Dave Read

Barrington Stage Company offers pay-what-you-can nights

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) is reaching out to a younger audience by offering Pay What You Can Nights for people 35 and under. On Pay What You Can (PWYC) nights, BSC offers close-to-free tickets (minimum payment $5) for one performance of each MainStage and Stage 2 production this summer.

PWYC performances are these:

June 13 Spelling Bee,
July 25 The Violet Hour,
August 15 Private Lives,
June 20 Harris Burdick,
July 11 My Scary Girl
August 15 See Rock City.

For further information contact: Carolann Patterson, Director of Marketing, Barrington Stage Company (413) 997-6109 capatterson@barringtonstageco.org

The Rite of Spring, with dancers from Africa, at Jacob’s Pillow

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, in Backet, MA, has announced that the contemporary French dance company Compagnie Heddy Maalem, comprised of dancers from Mali, Bénin, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, and Mozambique, will make its debut at the Berkshires’ dance venue June 25 – 29, 2008.

Artistic director and choreographer Heddy Maalem presents his provocative re-imagination of Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps). Inspiration for the piece derives from time the choreographer spent in Lagos, Nigeria.

Maalem’s explosively contemporary interpretation of The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) is performed in a stark white stage set, while the dance is “located” in Africa, with dramatic film interludes that bring the colors, sounds, and images of Nigeria onstage with the dancers. Maalem has said that when faced with the metropolitan cacophony of 12 million people in Lagos, Stravinsky’s throbbing score kept echoing in his head, “Lagos made me think of the end of the world.” This hour-long work for fourteen African men and women, each trained in their own indigenous movement style as well as Maalem’s precise and distinct dance language, has been performed more than 100 times throughout Europe.

“By definition, classic works of art such as The Rite of Spring continue to speak powerfully to artists and audiences, and Heddy Maalem gets to the core of it with his interpretation. I’ve presented and seen many versions of Rite all over the world, and this one is original and inspiring on many levels. The dancers are from all over the African continent and form an extraordinary ensemble, a sort of post-modern “tribe,” and the movement, film and of course the music draw us in, build throughout the dance, and combine to deliver a truly theatrical experience”, comments Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow Executive Director.

Maalem has commented, “Le Sacre has been performed a thousand times, unforgettable yet always new, with the same shocking joy overflowing out of time, out of the ages.” His version is striking and straightforward, yet quiet and sensual at times. Dynamic group sequences are interlaced with intense scenes of silence and atmospheric film projections. Dancers melt into one unit, pulsing with energy, and then explode apart only to come back again. The work is performed to the orchestral recording of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez.

In 1913, Stravinsky’s percussive, driving The Rite of Spring and Vaslav Nijinsky’s radical, angular movements shocked audience members who were present to see Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Void of long lines and elegant movement, the work portrayed pagan Russia and included the sacrifice of a young girl, dancing herself to death in honor of spring. The complex music and violent dance steps prompted catcalls from the audience and the theater soon erupted in fistfights and riots. The uproar became legendary. The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) has since been performed by orchestras around the world and has been staged and re-interpreted innumerable times by choreographers and companies such as Pina Bausch, Doug Varone, and The Joffrey Ballet. Jacob’s Pillow has presented Emmanuel Gat Dance, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and The Paul Taylor Dance Company in recent notable productions of the work.

Heddy Maalem was born in Batna, in the heart of the Aurès, Algeria, to an Algerian father and a French mother. Maalem’s early and extensive training in boxing and the Japanese martial art of Aikido continue to influence his choreography which is marked by precision, sparse vocabulary, and clarity. In 1990, he founded his own company, and in 2000 he began his investigation into the recurring question of identity with his work Black Spring, which would become the first in a trilogy inspired by Lagos, Nigeria. In 2002, Maalem collaborated with Benoît Dervaux to create their acclaimed film, also titled Black Spring, which has been screened and awarded prizes at film festivals around the world. That same year the two worked together again on L’Ordre de la bataille, with Dervaux providing imagery as a backdrop to Maalem’s choreographic inquiry into the meaning of existence in a war-torn world. The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) premiered in 2004, completing Maalem’s Lagos-inspired choreographic triology. The Rite of Spring has been performed more than 100 times throughout Europe and makes its American premiere in June of 2008. Generous support for the U.S. tour has been provided by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy of the United States, CulturesFrance, Afrique en Creation, and ADAMI.

A free PillowTalk film screening and discussion of Black Spring will be held at 4pm on Saturday, June 28 in Blake’s Barn on the Jacob’s Pillow grounds. A powerful exploration of identity, this film by Dervaux intercuts dynamic dance sequences with scenes of everyday life in Nigeria. Maalem choreographed the award-winning film, and he will be on hand to introduce and discuss it.

For more information on Compagnie Heddy Maalem and Jacob’s Pillow visit heddymaalem.com, or jacobspillow.org.

Review of The Ladies Man at Shakespeare and Co.

May 31 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

[singlepic=237,320,213,,left]Poor Dr. Hercule Molineaux (Jonathan Croy), the unheroic hero of Feydeux’s “The Ladies Man” now playing at Shakespeare and Co.’s Founders’ Theatre in Lenox, MA.

Not only must he grope his misguided ways in and out of the five doors (and one window) that are de rigueur in a French farce, but also through a situation that combines two Feydeux plots interwoven by translator Charles Morey. In doing so, Morey has devised one of the most boisterous, outrageous, slapstick plays to have ever graced the Founder’s stage

And there is Molineaux, innocent dupe buffeted by the seven other outrageous characters who comprise the talented cast who lurk behind, leap out of or swoop into those five doors at break-neck, but choreographed, speed. Outrageous French accents, guttural German declarations, even a patient who lisps and who likes to play doctor!

And the poor man is innocent, not the adulterer French farces so often employ. His sin is only his temporary unmanned state that has left his beautiful young bride still a virgin and has resulted in their occupying separate bedrooms behind two of the doors.

Bassinet (Michael Toomey) the lisper, practically moves into the door to the dispensary where he dons so much medical equipment he can be, and is mistaken for, the doctor himself, a role he gladly and gleefully assumes.

Madame Aigreville (Annette Miller), mother of the shunned bride, is so awesome she is nick-named Medusa, wears huge snake-bedecked hat, and usually erupts threateningly through double doors up center accompanied by music. Miller plays her to the hilt creating a character who, trying to defend her daughter, strikes terror, living up to her aggravating name. The way she swirls a cape displays her great gift for characterization.

Yvonne (Julie Webster) is properly petulant and beautiful as the rejected bride and has her husband so intimated by her attitude that he has spent a night in the rain on a park bench, not philandering as she would suspect, but trying to find a way out of his sexual dilemma.

Two servants, the maid (Caley Milliken) and the butler (Etienne – Dave Demke) manage to invade the plot, and the doors, and get interwoven in the shenanigans more often and more deeply than minor characters have any right to usually. Demke, especially, proves agile and inventive.

Walton Wilson provides a threatening but hysterically funny presence as the German husband of Suzanne Aubin who turns out to be the Leading Lady.

[singlepic=238,200,300,,right]And that leading lady is Elizabeth Aspenlieder who, as trollop deluxe, steals the show. The poor doctor has become involved with her—but only hoping, in a dumb misguided way, to find a way out of his impotency problem. He was playing with fire. The woman is agile in ways that keep the audience roaring, and her agility is fortunately garbed (by Govane Lohbauer) in Victorian finery that elegantly displays bloomers and bosom in hysterically funny, rather than in shockingly indecent, moments. She is boisterous, beguiling and insistent – absolutely wonderful.

As is our poor doctor, Croy, who is at his gleeful best in her presence, his agility matching hers. An equally awesome performance and a demanding one since he is on stage in almost every scene, coping with all those doors and all the people erupting from them, all seemingly intent on embroiling him in their lives. Had the poor man understood the significance of one French word worrying him in Act I, he would have avoided all his problems.

Acts I and III take place in the living room of the doctor; Act II takes us away to a boutique, also with five doors, at which, for various reasons, all eight cast members converge. While the entire play is a gem, the second act steals its own show. It is so hysterically wild and ends on such determined applause it could almost end the play..

Of course I does not. The play has to sort out, as best it can, all the tangled relationships of what has gone on before. It does, as best it can, plotless as it all has been. As an audience member one can be gleeful and not regret the fact that in Act I many of the witty double-entr’ lines one missed because the audience was roaring over the one that preceded it.

Kevin Coleman and his actors are having a ball bringing you this play. They want you to like it and them and you do. The entire cast is flamboyant and talented .The play is outrageously boisterous and bawdy but needs no x rating. It is almost a family play. Youngsters would adore the slapstick played at double tempo and the double-entr’ word play should go breezily over their heads.

In this “summer of our discontent” over elections, oil prices and other worldly woes, it is fun for an evening to watch the joyous cavorting on the Founders’ stage.

(Photos by Kevin Sprague, courtesy Shakespeare and Co.)

Barrington Stage schedules auditions for To Kill a Mockingbird

Barrington Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, is holding open auditions for adults and children for Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

One of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning “To Kill A Mockingbird” heralds in BSC’s Fall Mainstage Season from October 8 through 26. Adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel and directed by Julianne Boyd, “To Kill A Mockingbird” is an artful and compassionate story of innocence, courage and what it means to be a family.

Auditions for adults and children ages 9-14 will be held on Saturday, June 7 from 1pm – 5pm at BSC’s Stage 2 at the VFW Hall, 36 Linden Street in Pittsfield.

Set in Depression-era Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is the coming of age story of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, the daughter of Atticus, a lawyer who, despite threats to himself and his family, defends a black man accused of assaulting a white woman. The narrator of the story, a grown-up Scout, looks back at her childhood, delivering a powerful message about prejudice, injustice, and humanity.

Adults between the ages of 40-60 will be seen for a wide variety of roles. Also casting the role of Mayella, a 19 year-old, lonely, poor, overworked girl, afraid to tell the truth. Children’s roles are Scout (girl ages 9 – 11) – A tomboy, spunky and head strong; Jem (boy 12-14) Scout’s older brother and protector, a young man on the brink of manhood; and Dill (boy age 9 – 11) – Jem’s friend, imaginative with a sense of adventure. All are invited to audition. Those auditioning should bring a headshot and resume, and be prepared to recite a 2-3 minute contemporary dramatic monologue of his/her choice using a Southern accent. Those auditioning may also be asked to stay and read a scene from the play.

Rehearsals will begin in September 18, 2008 and performances will run October 8 through 26, 2008.

Performers must commit to the rehearsal schedule (Tuesday through Sunday) and performance schedule (Wednesday through Sunday, October 8 through 26).

To schedule an audition appointment call BSC Office Manager, Katie Johnson, at 413-499-5446 ext. 100. Barrington Stage Company.

Williamstown Theatre Festival 2008 season summary

Ticketing information for the 2008 season at Williamstown Theatre Festival can be obtained online at wtfestival.org or by calling 413-597-3400.

MAIN STAGE:

She Loves Me

Book by Joe Masteroff

Music by Jerry Bock

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick Musical Direction by Charlie Alterman

Choreography by Denis Jones
Directed by Nicholas Martin
June 27-July 12

Three Sisters

by Anton Chekhov

Translated by Paul Schmidt
Directed by Michael Greif
July 16-27

A Flea in Her Ear

a new version of George Feydeau’s farce

by David Ives
Directed by John Rando
July 30-August 10

Home

by David Storey
Directed by Joseph Hardy
August 13-24

NIKOS STAGE:

Beyond Therapy

by Christopher Durang
Directed by Alex Timbers
June 11-22

The Atheist

by Ronan Noone
Directed by Justin Waldman
June 25-July 6

Broke-ology

by Nathan Louis Jackson
Directed by Thomas Kail
July 9-20

The Understudy

by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Scott Ellis
July 23-August 3

Not Waving

by Ellen Melaver
Directed by Carolyn Cantor
August 6-17

Williamstown Theatre Festival announces casts for She Loves Me and The Athiest

Nicholas Martin brings his new revival of the Joe Masteroff/Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock musical She Loves Me to the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Presented in association with Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company, She Loves Me will play the Main Stage from June 27 – July 12, 2008.

The cast includes: Monique Alhaddad, Ashley Arcement, Brooks Ashmanskas, Jason Babinsky, Kate Baldwin, Jeremy Beck, Troy Britton Johnson, Nancy E. Carroll, Aldrin Gonzales, Rosie Hunter, Matthew Kiernan, Dick Latessa, Josh Mertz, Mark Nelson, Jessica Stone, Sarah Turner and Mark Vietor.

The production team for She Loves Me includes choreography by Denis Jones, musical direction by Charlie Alterman, set design by James Noone, costume design by Robert Morgan, lighting co-designed by Ken Posner and Philip Rosenberg, and sound co-designed by Drew Levy and Tony Smolenski. The production stage manager is Matthew Silver and the stage manager is Eileen Kelly.

She Loves Me is the irresistible tale of two unlikely sweethearts (Ashmanskas and Baldwin) who work together during the day unaware they are writing to each other anonymously at night and the quirky coworkers (Britton Johnson, Latessa, and Stone) who surround them. Hailed by many as one of the most charming musicals ever written, She Love Me’s quixotic mix of wit and romanticism timelessly invokes the old-world glamour of days gone by.

The Atheist by Ronan Noone

The Atheist by Ronan Noone features stage and screen star Campbell Scott in a one-man tour-de-force. Directed by Williamstown Artistic Associate Justin Waldman, The Atheist plays the Nikos Stage from June 25 – July 6, 2008.

In The Atheist, Augustine Early (Scott) is a reporter who will do anything to get his next front-page story. When shady political dealings whet his appetite for success, the consequences could be much more than he anticipated, deterring his quest to catch a pitch-perfect headline.

The design team for The Atheist includes set design by Cristina Todesco, costume design by Jessica Curtwright, lighting design by Ben Stanton and sound design by Alex Neumann. The production stage manager is Emily Roberts.

Ticketing information for both She Loves Me and The Atheist at Williamstown can be obtained online at Williamstown Theatre Festival or by calling 413-597-3400.