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Local theatre was...

Local theatre was an important aspect of our reporting on events that draw visitors to the Berkshires when we set up shop 20+ years ago. Since the passing in 2014 of Franny Hall, that desk remains empty (but available).

Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co.

John Douglas Thompson in Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co.

August 25, 2012 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

John Douglas Thompson in Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co.
John Douglas Thompson in Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co. (venue photo)

Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf at Shakespeare and Co. is a STUNNING production, one of the most exciting new plays to have premiered in a challenging Berkshire summer season. John Douglas Thompson, the play begins as solo performance. The time is March 1971 and Louis Armstrong, greatest jazz musician of the 20th century, is backstage at the Waldorf preparing for what may be his last performance. The man is aged and ill. As he sinks into a chair, he puts reaches not for his golden horn but gropes for his oxygen inhaler. Gradually, talking to himself he copes with his infirmities.

Thompson is Armstrong. And then, without warning he becomes Joe Glaser, his mob-connected manager, and tone and especially language with the F word entangled in most sentences and his over-bearing personality smashing through, rule the stage. Thompson is suddenly taller, dominating.

Then just as suddenly Glaser is gone. But one has feeling of two men on stzage. Yet on the stage is only Armstrong, limping, pill taking, trying to cope with the costume change required for the next Waldorf “set” for which he must leave at the end of this ninety minute play, which no longer seems just a play but an action in which we are involved. And to further complicate, but clearly easy to follow, a third character, Miles Davis appears on stage, briefly.

Armstrong does not play his golden horn. This is not a musical play in that sense, although it is a very musical play. One that manages to sweep us into Armstrong and the music with which he dominated his generation.

The simple set on which this magic takes place is the thrust stage, the only scenery the long back-wall mirror, the light bulbs that define it indicating character shifts. Various little groups of furniture compose the acting area. Simple but striking.

Thompson is so dynamically each character he assumes, one is at loss to find magic words to define his talent. Whatever it is, it is so mesmerizing that even if some audience members may feel shocked by language, or feel they should be, the final applause was so rapid that the audience was standing by the time the lights were back on.

This is an unusual play. About Louis Armstong. Some come because they at least remember he recorded Hello Dolly. Some come because they admire Thompson the actor. Whatever, the stage is steeped in talent. Love it or hate it. The experience is well worth it.

Review of The Tempest at Shakespeare and Company

Olympia Dukakis, Rocco Sisto in The Tempest at Shakespeare & Co..

July 28, 2012 Matinee reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Olympia Dukakis, Rocco Sisto in The Tempest at Shakespeare & Co..

It is with joy that one can cheer Olympia Dukakis’ and Tony Simotes’ version of The Tempest now playing at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox. They have taken risks that could have been disastrous. These included not least the changing of the sex of the leading character, the time in which the events in the play occur moved to the 20th century, and the locale changed to a Mediterranean island. None of this mattered. Instead, for the play, it added only joy and deliverance. Anyone not familiar with Shakespeare’s original version could well have believed that the play was exactly as written and originally played.

As staged in its current version, the magic words are still there, the marvelously limned characters still speak them and the stage is awash with discovery and a strange joy. The setting is simple, the stage relatively bare, one tall bare tree sufficing for many glorious opportunities. Other slight bits were effortlessly risen from the floor or whirled in by the actors. Stage-filling musical numbers whirled in opposing groups with their agenda—demanding changes or plotting to recover territory lost.

In the midst of it all, the innocence of the juvenile love scene between Miranda (Merritt Janson) and Ferdinand (Ryan Winkles) was played with such naivete that one could literally feel behind it the will of Prospera (Olympia Dukakis) hoping it to evolve into the daughter she loved becoming Queen of Naples.

In costuming one delights in that of the anemic Caliban, (Rocco Sisto) his skin washed to baby-like contrast to that of any other on stage. Shakespeare gave him the (at times) the innocence of those marvelous lines, the isle full of noises of which he cried to dream again. Director Tony Simotes gave him the stage location from which to deliver them. Of such moments is a beautiful play made.

Music seemed to wash over the whole play, and the stage again and again was filled with groups of valiant women abetting Prospera or other groups plotting conquest and ruin.

Every actor could, and should be mentioned and praised and is so in this brief hurrah as is praise for those in the theatrical arts contributing to this inspired joyous production. Each could be singled out such as Ariel (Kristin Wold, light as a feather) or Gonzalo (Apollo Dukakis ever ready with sane, calm observation) or Jonathan Epstein as the uproarious Stephano, butler to the King of Naples (Thomas A. Rindge, a deserving loser.) These and more deserve mention.

As for Olympia Dukakis, she knew what she wanted the play to say and saw that the play and her lines said it with controlled intensity. Her mother love in which she told her daughter of her previous life vibrated through the play in all the scenes that followed. Musing on the play as he drove me home, my son remarked, “And to think that when it was played in Shakespeare’s day, if the character had been changed to Prospera, it would have been played by a man.” And that boggles the mind. Rejoice that in the current production we have Olivia Dukakis playing it.

A Thousand Clowns at Berkshire Theatre Festival

Russell Posner and CJ Wilson in A Thousand Clowns at Berkshire Theatre Festival.

July 21, 2012 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Russell Posner and CJ Wilson in A Thousand Clowns at Berkshire Theatre Festival.
Russell Posner and CJ Wilson in A Thousand Clowns at Berkshire Theatre Festival. Photo by Chris Reis
Rarely can one say of a play that includes a cast of six that each character is perfectly cast and that zany as each role was, tore through the antics on stage with such brio that one loves him and is moved by his antics and his attempt not to accept but to cope with “reality.”

Director Kyle Fabel is responsible for the perfect casting, interweaving and maneuvering the marvelous actors who whirl through Herb Gardner’s A Thousand Clowns on the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Fitzpatrick stage, where a prat fall is nothing, only a prone position is an expectation.

The play is an endearing poignant comedy. Every character in it is real. And human. Flawed but hanging in. Agile, hysterical, trapped in situation and personality.

The plot centers around Murray (C J Wilson), a day dreamer who walks off his job as joke writer for for a kids TV show about a Chipmunk and in so doing risks losing custody of his young precocious nephew Nick (Russell Posner), and in come more clowns, the social workers to join those already on stage.

Murray who sets it all in motion keeps the plot a-boil with his dry humor, one liners, his over powering need to keep his apartment full of lovingly collected junk and his more over-powering love for his twelve year old nephew who has a few foibles of his own. He is trapped between his hate of sham and his love for others and is one hundred percent human.

Nephew Nick attempts to bring sanity into his uncle’s zany existence. It is he who attempts to blind-side the social workers, but Nick too has his problems trying to protect his uncle and be marching in that uncle’s zany band at the same time. In this cast he must be agile and resourceful and fills the bill.

As for the social workers, Sandra (Rachel Bay Jones) being female, feline and given to tears and agile with the movements of a household pet and James Barry as Albert, buttoned tight into his clothes and his life, provide grist for the hysteria mill.

In smaller roles Murray’s bother and agent Arnold (Andrew Polk) who attempts to introduce reality into Murray’s foibles but who is himself caught in the grubbing for money with awful TV mishmash, and especially Leo (Jordon Gelber) whom we first meet through his voice being thrown into a wastepaper basket. He has the awful physical girth to be terrifying as Chipmunk and is terrified of being drummed out of Murray’s life. This is a fun and funny play.

All of these magnificent actors hurtle physically through the events that occur during the mad house that this play concerns. The props alone must have kept half a dozen apprentices on hand every minute backstage. And the stage had to whirl back and forth as zanily as the plot, to a different locale, or just to a different décor as the romance came and went. It was as whirled about as often as the charactrs were staring at the ceiling.

This is a wonderful, hilarious play, beautifully presented; so glad I went!

Mother Courage and her Children at Shakespeare & Co.

Brooke Parks and Ryan Winkles in Mother Courage at Shakespeare & Co., Lenox, MA

Aug. 2, 2013 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Brooke Parks and Ryan Winkles in Mother Courage at Shakespeare & Co., Lenox, MABrecht’s Mother Courage and her Children now playing at Tina Packer’s Shakespeare and Co. theatre under the insightful direction of Tony Simotes, is one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. The play is set in central Europe in the 17th century during the Thirty Years’ War, which was fought largely between Catholics and Protestants.

The play demands a large cast and style of production that is deliberately alienating as it weaves together its story in a series of scenes, songs, and projected text summaries and it is never stagy. These are real people. The plot concerns Mother Courage’s unsuccessful attempt to feed and care for her children, two sons and a daughter, during the dozen years that the play covers. She has set herself up with a wagon pulled onto the stage and from it she makes her living selling food and goods to soldiers.

The wagon becomes a symbol always onstage reflecting her restless life and questionable prosperity. By the play’s end, it is a dilapidated cart and she is like an animal pulling it. Olympia Dukakis is marvelous in this, her 5th time grappling with the convoluted character. Although she is on stage most of the time, she never draws attention to herself if stress belongs to another character.

The play opens as she and the children drag onstage the cart in which she and they live. Her co-stars, Apolo Dukakis as the Chaplain and John Douglas Thompson as the Cook, each bring their own relationship and attraction to Mother Courage’s conniving. Each role is played competently.

All members of the cast are well drawn, and the audience cannot help being drawn by the most vulnerable. Of the 3 children, Kittrin, who hears but cannot speak, played by Brook Parks, moves through this role convincingly, giving her life (and the red shoes she finally gets), to save all the children in the village from attack.

Despite calamities, this play is not depressing. The characters and situations that Brecht has woven into his play have produced a gem. It is a joy to have been able to see it on a local stage. Director Tony Simotes and Olympia Dukakis have pooled their talents to create an evening in the theatre this reviewer hopes to have the time to see again before it closes in September.

Heroes at Shakespeare & Co. review

Cast of Heroes at Shakespeare and Co

June 23, 2013 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall
Cast of Heroes at Shakespeare and Co
Heroes, the translation by Tom Stoppard of Le Vent Des Peupliers by Gérald Sibleyras, was enough to lure me to a matinee at Shakespeare and Company’s Bernstein theatre on a rainy afternoon. I knew nothing about the play except that several friends whose opinions I valued had urged me to see it. Thinking back I realize none of the friends had told me why, beyond the generalities.

The cast is top-notch, three actors who all have been with the company, playing leads for the past 20 years, Jonathan Epstein, Malcolm Ingram, and Robert Lohbauer. And Kevin Coleman, who directed, has been with the company turning out gems since it began here in the Berkshires many years go. All impeccable and deserve hurrahs.

The setting of the play is the terrace of a retirement home for veterans of World War I but three men have been there until the time of the play’s present 1959. The acting occurs on the terrace….at the back are 5 great French windows and one thinks that this will be a farce with doors swinging back and forth but only one door ever opens. An added member to the cast is a huge 200 pound German Wolfhound dog.

(And backstage are formidable NUNS!)

And off in the distance are poplar trees to which the original title of the play refers – “Le Vent des Peupliers” by Gerald Sibleyras. The wind in those poplars fuels what happens in the play. HEROES may just be the most moving play you see all summer.

The 39 Steps at Shakespeare and Co.

September 30, 2012 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The plot of this play now gracing the stage of the Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare and Co. is one of hectic chase and pursuit, mayhem and madness. Four actors, abetted by three stage hands (honorably invisible in black) weave in and about playing dozens of characters including spies, murderers, and sheep farmers as well as kilted police and females of allure and treachery.

Central and pursued is Richard Hannay, a young Englishman innocently forced to flee from England to Scotland, when a woman with a knife in her back dies in his apartment. Once there, after a harrowing train trip, he encounters every sort of danger and harassment from German spies to Scotch police in kilts, to say nothing of herds of sheep and women of allure and danger.

The ever shifting settings, from airfields to sheep cotes, are speedily contrived by the whirling of trunks and door frames from which there can appear a different person than expected. Scenes can send enemy aircraft zooming over a ducking audience or trains whirling through Scotland in which actors are at times passengers and at others escapees from the latest disaster.

Central to it all and on stage from the beginning to the end is Hannay (Jason Asprey) running for his life but at unexpected moments delighting with a stellar acting moment when in the midst of mayhem he can pause a moment to let his face slip into self satisfaction at the handsome “wanted” character described in the press. His role demands, as that of his fellow actors, constant acrobatic involvement, and involves women, the three most exciting played with his co-star, Elisabeth Aspenlieder.

Aspenlieder as Annabelle appears in his London apartment with a knife in her back and her inconvenient death makes Hannay a wanted man. Her entrance to his bedroom involves gymnastics that should not be missed. Later she moves into his life when as Margaret, a young woman with a gimpy leg and discontented with being wife of a sheep farmer. And then there is Pamela who has to remain with him for the rest of the play because they are sharing handcuffs. All three roles played with brio and with such makeup it is hard to realize she is the same woman.

The other two cast members each play around a dozen roles with instantly changing characters at times including men and women, police and spies, sheep farmers and BBC broadcasters. David Joseph dies gallantly when shot, plays his own wife in a matter of seconds by donning a wig and is marvelous as a kilted policeman in huge red wig as partner to his cohort. Also drives a neat car.

Josh Aaron McCabe is often the scary other, big and brawny. BBC announcer, partner kilt wearing police, but also suave Brit on a train. Or the BBC. Or a pilot of a swooping plane. A man to be watched and feared. And then there is a CAT. Enough. You will remember the cat.

Director Jonathan Croy holds all this madness together ably assisted by his staff of musicians, lightmen, costumers, etc.

This is a delightful play. You may even want to see it twice.

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