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.

(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.

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.

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.