Tina Packer has shown her ingenuity and originality in dealing with the Bard’s plays, and her staging of All’s Well That Ends Well now playing in repertory through August 31 at the Shakespeare and Co.’s Founders’ Theatre, Lenox, MA, has turned an ugly duckling into a swinging, singing swan.

All's Well That Ends Well
(L-R) Virginia Ness,Peter Davenport, Grace Trull, Douglas Seldin, Brittany Morgan

All’s Well That Ends Well is one of Shakespeare’s problem plays in which the plot (as written) is a weak one, based on a saying that is ambivalent, at best. The audience is left to decide whether or not the marriage of the warring lovers can possibly “end well.” This production, through the skillful casting and playing of the two lovers, leaves no doubts.

Packer achieves her effects, not only by the skillful casting of all the talented members that make up her large cast, but by choosing to open the play in troubadour France. As written, the play has only one song, she and composer Bill Barclay have added fourteen more musical numbers performed by a five piece onstage orchestra, cast members, and often danced to choreography by Susan Dibble.

What is playing on stage at the Founders’ is indeed a musical version of a play by William Shakespeare.

The plot involves an unlikely pair of lovers. Helena (Kristin Villanueva) is a poor orphan living on the bounty of the Countess of Rossillion (Elizabeth Ingram) and secretly in love with the Countess’s son Bertram (Jason Asprey), who is socially far above her. However, she is determined, and when Bertram goes off to Paris and is welcomed into the court of the dying King (Timothy Douglas) Helena, who has learned medical lore from her recently deceased father, goes to Paris, cures the King and is offered one wish.

Of course the wish is for a husband. All the gallant blades of the French court are lined up for her choice, and she traverses the line (in couplets, otherwise rarely used in this play) politely rejecting all, until Bertram, accidentally in line, is chosen.

Bertram objects violently but is unable to convince the King to change his promise to Helena. An off stage wedding ensues. However, Bertram enters announcing his rejection of the match with words that will echo down through the events that make up the (improbable) events in the second half of the play.

Bertram will recognize the marriage only

“When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a ‘then’ I write ‘never.’ “

He then takes off for war in Florence and poor Helena returns to the Countess in the south of France.

However, Helena is determined, if temporarily saddened and almost defeated. She dons the ragged garb of beggar and goes off to Florence. There, aided and abetted by a group of local women, she accomplishes the seemingly impossible feats Bertram has insisted upon, and the play can end gaily, happily, jubilantly, and musically.

The cast is star studded with the handsome talented Asprey slipping easily in a role so different from his villainous but memorable one in “Much Ado About Nothing” or his recent brio one as Hamlet.

Ingram is convincing in her central and compassionate role, every gesture or vocal nuance so right. Villanueva, petite but feisty, is engaging as the loving but determined Helena, especially appealing in her vocal delivery and her dogged determination. Timothy Douglas as an ailing King of France, feebly sinking to a chair is, touchingly central.

In a large supporting role, that of Parolles, the cowardly foppish villain of the play, Kevin O”Donnell delights whenever on stage. While Brittany Morgan is appealing and graceful as Diana, playing the chief role of the women in Italy who come to Helena’s defense.

And then there is LAVACHE, (Nigel Gore) in a role that in Shakespeare was that of a clown in the Countess’ court. In Packer’s version, he is a world weary troubadour and present on stage much of the time, a key figure singing a plaintive solo, or boisterously performing in group numbers, the music mixing folk songs recalling Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or energetically employing the rest of the talented musicians in the on stage band. The music of varied moods accompanies original pieces moving the plot along as well of poems and lines from other Shakespeare plays.

Jacqueline Firkin’s countless costumes are color coordinated (everyone in black and white for a mourning time in the countess’s court; all rustic among the peasant women). Many cast members play several roles, and each dons several costumes. What a flurry that must cause backstage; during one song Asprey leaves the stage and keeps returning with suitable costume additions, all charming and delightful as are so many of the touches in this charming and captivating play.

The three different locales for the action are ably provided by Susan Zeeman Rogers towering flats that flip swiftly from the white walls and flowing curtains of the Countess country home to the elegance of the King of France’s throne room in Paris or the helter-skelter vivid colors of the Florence scenes.

What with Bertram escaping to the wars, much elegant sword play is in effect thanks to Ryan Winkles.

Everybody, including all those engaged in this saucy and surprising All’s Well deserves praise including names unmentioned but whose skills made it flourish so delightfully.

Tina Packer, Bill Barclay and all the rest have convincingly proved that All’s Well That Ends Well ends very well at the Founders’. Shakespeare should be pleased.

Review of Candida at Berkshire Theatre Festival

June 20, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Andres Cato’s intuitive direction of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, now playing engagingly at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, gives one the uncanny feeling that in a previous incarnation he moved in Shaw’s world, perhaps hoping he had been swapped in the cradle and was somehow Shaw’s son.

In each of the Shaw plays that Cato has recently directed at the BTF, including Heartbreak House, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, he has caught the precise tone that the wily playwright intended.

Candida, following close on the heels of Shaw’s Arms and a Man, is an uproarious comedy involving mad-house physical action that escalates to farcical levels for two and a half fast-paced, hilarious acts before, in mid-act three, the entire tone changes with the three main (warring) characters in a scene in which pace, tempo, and mood totally change and Shaw has his say about a world in which Ibsen’s Doll House is turned upside down.

The plot (the action of which all occurs on one day in the Victorian world of 1894) begins innocently enough. The Reverend James Morell, (Michael Gill) confident in his role as beloved pastor and orator awaits the return of his wife Candida (Jayne Atkinson) from a three week absence in the country, shared with her children and a shy young poet, Eugene Marchbanks (Finn Wittrock), whom they have both befriended.

The day should be a glorious one. It’s glories are soon shattered when the young poet as soon as he is alone with Morell announces his love for Candida. And challenges him for her. As the conflict escalates, Eugene demands that there must be a showdown in which Candida must choose, and Morell’s character is shaken by a situation he found at first ludicrous but which threatens his total confidence in his world.

And swirling through the day until the evening when matters finally can be faced and settled are the presence of Morell’s secretary Proserprine Garnett (Samantha Soule), madly and secretly in love with her employer, as lovingly typing his letters as she is helping wash up in the scullery.

Also erupting unexpectedly into the day is Candida’s father, a bombastic, unscrupulous businessman of incredible girth, Mr. Burgess (David Schramm), who is a trial run for a future Shaw creation – (Eliza’s father in Pygmalian) – who can only determine that all occupants of the house are mad and attempt to pacify them. Equally bewildered by the turbulence of the household, but adding to its confusion, is Reverend Alexander Mill (Jeremiah Wiggins), Morell’s assistant.

Central to all the confusion, and at first amused by it, eventually forced to indignantly end it, with a terse, “I am up for auction it seems,” is the suburb Candida, one of Shaw’s greatest creations (whom I am grateful, momentarily, to be old enough to have first seen played by Katherine Cornell). Atkinson embodies the role beautifully from her first glad return in act one to her bemused but half-hurt understanding the needs and strengths of both men as the play ends.

Gill evolves from the handsome, self-confident husband, into a shaken, but possibly a bit wiser husband whom one feels will recover once the shocking day is behind him. A subtly played role.

Miss Prossy, the adoring secretary, will appear on the morrow possibly with a hangover from the champagne that contributed to her marvelous character betrayal in act three.

And Eugene, the young poet, who after all is still only 18, will go off into the night secure in the belief that a genius such as he may be clumsy in the drawing room (in this production perching bird-like on furniture and swooping about a bit too unbelievably), but that the romance of being a poet is secure in his heart. For all his youth, he has been manly, if insecure, in drawing rooms, and vocally he has handled his side with conviction. Like a pre-Raphaelite hero, he vanishes into the night.

As for Candida’s father, he is a pompous windbag and will never change. He is as self-satisfied as we are in his handling of his role.

Hugh Landwehr has transformed the BTF stage into a handsome Victorian living room, one that scrupulously includes each item Shaw calls for, down to the child’s chair by the hearth (so needed for subtle character definition at times). And, of course, the wall paper is William Morris.

Olivera Gajic’s costumes are perfect from the high-top shoes of the men to the apron Candida dons to clean lamps.

We are so fortunate here in the Berkshires that the BTF brings Shaw to us and that in this summer of gasoline woes it is not necessary to drive to Canada for superb Shavian productions since we have a such joyous one here in our own backyard.

Tanglewood opens with Mark Morris, Garrison Keillor, James Taylor

The 2008 Tanglewood season will begin with performances by:

Mark Morris Dance Group on June 26 and 27,
a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor on June 28,
two concerts by James Taylor on July 3 and 4.

On June 30, Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director James Levine will lead the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in its first concert of the season, conducting Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season opens with weekend performances of Berlioz’s Les Troyens under the direction James Levine on July 5 and 6, 2008.

On June 26 and 27 at 8 p.m. in Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Mark Morris Dance Group will perform a program featuring the world premiere of a new work, Excursions, choreographed to a Barber piano piece of the same name. Music of Brahms and Schubert will also be featured on the program. Vocal and piano fellows from the Tanglewood Music Center will be featured along with dancers of MMDG, marking the fifth year of collaboration between the two groups. In addition to the performances, these TMC fellows will have the opportunity to work with members from the company on learning dances from the repertoire being performed; similarly, the dancers will study some of the music being played in the performances under the tutelage of TMC Fellows. Mark Morris, who will supervise most of the musical preparation for the performances, will also hold special classes for other TMC musicians, including the percussion and composition departments.

On, June 28 at 5:45 p.m., Garrison Keillor will host a live broadcast of American Public Media’s A Prairie Home Companion from the Koussevitzky Music Shed. The annual event has become the radio program’s season finale and a Tanglewood tradition since Prairie Home was first broadcast live from the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in 1998. The Prairie Home broadcast is sponsored by Select Comfort and General Mills, Inc.

On June 29 at 2:30 p.m. in Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players will be joined by guest pianist Menahem Pressler for performances of Mozart’s Quintet for piano and winds and Dvorák’s Piano Quintet No. 2. Harbison’s Wind Quintet opens the program.

On July 3 and 4 at 7 p.m., Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter James Taylor performs with his band for two sold-out Shed performances. The Tanglewood grounds open at 4 p.m., and each concert is followed by fireworks over the Stockbridge Bowl.

Review of Garth Fagan at Jacob’s Pillow

June 19, 2008 performance reviewed by Connell McGrath

Garth Fagan returned to Jacob’s Pillow this week after a hard-to-bear three year absence. His company performed Griot New York, a 1991 work originally commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music and others. Griot New York is a collaboration between Fagan and Wynton Marsalis, who wrote the original score, and with Martin Puryear, who designed the sets. Costumes were by Garth Fagan along with Martin Puryear. The score by Marsalis is extremely good, mainstream jazz. Fun to listen to and with a depth of musical complexity, mastery and feeling. The sets were a little funny, and it was a stretch to associate them with the dance in some cases. (Why the oversized melted spatula? what could it have meant?) Costumes were excellent. 2014 Jacob’s Pillow schedule, Contact info. and links

The choreography, however, was uneven, though the great parts more than made up for the less successful. When Fagan focuses on rhythmic dance truly based on the music, he excels as usual. He brings his great gift for blending jazz, modern and African dance styles to bear on the project. He attempted in Griot to intersperse the bigger, faster and more successful passages — such as City Court Dance, Oracabessa Sea and High-Rise Riff — with slower passages. While these passages were original and somewhat interesting, they can’t compare with the brilliance of his moral rhythmic work. It seemed as if he was reaching too far for depth and meaning. Also, he is rightly trying to balance a full evening length work with variety. Unfortunately, in 1991 he couldn’t do this kind of work well.

The highlights of the evening were the three previously mentioned sections. City Court Dance starts Griot New York with a terrific up-tempo jazz beat and thrilling, original dance. He ends it in the same fashion with High-Rise Riff.

Garth Fagan is most famous for choreographing The Lion King on Broadway. It’s what’s always mentioned. While the constant refrain of Lion King gets old quickly, it points to Garth’s true genius. He is best when he’s mixing entertainment with his blend of modern-jazz-afro-caribbean dance. This in itself certainly provides enough meaning to his work, and he doesn’t have to reach further.

Review of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at B.S.C.

June 15, 2008 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee that has just opened at the Barrington Stage Company is a joyous, hilarious and heart-warming hip-hop musical that should pack the house for its run.

Its Berkshire roots in the lab-theatre production a few summers ago have since sprouted and flowered into a Broadway success and Tony Awards, and this well-cast and zesty production under Jeremy Dobrish’s direction is a delight all the way through its non-stop two hour run.

As for a plot, we the audience very quickly realize that we are a part of the show, sitting not in the comfortable seats of an auditorium but on bleachers in a high school gym facing a raised platform on which a spelling bee is being conducted. Six young hopefuls, all vying for first place and the chance to go the national contest, are soon augmented by four members of the audience who have volunteered to accept the spelling challenge as well.

Their names are called out and they climb up the stairs to join on the stage the six finalists, three boys and there girls in having numbers hung about their necks and be instructed by the program’s host who sits with her the assistant who will pronounce each word, give its derivation, use it in a sentence etc.

And downstage, center front is the ominous microphone at which each contestant must stand and encounter the one word that stands between him/her and the glory of going on to the National Bee.

The six in this production are stars; they convincingly, engagingly, and endearingly create the children, with ages ranging from a second grader (who as a previous third place winner gets in because the rightful contestant can’t make it) to a pubescent youth whose erection at a fateful moment distracts him into error.

The six also vary greatly in home and educational backgrounds and bring to the fray emotional baggage confusing for a child to carry, from angry self-defeat at winning last year to losing at the nationals; from failing to see daddy sitting in the aisle seat she saved for him, from thinking, just thinking as she stands to spell, “Jesus, can’t you come up with a harder word than that?” and having him suddenly appear and assure her that it is not the kind of thing he cares much about!

The six stars who so successfully thread the maze of this production are: Emy Baysic, Miguel Cervantes, Hannah Del Monte, Molly Ephraim, Clifton Guterman, and Eric Peterson. All of them sing, dance, and spell with astonishing agility. Each of them costumed distinctively down to distinctive haircuts and styles.

As the play proceeds, one sorts them, and their personalities and abilities, out, and realizes their young vulnerability, cloaked in hostility in some, in insecurity or ego in others. Little life plots weave in and out of the absolutely riotous laughter that washes over the play.

And holding it all together, keeping them and the plot in line are host Rona Peretti (Sally Wilfert, who years ago was a winner herself and knows the joys and griefs of the spellers) and her assistant, played by Douglas Panch who as judge must on request provide a sentence in which the word occurs. Every such sentence evoking an audience roar of delight.

And there is a ninth cast member playing at least three roles but most delightful as the “comforter.” It is he who must remove from the stage those who fail to spell a word correctly. They go differently into that good night, some meekly, but other clinging to chairs and having to be bodily carried from the room. Not an easy role but creatively and agilely rendered by Demond Green.

It would be unfair to tell who wins, how and why. And what special significance the winning has. It’s a lovely, loud, glorious little musical. How nice it grew up in our own Berkshire backyard.

Clark Art opens exhibition of Whistler, Inness and others

An exhibition at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, running from June 22 through October 19, 2008, will be the first to explore “painting softly,” a distinctive and unexamined approach to painting exemplified in works by James McNeill Whistler and George Inness.

Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness, and the Art of Painting Softly brings together forty paintings by leading American artists working around 1900, including Whistler, Inness, William Merritt Chase, John Twachtman, Eduard Steichen, and others, to examine this style of painting through which artists obscured their brush strokes.

Generally thought of as an era of virtuosic brushwork-where touch and surface were nearly as important as the subject being painted-the exhibition will trace a quieter approach to painting that evolved during this period.

“The Clark is engaged in providing new ways to look at well-known artists,” said Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “This exhibition invites a re-examination of the work of America’s leading artists at the turn of the twentieth century in which the artists challenged the very nature of making art and by removing themselves as intermediaries between the work and the viewer.”

The exhibition will open with a community open house, and opening lecture, “Like Breath on Glass: The Hard Work of Painting Softly,” on June 22. Other lectures include “Night in the City: Whistler, Fireworks, and Dancing Girls” on August 10, “Higher Forms of Truth: The Late Works of George Inness” on August 24, and “In Praise of Shadows” on September 7. The “Vision of the Gilded Age: Film Adaptations of Henry James and Edith Wharton” film series will be held on selected Saturdays in July and August. “Listening to Mr. Whistler,” a special event co-hosted by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, will be held August 4.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm (daily in July and August). Admission June 1 through October 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. Admission is free November 1 through May 31. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit www.clarkart.edu.