Dave Read

Tanglewood pre-season schedule

Here’s a look around Tanglewood just before the show, which was terrific, with unannounced guest Arlo Guthrie. We’ll have a review and more video from the after-show soon.

The 2009 Tanglewood schedule includes a week of pre-season concerts featuring the Emerson String Quartet, the Julliard String Quartet, the annual live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, and the opening exercises and performances of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and a piano recital in Seiji Ozawa Hall by Stephen Kovacevich.

This will be the 10th appearance on the stage of the Koussevitsky Music Shed for Mr. Keillor and his cast of beloved Lake Wobegon denizens, joined this time by special guests Martin Sheen, Stuart Duncan, and Steve Martin, who will be playing banjo with the bluegrass band Steep Canyon Rangers. (See our review of the 2006 Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, which featured Meryl Streep.)

Friday, June 26, 8pm, Ozawa Hall
EMERSON STRING QUARTET
PAUL NEUBAUER, viola

IVES- Quartet No. 1
DVORÁK-Quartet No. 12 in F, Op. 96, The American
BARBER-Adagio, from Quartet, Op. 11
DVORÁK-String Quintet No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 97, American

Saturday, June 27, 5:45pm, Shed
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION AT TANGLEWOOD
with GARRISON KEILLOR
With special guests Martin Sheen, Stuart Duncan, and Steve Martin performing Bluegrass & Banjo with the Steep Canyon Rangers
Live broadcast ending at 8pm

Sunday, June 28, 2:30pm, Ozawa Hall
JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET

ALL-HAYDN PROGRAM
Quartet No. 27 in D, Op. 20, No. 4
Quartet No. 26 in G minor, Op. 20, No. 3
Quartet No. 23 in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5
(“Sun Quartets”)- Quartet No. 25 in C, Op. 20, No. 2

Thursday, July 2, 8pm, Ozawa Hall
STEPHEN KOVACEVICH, piano

BACH – Partita No. 4 in D, BWV 828
SCHUMANN – Kinderszenen, Op. 15
BEETHOVEN – Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120

Tanglewood Music Center

Monday, June 29, 2:30pm, Ozawa Hall
Tanglewood Music Center Opening Exercises

Monday, June 29, 8pm, Ozawa Hall
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
HERBERT BLOMSTEDT, conductor
RYAN McADAMS (TMC Conducting Fellow), conductor (The Swan of Tuonela)
GERGELY MADARAS (TMC Conducting Fellow), conductor (Tapiola)

ALL- SIBELIUS Program

The Swan of Tuonela
Tapiola
Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 43

Pinter’s Mirror at Shakespeare and Co.

June 13, 2009 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Pinter’s Mirror, now gracing the “easily anywhere” of the Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare and Co., is a brilliant glittering gem in which three talented actors, Malcolm Ingram, Elizabeth Ingram, long-time company veterans, plus new-comer Stephen Pilkington, and a few mismatched chairs capture the slippery ambiguity, menace, and constant humor of that theatre style so unique that “pinteresque” has become a lower-case word to describe a style otherwise impossible to pin down.

But ambiguous as Pinter’s plays are, full of dark humor, domestic settings riddled with angst and yearnings behind the pauses, gradually the menace builds in plots that are impossible to summarize, but tantalizing in their very obscurity and sudden surprises. All three plays in the evening’s program are set in England in the 1950s but their concerns for us in the audience are still very much with us in the over-complexities of today’s world.

In the opening play, A Slight Ache, the two Ingrams, Brits themselves, bring the the exact tone and accent of the aging couple where tea on the terrace (with a wasp in the marmalade) gradually escalates when a match-seller at the end of the lane brings out in the husband hostilities and in the wife suppressed erotic urges. The gradual menace mounts as we eventually and agonizingly slowly see the match-seller, though never his face. The faces, speeches, and actions of the other two are varied minutely; acting at its subtle best by both.

In “Family Voices,” Pilkington as young wayward naïve son is on one telephone (and all over the stage taking on scenes and characters he describes naively) while his aging mother (Elizabeth Ingram) frets, scolds, advises, and cannot reach him. She is the mother one loves, but hates and avoids. And Malcolm Ingram plays the dead father reclining but commenting. All of this again with the typical Pinter ambiguity and menace and surprise and, when needed, agility.

“Victoria Station” is never reached in the small play that ends the evening. The two men, Pilkington and Ingram, are cab driver and his controller, on telephones, each in his spot of light. In this brief coda play, the driver doesn’t know where he is, let alone where the station is, but never mind, the dialog along with the pauses and ambiguities are all there and has the right tone. The characters, each far different from those played earlier, are clearly limned, if preposterous, and the humor is more blatant and less menacing.

The whole evening is pure Printer as I, limitedly, understand him. And it is delightful. Printer would never explain what the plays “meant.” Sometimes we do try to explain them, though. They are full of the banalities of contemporary life, non-realistic, but real in their own way. No clear message is intended.

So go. Director Eric Tucker can be proud of this production and of the zest and skill with which his three actors bring their varied roles to rollicking, suspenseful life.

Williamstown Theatre Festival cast announced

Artistic Director Nicholas Martin has announced the casting for the second Nikos Stage show of the 2009 season, What is the Cause of Thunder? by Noah Haidle (Saturn Returns, Mr. Marmalade) playing July 22-August 2.

The two-person cast features Betty Gilpin (Boy’s Life, Good Boys and True) and Wendie Malick (“Just Shoot Me,” Confessions of a Shopaholic, Blithe Spirit).

The design team for What is the Cause of Thunder? features set designer Alexander Dodge, costume designer Nikki Moody, lighting designer Jeff Croiter, and sound design and original music by Fitz Patton. The production stage manager is David Sugarman.

In What Is The Cause Of Thunder?, after 27 years on the same soap opera, Ada is starting to confuse her art and her life. But after so many years of acting, her art is her life. Noah Haidle’s poignant comedy brings us the hilarity of day-time drama alongside the harsher, but often equally funny, realities of life.

On the Main Stage, Paul Sparks (Hedda Gabler, Take Me Out) will join the previously announced Nate Corddry, Stephen Kunken, and Debra Jo Rupp in True West by Sam Shepard, directed by Daniel Goldstein. True West runs on the Main Stage from July 15 – 26.

John Rubinstein (Tony Award – Children of a Lesser God, Love Letters) completes the cast of The Torch-Bearers by George Kelly, adapted and directed by Dylan Baker, joining the previously announced Becky Ann Baker, Yusef Bulos, John Doherty, Katie Finneran, Phillip Goodwin, Jessica Hecht, Edward Herrmann, Dana Ivey, Lizbeth MacKay, Marian Seldes, and James Waterston. The production runs on the Main Stage from July 29- August 9.

In Quartermaine’s Terms, Ann Dowd (The Seagull, Doubt) joins the previously announced Jeremy Beck, Morgan Hallett, John Horton, Simon Jones, Stephen Kunken, and Jefferson Mays in Simon Gray’s play, directed by Maria Aitken. Jayne Atkinson has had to withdraw due to scheduling conflicts. Quartermaine’s Terms runs on the Main Stage from August 12-23

Ticketing information for the 2009 Williamstown Theatre Festival Season can be obtained online at www.wtfestival.org or by calling 413-597-3400.

Night in Day, poem by Joseph Stroud

American Life in Poetry: Column 220

Night in Day

by Joseph Stroud

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun–
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

One of the privileges of being U.S. Poet Laureate was to choose two poets each year to receive a $10,000 fellowship, funded by the Witter Bynner Foundation. Joseph Stroud, who lives in California, was one of my choices. This poem is representative of his clear-eyed, imaginative poetry.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2009 by Joseph Stroud, and reprinted from his recent book of poems, “Of This World: New and Selected Poems 1966-2006,” Copper Canyon Press, 2009, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Berkshire Fringe schedules six theatre, music, and dance productions

The 5th annual Berkshire Fringe schedule features 6 theatre, dance, and music productions created by emerging artists from as far away as Minneapolis, MN and as nearby as Great Barrington, MA, which is where the 3 week festival will be staged, from July 27 – August 17, in the Daniel Arts Center on the campus of Simon’s Rock.

The festival also includes :30 Live!, a free music series; EarlyStages, a showcase of new plays by emerging local writers; and numerous other special events including post-show artist discussions, free community workshops and a world-premiere staged reading of Hurricane Hotel by Berkshire-based novelist and artist John K. Lawson.

Since 2005, Bazaar Productions/The Berkshire Fringe has hosted more than 150 emerging artists including theater companies, dance ensembles and music groups from across the country and around the corner. Hailed as the ‘enfant terrible’ of Berkshire theater by the New York Times, this unconventional organization will once again present a diverse cross-section of original, high-quality, inter-disciplinary theater, dance and music—all at affordable prices.

New in 2009 is $ Pick Your Own Price Opening Nights! Make us an offer we can’t refuse or pay what you can for each of the six opening night performances throughout the festival. The season lineup is as follows:

5th ANNUAL GALA EXTRAVAGANZA – SCORED!

Launching the 2009 season is Scored!, Bazaar Productions’ and The Berkshire Fringe’s 5th Annual Gala extravaganza. From one impetus come many stories. Exploring artistic innovation and collaboration across disciplines, Scored! presents a mini-marathon of dance, animation, film and visual art presentations inspired by an identical, six-minute soundscape composed by Fringe co-artistic director, Peter Wise.

The event celebrates the rich and varied approaches taken towards the creation of original work and features world-premiere presentations by playwright Joan Ackermann, animation artist Tyler Kinney, Spine Dance Company, Bazaar Productions Ensemble Theater, filmmaker Larry Burke and more! In addition to highlighting the work of dozens of Berkshire-based artists, the celebration also includes live video mixing, DJ and dance party, an open bar, delicious ‘score’ d’oeuvres, a paparazzi photobooth and a massive not-so-silent auction MC’d by Fringe favorite, Lounge-ZILLA! (aka Fiely A. Matias). Mon 7/27 doors open at 7pm. Premium and pay your age tickets are available.

MAIN STAGE PRODUCTIONS

THE GAY AGENDA’S GREAT BIG BROADWAY SHOW!
Written and Performed by Micah Bucey and Nicolas Williams

Have you ever laughed so hard for so long that your face hurt? Because that’s what will happen at The Gay Agenda’s Great Big Broadway Show. Micah and Nicolas have been locked in their basement by their homophobic dad for years. Fed only cookies and original cast recordings, they have created mini-musicals that turn the Great White Way on its head. Their mission is simple: Complete and utter world domination through SHOWTUNES. Come. Listen. Be offended. Songs have never dripped with such innocent sass and biting satire. You’ll laugh yourself gay! Wed 7/29 8pm (Post Show Discussion), Thurs 7/30 9pm, Fri 7/31 7pm, Sat 8/1 9pm and Sun 8/2 6pm

THE DISAPPEARING WOMAN
Created and Choreographed by media artist Nell Bryer and dancers Alissa Cardone, Lorraine Chapman
and Bronwen MacArthur

Like the classic conjuring act in which a woman on stage is concealed and then revealed again, so are the dancer’s bodies in The Disappearing Woman. Using gestures inspired by classic imagery juxtaposed against movements invoking the female condition today, the three virtuosic dancers explore how technology folds around us squeezing our interactions into new kinds of abbreviated exchanges. Digital skins at times blur and stifle and at other times accentuate and amplify the woman and their movements. Media becomes an enveloping, inescapable part of the body itself. Thu 7/30 7pm, Fri 7/31 9pm, Sat 8/1 7pm, Sun 8/2 8pm, Mon 8/3 8pm (Post Show Discussion).

CIRCUMFERENCE
Written and performed by Amy Salloway

The Ghosts of Gym Teachers Past haunt the Fear of Fitness Centers Present and the Obsession with Weight Loss Future in this new, mostly-true solo comedy about size, sweat and exercising… your demons. Circumference is largely based on the year Salloway spent trying to get insurance approval for gastric bypass surgery. Flashbacks take us to her 7th grade gym class where she flunks her Presidential Physical Fitness Test worse than anyone in the history of Cheese Creek Junior High and where Amy is forced into constant, daily interactions with the uncooperative body she insists she long ago “got a divorce from.” Wed 8/5 8pm (Post show discussion), Thu 8/6 9pm, Fri 8/7 7pm, Sat 8/8 9pm, Sun 8/9 6pm

ELEPHANTS AND GOLD
Created by Eliza Ladd and Little Big Tree Productions

Inspired by the New York Times Magazine article Are We Driving Elephants Crazy? Elephants and Gold is an ensemble driven physical theater piece that drags, digs, buries, crawls and plunges into an archeological excavation of human identity. The cast blends song, movement and dreamlike vignettes to chronicle human migration, ritual and inter-species dynamics. The performers transform into early humans, elephants, Victorian explorers, lost men and poachers, within a landscape of metal buckets, heavy stones, iron hooks and strands of rope. Elephants and Gold reveals both the ancient and contemporary relationships between elephants and humans and questions our evolutionary and cultural stories. Thu 8/6 7pm, Fri 8/7 9pm, Sat 8/8 7pm, Sun 8/9 8pm, Mon 8/10 8pm (post show discussion)

PHI ALPHA GAMMA
Written and Performed by Dan Bernitt

The Lamda Award nominated Phi Alpha Gamma is a haunting portrait of brotherhood, masculinity, love and fear embedded in American culture. Two years after two young men perpetrate a gay-bashing that scars their fraternity’s reputation, another member of the fraternity comes out of the closet. Phi Alpha Gamma focuses a compassionate eye on young men searching for a deeper connection with each other. The story weaves together the voices of four fraternity brothers as they each grapple with the remnants of the hate crime and this new revelation. Wed 8/12 8pm (Post Show Discussion), Thu 8/13 9pm, Fri 8/14 7pm, Sat 8/15 9pm, Sun 8/16 7pm

GRAVEYARD SHIFT
Written by Gabriel Patel, Directed by John Hadden

With themes straight from Greek tragedy and language from the skate park, Graveyard Shift paints an unflinching picture of young, lower-middle class life in rural America. Creating a vibrant, poetic and contemporary theater of place, the play chronicles the lives of Alice, a tumultuous, fast talking heroine, and Murdoch, a troubled late night convenience store clerk. Amidst the backdrop of youthful angst and harrowing family drama, the two strike up an unlikely friendship that awakens a deep current of love and mutual respect. This world premiere by Berkshire-based writer Gabriel W. Patel features an ensemble of local performers under the direction of John L. Hadden. Contains strong language and adult themes. Thu 8/13 7pm, Fri 8/14 9pm, Sat 8/15 7pm, Sun 8/16 9pm, Mon 8/17 8pm (Post Show Discussion)

SPECIAL STAGED READING EVENT – HURRICANE HOTEL
By John Lawson, directed by Aimee Michel

In an eclectic love letter to the city of New Orleans, Hurricane Hotel grabs a hold and takes us on a ride into the underbelly of a drowned city destined to be reborn. Adapted from the novel by Berkshire-based artist and author John K. Lawson, this world-premiere staged reading is directed by Aimee K. Michel, and features an original music score by Chris Mariantetti (Fragile, 2008) and an ensemble of local actors. One performance only: Saturday August 9, 2pm.

FREE PROGRAMS
EARLYSTAGES
On Sunday, August 16th at 12, 1:30 and 3pm participants in the EarlyStages playwright mentorship program will present staged readings of new works. This is the culmination of a two-week residency where emerging local writers develop scripts under the guidance of Award winning writer Susan Kim. This event is free and will be followed by a discussion with the artists.

:30 LIVE!
Free music series featuring an eclectic mix of new music, emerging composers and sonic innovators from throughout the North East. Takes Place every Wednesday and Monday at 7pm during the Berkshire Fringe.

COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS
All workshops are FREE and take place on Saturdays at 1:30 pm in the Daniel Arts Center. Each workshop is taught by Berkshire Fringe artists and is open to participants of all backgrounds and levels of experience ages 16-96! Space is limited and early registration is strongly recommended. Workshop Schedule is as follows:

Saturday, August 1st
Movement/choreography workshop with acclaimed solo artist and dancer Alissa Cardone from The Disappearing Woman

Saturday, August 8th
Movement Theater workshop focusing on poetry and music with Elephants and Gold creator, Eliza Ladd

Saturday, August 15
Writing for performance with Lambda Award nominated writer of Phi Alpha Gamma, Dan Bernitt.

GENERAL INFORMATION
All performances, events and workshops take place at The Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 84 Alford Road in Great Barrington, MA. Tickets are $15 to main events, $ Pick your Own Price for all opening night performances. Ask our box office about a Season’s Pass – See all six shows for $69. All workshops, :30 Live! performances and EarlyStages readings are free. For directions, tickets, workshop registration, and all other information please call (413) 320-4175, e-mail us at info@berkshirefringe.org or visit berkshirefringe.org.

Major support for the 2009 Berkshire Fringe is provided by The Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Katherine J. Dinardo Fund

BTF production of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer reviewed

May 23, 2009 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Sitting in the audience that filled every seat at the press opening of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer at the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Unicorn Theatre, I found myself envying those who knew little or nothing about the play and for whom it would be a daunting experience.

And just as strongly I rejoiced that I was one of those who had come, knowing the play and feeling sure that under Eric Hill’s mesmerizing direction, it would unfold dazzlingly in its subtle, but all so Irish, experience and weave gradually to its shattering ending.

For any future audience members to whom the play is unknown, I will tread lightly on plot and offer a few suggestions as to what to expect. For the Friel enthusiasts, I’ll attempt to describe the play’s “Irishness,” based as it is on the old tradition of seanachie, and how Friel employs it, blending metaphor into his theme and how this production reveals it.

The play is composed of four consecutive monologs delivered by three actors, each alone on the stage, in a minimal but beautifully lit set, each telling his story from his own point of view.

Frank Hardy (Colin Lane) opens the play and his second monolog closes it. Frank is the Faith Healer who has found significance in his very initials which seem to have bestowed on him an art over which he feels he has a strange talent, but one not under his control. He can, occasionally, heal, but at other times it is impossible. And usually he is aware of what the outcome will be. Yet his untaught talent drives him.

From Frank we learn also what he chooses to tell us of the long twenty years of touring the little fringe towns of Wales and Scotland (where he expects subjects to be more gullible). He can be charming and persuasive, but there are topics he avoids. His memory of scenes sharply differs from that of his two companions, and does so in significant and self-protecting ways. Lane gives us a conflicted character – endearing, but also hurtful and self protecting. His final monolog is beautifully and sympathetically rendered. For all his weaknesses, he still gains our compassion. A strong portrayal.

Keira Naughton as Grace brings grief and courage to her role as wife? (Frank at times seems to deny her this honor) and fellow-traveler of twenty years in the van. She too shares scenes Frank has told us of, but from a different angle, and we see her later through the eyes of the third character, Teddy, in a setting that forces her into assuming a bravery for which she has not the strength.

Her role demands the skilled actor that she is, aware of subtle nuance and the character’s conflicted emotions concerning her twenty year association with Frank. She gives us a woman we can admire. And later, when Teddy speaks, we can understand with even greater sympathy the flowing woman she once was who at one brief moment of sheer happiness could sing of “endearing young charms.” A carefully crafted performance.

Teddy (David Adkins) brings he first bursts of humor, music and song into the play as he almost avoiding material that involves his love and devotion to Frank, and especially to Grace. His accounts of his life before he joined them on their twenty year trek of the hinterlands is hilarious.

And he finally, bravely, confronts the sites that recur in the incantations and haunt all three in the group. He is Frank’s manager. His speech is broad Cockney and his formal education probably slight, far less than that of Grace and the career she abandoned.
“Manager” is a rather glorious title for the role he plays as van driver, but is too humble a word for other actions he has been on hand to perform. Adkins gives us a character we can love, one who supported the others in time of need, and who remembers the “big” moments differently and movingly. A sympathetic character, warmly created.

Frank delivers the final monolog, and finally, buttoned into his shabby coat, knows why he came back to Ireland.

Since in the monologs each character brings us only the way he/she remembers it, facts differ wildly. Still Friel keeps us on keel. Gradually, especially if we are new to the play we realize that not only do themes recur, but so certain names of the incanted villages. And the name Kinlockberbie, that small town in the far north of Scotland is often not only named, but repeated. With what happened described differently.

Even more significantly, two sentences, seemingly harmless description will, somewhere in each of the three’s monologs be introduced.

“So on the last day we crossed from Strenraer to Larne and drove through the
night to County Donegal. And there we got lodging in a pub, a lounge bar really,
outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town.”

These are some of the moments to listen for. Much of each story sheds light upon the fates of the others and on the basic theme that seems to me to be a metaphor referring to all artists, who feel someway “chosen” (at times almost reluctantly) to use an inborn gift. One that they embrace as if “called” to it, but one of which they are at times fearful. It can fail them. But even knowing they will fail, they must face the challenge and go on. Accept. In this play Frank “knew.”

Sadly, those living in the shadow of such artists often suffer too. But loving, they support, carry on, as long as they can.

Despite the sadness, this is not a depressing play. The characters are real and moving and each admirable in his or her own way. Although an early Friel, many would list it among his best, as perfect in its own way as Translations or
Molly Sweeney with its similar format of three, appearing fifteen years later.

Eric Hill and his team of actors, technicians have brought to the BTF’s Unicorn Stage a beautiful, sympathetic and dynamic production of an important play. What a lovely way to start the summer season in the Berkshires!