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).

A Thousand Clowns at Berkshire Theatre Festival

July 21, 2012 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

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.

Aug. 2, 2013 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Brecht’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

June 23, 2013 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

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.

A Chorus Line at BTF

July 7, 2012 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Berkshire Theatre Festival‘s production of A Chorus Line is a dynamic reenactment of its original performance that involves so many specialists, in the fields of orchestra, choreography, lights, sound, and costumes that we can merely list them and aver that they are all deserving of high praise.

This short speculation concerns the part played by Eric Hill as Director and what possibly was included in his involvement, and considers evidence of his working with the dancers in character interpretation. It also gives opportunity to discuss some of the scenes that moved me and to list a few names of performers whose work I admired.

The scenes chosen are ones in which a chorus member, desperate to be chosen, bares his soul, and in doing so makes one consider WHY these “children” for they are mainly still young, endure constant rejection at auditions as they try to hang onto a career choice that is perilous at best.

Asked to talk about themselves, they are confused, reluctant, rambling and avoiding, but in their self-confessions are woven into songs and dances that begin with childhood and move through growing as a struggling dancer. Nili Bassman as Cassie has a story that breaks the heart as she pleads for a chorus job, she who has been a star, a lead, demoting herself from past stardom no begging to be in the chorus line. She needs a job. She needs to eat. She knows the stardom is behind her.

Paul (Eddie Gutierrez) near the play’s end, brings into appalling focus how painfully and confusedly he has struggled with his sexual identity, especially in relation to his father, and his adolescence, and shares with us the moment when his father almost accepts him.

Sheila (Dana Winkler), Bebe (Julienna Katz) and Maggie (Karley Wilcocks) are fleet and lyrical and poignant in their memories of how it all began, when as tiny little girls they had fathers interested in their small ballerinas, and how “everything was beautiful at the ballet.”

In dance, song and story, the show is threaded with dancers who share their joys and dreams but let us realize, perhaps for the first time, how much it has cost them and how willingly they have sacrificed. The musical numbers that evolve from these confessions are as varied as the experiences, all choreographed with precision and style (or humor if needed). And, of course, this alerting the audience to a side of life in the chorus line that we possibly never considered, the sacrificial one, is important.

However the real joys of the play are the marvelous skills of the dancers, the musicians, and all who make this such a glorious evening at the theatre. And behind all that, the skills of the theatre artists who make it all possible. Go. And watch out for the hats. Because hats matter gloriously in what I think of as “the silver surprise” when we thought we had seen it all and were clapping furiously.

Review of The Importance of Being Earnest at Williamstown Theatre Festival

June 30, 2012 matinee reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest now playing at Williamstown Theatre Festival is a smashing success. Director David Hyde Pierce’s weaving the joys of Wilde’s one-liners with the accents of Damon Runyan’s mobsters in a delightful English setting (where in 1932 mob members have migrated to escape mob problems in the good old USA) works magnificently. And having the versatile and competent Tyne Daly play Lady Bracknell is icing on the cake. It is a role all the great 20th century English actresses have played to our enchantment.

Tyne Daly in a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Having given that glorious rave, one must admit that the first act was flat. The Wilde dialog was there but brought almost no laughs or response from the audience. The two male leads seemed underplayed and even the dominating entrance of Lady Bracknell and her daughter not enough. And then, after intermission, the curtain came up on the glories and praises that prompted the opening of this review.

The setting as in the script had changed to the country and the skies were blue and the roses blooming in the garden where Cecily (Helen Cespedes), spirited and delightful and very sure of herself, and Miss Prism (Mary Louise Burke), a zitsy family retainer, take the play immediately to its Wilde level where the pedantic clergyman Rev. Chasuble (Henery Stram) carries it along.

No sooner are he and Miss Prism gone, the stage is activated by the challenging arrival of Gwendolyn (Amy Spanger) to spar spiritedly with Cecily over who Earnest might love, only soon livened by Algernon (Louis Cancelmi) on a Bunbury trip, pretending to be John’s brother, to fall conveniently in love with Cecily. And of course suddenly levels are elevated further by the arrival of John Worthing, (Glenn Fitzgerald) dressed in deep mourning for a non-existent brother and, dynamic on his own turf, demanding Algernon leave.

Act 3 set inside the house at the country estate is even more dynamic and hectic. All the tangles of act 2 are resolved and the actors are all in splendid form. But the real glory of Act 3 is Tyne Daly. She dominates casually, it would seem, from her chair. But she has within her a heart of steel. She makes it look easy. That is her glory. It is nice to have her in the Berkshires.

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Review of King Lear at Shakespeare & Co.

June 24, 2012 2PM performance Reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

King Lear, playing through August 19 at Shakespeare and Co. under the direction of Rebecca Holderness, offers some surprises which will delight or confuse playgoers. One of the Bard’s longest tragedies, it has been slightly cut and plays in three hours keeping the double-edged plot intact.

In the opening scene of the play, Lear (Dennis Krausnick) banishes his only honest and loving daughter Cordelia (Kelly Galvin) and in a division of his kingdom gives all to his two deceitful and fawning daughters, Goneril (Corinna May) and Regan (Kristin Wold).

In the more prosaic subplot, the Earl of Glocester (Jonathan Croy) unwittingly banishes his loving and dutiful son Edgar (Ryan Winkles) and believes the lies his bastard son Edmund (Peter Macklin) tells him.

These two acts of the gullible old men are each fatal. Out of them grows the civil war in which both will die. The civil war that dominates much of the action introduces one of the major changes in the current presentation of the play. The action takes place not in ancient England, but in Russia in 1906, a time in which the Tsar was deposed and slain.

This change is marvelous in its own way in that it offers the costume designer (Govane Lohbauer) the opportunity to clothe the warring men in magnificent uniforms of contrasting colors, and to costume the women in furs, velvet gowns, and jewels. Set designer (Sandra Goldmark) will get mixed reviews.

The set is surreal with bare ladders, multiple small levels, a trap door, door outlines to signify indoor scenes, and great white curtains that are employed in various, and at times ingenious, ways. Again, something in this performance to love or be doubtful about. For this reviewer it did not work as Dover, especially in the heart-wrenching scene between blind Gloucester and his loyal, although banished, Edgar.

However at times the set was used delightfully. Kevin C. Coleman, as Lear’s Fool, used every inch of it in a will-o-the-wisp flitting up and about. And the curtains made even more devastating the scene of the blinding of Gloucester. There was even, in that anywhere set, room for stocks in which Kent, another trustee banished and played magnificently by Jonathan Epstein to be shackled.

Whatever audience members will make of the changes the most interesting to all will be the opportunity of experiencing the playing of Lear by Dennis Krausnick, who has in the last ten years of his busy theatrical life been working on developing his concept and acting style for the character of the king. (Radical changes in locale and time periods are often, indeed even this summer at other theatres, on display.)

Krausnick’s playing literally strips the king bare. The sad small line, “I pray you, undo this button” must be cut although even in its absence perhaps builds the interpretation. This production gives us a character with whom the actor has lived and thought for years. It is one conceived as a self-willed king of great strength but who in his dotage cannot cope with anger and frustration. For this reviewer the set did not give him enough for the storm scene and the marvelous lines in it. And one wanted more contact with the dying Cordelia, again perhaps the set?

Obviously this is an unusual Lear and one well worth seeing. It is studded with strong cast members, each moving with grace or treachery or malice. Holderness has at times made bold choices. And her play is well worth seeing; the interpretation of the role Krausnick plays is an unusually vigorous one.

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Memory of Water at Shakespeare and Co.

August 7, 2011 matinee performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Shakespeare and Co’s riveting production of Shelagh Stephenson’s Memory of Water, has been playing to rapt audiences at the Bernstein Theatre for the past month, and praise for the script, the six talented actors, the direction and all aspects of the play have been deservedly lauded. Therefore, this belated viewing of the play will confine itself only to a discussion of the four women in the script and the incredibly nuanced performances they perform, several times a week.

The action covers a small period of time and all takes place in the bedroom of the mother of three daughters, assembled at home for this weekend of the funeral of that mother in the small Northern England home in which they all grew up.

More significantly, the only set is the bedroom of that mother, dominated by the huge bed in which she slept and the closets full of her clothes, the dressing table full of her adornments. And even her ultimatum that she “rest” (in her coffin) in that room the night before her funeral.

Even from the beyond she returns to dominate. Annette Miller as Vi, impeccably dressed in dark green and not a hair out of place appears in two cameo’s with her daughters in which, as it was in life, all about her and without any thought of pity for the conflicted and grieving children She moves with a calm elegance, self-assured. Still vain, selfish and not much interested in or sympathetic for her children. When on stage, she dominates as she did during their growing up, a time in which her life was more important than theirs. Miller plays her to perfection.

And how have those children turned out? She might have been vaguely interested in having a handsome son. But her children where three daughters, the third totally unexpected, menopausal.

That child, the most rueful of all, Catherine, for me was the saddest one of all. She explodes into the room when she arrives, booted, padded coat, earflap cap and baggage covered with snow. Elizabeth Aspenleider knows how to explode. She is antic, chatting a mile a minute about a latest suitor who will be arriving for the funeral (he won’t, he is “suitor” in her mind more than his) but for most of the first act her buoyant character revs up the chat and the action into which she pulls the other sisters into defrocking the closets bursting with mother’s gowns. The is boisterous, hiding the knowledge she has always had of not being wanted in the family roster, not being able to keep the boy friends she meets, not having a sense of how wrongly dressed she is for a funeral.

Mary (Corinna May) one of the two elder daughters has succeeded on worldly terms, become a doctor and has for some time been mistress of a married man by whom she longs for his separation from his wife and the fathering of a child by her. Doctor that she is, she knows her birthing time is running out. One yearns for her to have that child. She would love it, nurture it as her mother failed to do for her.

Teresa (Kristin Wold) is the other elder sister, the one who stayed in the town near her mother. She is a health food nut, is prone to settle on details as to casket choice etc. A topic the other two don’t seen smitten with. Having been the only one of the three who remained home in the sense of evidently marrying and living not with her mother but nearby, the event of her mother’s last illness and dying at 75 has rested mainly on her. Her husband, for she has one, travels all over the landscape in connection with his job in the food business. Her life has been dull at best and is not apt to change much.

As the door closes on these three children, each dressed for the funeral as her own feelings and character seems to define she should, one can feel they have a certain resilience and will carry on—though I personally worry about Catherine, the so unwanted baby, and the fact that the so-wanted baby of Mary will never be born.

It is a tribute to the author that within a short play, she can bring so much of the rough and tumble of the lives of these women to vivid life and create the roles the four actresses so illuminate.

But it is further important to note that despite the maternal neglect, this is not a depressing play but a buoyant one. The dialog is witty and much of the time very funny. One enjoys the play and the characters. One believes in them as real people, coping in a weekend of stress, but capable, although mother-maimed, of going on with lives of their own, such as they may be.

The standing ovation at the play’s end is for resilience. These women will carry on and put the weekend behind them. Life goes on.

And this dynamic play goes on til Labor Day.

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In The Mood at Berkshire Theatre Festival

August 6, 2011 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Theatre Festival has presented the world premier of Kathleen Clark’s In the Mood. The play is described as a comedy but viewing the magnificent set as one awaits the play to begin, it is apparent the action will spill over into farce.

Because there before our eyes on the widest proscenium opening one can recall seeing at the BTF is the demanding farce stage and those five farce doors. The setting is the enormous upscale apartment of Perri Rubin (Erin Dilly) and her husband Derek (Damian Young) for whom Perri has planned a surprise birthday party and invited scores of guests. (Designer Lee Savage)

Should things go as she planned, the enormous living room, replete with grand piano, cocktail bar, rooms on second floor, and an elevator that opens directly into her living room could almost accommodate them.

One guest is already on scene when the play opens-Nick Eliot (Stephen R. Buntrock) who musing at the piano gets Perri to sing with him (a former boyfriend) the 1940’s hit song, In the Mood, and the play begins with Perri (ala Gertrud Lawrence) clad gorgeously in red, long blond hair hanging to her shoulders, and him, rendering the song.

At the end of the play one is about to see, the song is repeated, bringing the 75 minute, no intermission, play to a close very different from the one it seemed to begin.

The stage is well designed for the chaos that soon erupts. The apartment is on a high floor, naturally, and the elevator, upstage center, is, the desk informs, not working. This a great misfortune for guests struggling to reach the party (few do).

Among those who do are Perri’s husband and Carolyn Shore (Jennifer Cody, uninvited) and Edward Horton (Arnie Burton) and Sally Elliot (Johanna Day). No one else makes it, and the play’s cast is thus assembled for the hysterically funny situations and also snappy dialog and at times epigram, such as one remembers in Cole Porter and even Oscar Wilde.

A plot summary is being deliberately omitted. Audiences will find it out for themselves and respond with belly laughs as they did on opening night.

Director Marc Bruni has served his cast well. There is never time for a dull moment. Each of the six actors, all in significant roles are well cast and throw themselves physically as well as vocally into their roles-ones that when they entered they did not always know they had. Watch out for the word “contractor.” And for lines such as, “my ex-wife and I were the Lunts of Off-Off Broadway.” These are all actors who can think on their feet and roll with the unexpected.

It all makes for an enjoyable evening. As for the play itself, my feeling is that it should, and very possibly will, evolve into a longer two-act play. The script cries for it in trying to pack so much into 75 minutes, and the actors are so gifted and engaging, their talents cry for it too.

Meanwhile, it is rewarding, now and then, to be a part of a new play a-borning; and to wish it well.

Berkshire Theatre Festival 2011 schedule.

Sylvia at Berkshire Theatre Festival

July 16, 2011 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Sitting in audience of the Fitzpatrick stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival for the opening of A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia, I found myself remembering an evening many years ago when Gurney a yet untried playwright came to see what our little play-reading group would do in a staged reading of one of his plays in our little black-box theatre off Main Street. Our group was founded by Bill Gibson and carried on by Jane Mooney.

In the forty or more years that have elapsed since that eventful night, details have gone hazy. Gurney was unknown to any of us. He was was an affable and not condescending young man, scarcely middle-aged, who drove in from Boston with a family play, perhaps about the Buffalo area. Gurney viewed our production, listened to suggestions and praises, then drove off into the night. A young man, knowing where he wanted to go.

How brilliantly he has gotten there!

Silvia is a gem; one of the many gems he has created over the years!

The plot centers around a family crisis. Greg (David Adkins) and Kate (Jurian Hughes) are empty nesters with their kids off to college and the couple settled in a NY apartment where Greg’s career is winding down and Kate’s is picking up.

And into their life Greg brings Sylvia, another woman whom he has picked up in Central Park and whom he expects Kate to welcome into a ménage a trois, further complicated by the fact that Sylvia is an enormous bouncy stray dog, dog tag bearing only her name, her breed a mix, seemingly, of Lab and Poodle, and a great deal of bounce and pounce, and audacity.

Sylvia not only pees on Kate’s rug, she ASSUMES she could sit on Kate’s couch. Marriage in jeopardy. A serious situation for Kate and Greg but an absolutely hilarious one for the audience with laugh lines coming so fast one misses a few. And it is not only the dialog that is hilarious. The uneasy trio members all have to be athletes, very often not on their feet and being dragged in directions they don’t want to go.

Director Andres Cato’s guiding hand has rung every possible variation on the production—timing and pace, scenes flowing seamlessly after each other, moods shifting from hilarious to touching, or “naughty,” or unexpected.

Sylvia, (Rachel Ray Jones) and her costumes, from bedraggled in the park to preeningly wooing when in heat she meets Buster in the park, are gloriously seductive. And she knows it. Jones seems to have literally climbed into Sylvia by donning her clothes, Her bite is usually restrained but her bark is utterly remarkable.

Adkins is convincingly unaware of the sacrifice he is asking of his wife. His sudden love for Sylvia, giving a meaning to his days in a time when he has lost meaning and confidence, seems to him reasonable.

Hughes as the wife, expected to accept without a struggle her husband’s aberrations, is sympathetic, resourceful and willing eventually to bend but not break. It is she that at a strategic moment finds and tosses the red ball.

The versatile Walter Hudson plays three supporting roles, necessary in plot development in the park or the psychiatrist’s office, each with panache.

The New York skyline set, assisted by lighting affects in evoking the park on the apron, and changing color for mood changes in plot, is effective.

All this adds up to asserting that over the years Gurney has continued to write play after play, success after success.

Sylvia is an especially delightful one.

As for the rest of those long ago hopefuls performing in the black box theatre, I haven’t a clue. But it’s nice to remember that we performed early Gurney, and in Stockbridge!

Berkshire Theatre Festival 2011 schedule.