July 2, 2009 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

• Williamstown Theatre Festival 2009 schedule.

Children is the title of the early A. R. Gurney play that has opened the season at Williamstown Theatre Festival, but the play is dominated, not by the children and grandchildren (off-stage and on) but by the character the program lists only as Mother.

Judith Light is outstanding as the lead character, taking quiet command from her first entrance on, and, as the play continues, developing and enhancing it until its conclusion, in which she resoundingly dominates.

The 90 minute play, without intermission, is set on the terrace of a large old two-story summer home on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Obviously it has been in the family for years, a place returned to every summer, as it is returned to this 1970s 4th of July.

The setting, designed by James Noone, is an idyllic one with a weather-beaten house and flower-bedecked terrace. Great bushes and trees hide the tennis courts (decaying) and the beach beyond where the father of the family always swam naked, leaving his bathrobe on the beach.

The returning children bring much baggage with them, spouses, and many grandchildren who populate the off-stage areas and far outnumber the persons we see on the stage.

Those we do see include Barbara (Katie Finneran), a daughter whose marriage has ended in divorce and who admits that every summer since she was a young girl she has carried on an affair with the (originally) Italian gardener, who now is a big real estate developer. At the moment she seems to have interest only in slipping off for quick clutches in his parked van.

More importantly, we also see Randy (James Waterston), the eldest son, who probably loves the site itself more than any of the other children. He has arrived this summer to bewail the erosion of the tennis court, which has faltered as much as his marriage to Jane (Mary Bacon) seems to have. She is the mother of some of the unseen upstairs children. Most importantly, all his life Randy has vied with his un-seen brother Pokey, baby of the family. Their rivalry is a second vital thread in the plot.

Pokey (though an off-stage character) figures largely in the plot. He has gone further from the nest, become a successful Washington lawyer, has a Jewish wife, and fathered a batch of children who, when they arrive, shock with their offensive language and drinking of coke to say nothing of setting off the fire-crackers early.

For Pokey, absent from the scene since the father’s death, is a dominator, and when the seemingly quiet contained mother calmly announced her intention to marry “Uncle Bill” in September, Pokey is on the scene to prove that by doing so, she will forfeit the estate to the children. He, after all, has written the will and has held on to it. He has also possessively held onto his father’s “day books” that recorded competitions in grades and sports. He is a scary character, at best.

King Lear threads suddenly emerge in a script too full of Chekhovian characters (each with off-stage lives) as well as ones from Cheever short stories, with Gurney’s additions.

It is a tribute to Gurney that the on-stage characters, and very especially the dynamically and skillfully acted role of the mother, and to a lesser extent by Randy, (whose final exit in the play says much in terms of his lack of attire) make all this work. And it does work, witnessed by the repeated curtain calls for Judith Light and then cast as a whole.

As a reviewer I found this play hard to describe with almost too much plot in so short a time. Gurney has gone on to write more significant plays; indeed he has had nine productions at the Williamtown Theatre Festival. This is a rewarding play, if not Gurney’s greatest one. And it is well worth seeing in this splendid production, under the fine direction of John Tillinger who has directed other Gurney scripts over the years and is sensitive to his nuances.

The ending I have deliberately avoided describing, leaving future audiences to be delighted with it for themselves.

June 21, 2009 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Barrington Stage Company has opened its main stage season with a flamboyant production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. The sets are amazingly detailed, especially for the opening number with the entire large cast on stage as ingeniously designed horses circle the merry-go-round.

And the cast is a huge one of close to thirty actors, singers and dancers (including thirteen equity actors) who robustly perform the much-loved songs, doubling at times, all magnificently costumed (down to their period shoes) as they populate the various settings of a New England fishing village, circa 1900.

It is a daring achievement in this summer of our shattered economy when black box, small cast, must of necessity be more in evidence. Fortunately a grant of $20,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts has helped make this production possible.

And the delight of the audience in the production proves the opulence worth it, not to mention the trickle-down effect in the employment of so many equity actors.

This is a splendid production of one of the great American musicals, adapted from Hungarian Ferenc Molnar’s greatest play, Liliom, the plot of the musical closely followed with adaptations to transfer it to its New England setting, and be-jeweled with song and dance.

That basic plot centers around a poignant, and at times brutal, love affair between Billy Biglow (Aaron Ramey) and Julie Jordon (Patricia Noonan). He is a rough, crass barker at an amusement park, who expresses the frustration of his twisted soul through violence when he means love. She is a simple housemaid, a village girl, willing to give up all of her meager security for life with Billy.

Somehow, both inarticulate, they express their love beneath the falling leaves of an acacia tree, both sacrificing their jobs in the bargain and not caring.

Their marriage turns out to be far different from the conventional one that Julie’s best friend and confident, Carrie (Sara Jean Ford) makes, and Julie is left pregnant, to cope alone before any of Carrie’s nine children are born.

The love of Billy and Julie is beautiful and touching. Julie’s last line to her daughter at the play’s end sums up Billy’s brutal love and her mute understanding of it:

“It is possible, dear, that someone may beat you and beat you and beat you, and not hurt you at all.”

Although the play is basically realistic, with scenes whirling through the activities of the fishing village and including a seafood picnic, it also includes expressionistic scenes in which a man can steal a star from heaven itself, in a skillful blending of the two very different theatrical modes.

While the play is basically Billy’s (in Molnar’s version his name was the title), Julie has good scenes and songs, well presented.

As do several others in this star studded cast. Leslie Becker as Mrs. Mullin, owner of the amusement park for all her vulgarity (and burgeoning breasts) loves Billy in a moving way. Christopher Innvar, as Jigger, radiates evil and lures Billy toward destruction. Indeed many in this well–cast show deserve cheers for their singing, dancing and gusto. The whole production is buoyant and every actor in it, down to the delightful children, radiated delight in their participation.

Economics, despite that generous grant, reduced the music accompaniment to two pianos in a small pit stage-left; a bit strident if one is seated near them, but capably played, with dexterity, by two musicians who share in the praise

As do the energetic dancers in the rousing dances that Joshua Bergasse choreographed from Agnes de Mille’s original Broadway ones; Holly Caine designed the costumes, and Robert Mark Morgan the sets. Darren Cohen directed the music.

Julianne Boyd, a lady who is fairly busy around Barrington Stage, and who has spent fifteen years getting it to a production such as this one, directed this show that brings so much joy to Pittsfield.

• Barrington Stage Company schedule 2009 season

June 20, 2009 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Broadway by the Year, now playing at the Berkshire Theatre Festival is much more than the average musical review. An ensemble of talented singers/actors, Christiane Noll, Kerry O’Malley, and Scott Coulter, with musical director Ross Patterson at the grand piano, and host/writer Scott Siegel at a down left lectern, involve us in far more than a trip down memory lane.

On a stage, bare except for a grand piano and lectern, but with a wonderful backdrop that changes colors, dancing stars and even briefly a Manhattan skyline, they bring alive songs from two, widely separated decades of Broadway musicals.

In Act I, the time is 1930s and the musicals from which the songs come are forgotten but not the names of their, then young, composers, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, and others.

But if the musicals themselves did not endure, songs did, and they are linked together by rapid fire narration, friendly and informative with brief insightful comments by host Seigel.

The songs we all recognize are presented as solos, trios, and duets. The singers are costumed in garb of the period. Delightful too is the fact that the marvelous piano accompaniment gives time for openings that lead into the songs, and that the actors use the stage area in multiple ways, whether it is assembling around the piano, being isolated in a duet far down right and left, or hamming it up in a rousing trio or draping atop a piano.

In the second act of this two hour show, the host takes us into a period 37 years later. We are in 1964, the Beatles aren’t quite number one yet and not included. But the shows can include successes such as Hello, Dolly!, Fiddler on the Roof, Funny Girl, Anyone Can Whistle, and High Spirits.

The costumes are now those of the late 60’s and the mood lighter. Staging and lighting again contributing to the songs themselves, not the “Ten Cents a Dance” of the Great Depression period.

Songs this reviewer enjoyed most, though far more pleased as well, were O’Malley’s “Home Sweet Heaven,” delivered from piano top by the returned spirit in the musical of Noel Coward’s play. Beautifully sung. “Anyone Can Whistle” high spot for Coulter,
and “Love for Sale” a haunting duet by the two sopranos in marvelous staging, at first a solo for the talented Noll, destitute and alone and on the street, to be joined and made a duet by O’Malley at the far left corner, joining her in the song, but both isolated in their dreary profession. Unforgettable moment.

Even the deluge that greeted audience members exiting the theatre did not dampen the gala in the tent once the countless umbrellas were furled again. Among the evening’s song had been a delightful “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and, if literally it tried to, metaphorically it didn’t. So director Scott Coulter could be pleased with his production.