Not having been in the Berkshires
since the early “Oughts,” I was eager to see some theater in this region of
Western Massachusetts when I went on vacation in late August. Specifically, I
wanted to see at least one production at Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox.
From the
company’s Website, I knew that it continued to stage productions even into the
fall, well after other area troupes had wrapped up for the season. More
important, past productions had greatly impressed me, and I was eager to see
how it had changed since my last visit.
Shakespeare and Co. is in the home
stretch of its 40th season, in the last weekend of its current
production, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage.
(Following the regular season banquet, a kind of holiday dessert, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley - A
Costumed Staged Reading, will be offered in mid-December.) Nearly a decade
ago, as the Global Financial Crisis took hold, its willingness to take risks
led the operation into financial shoals that looked too deep at times. Now, it
is enjoying the benefit of a substantial physical plant to accompany its
diverse artistic offerings.
It was appropriate that the two plays
I saw while on vacation in the area at the end of summer, The Tempest and The Wharton Comedies, sprang from the writers who might be viewed as two guiding
lights of the company: William Shakespeare and novelist Edith Wharton.
The company takes
its name, of course, from The Bard. But, following its formation in 1978, it performed
through its first 25 years in The Mount, the Berkshire summer home of Wharton (The House of Mirth, Ethan
Frome). As programming evolved over the years, it staged plays in three
different venues at the estate, located in Lenox.
In 2003, however, following a
painfully public dispute with its landlord, Edith Wharton Restoration,
Shakespeare and Co. moved to a new Lenox location, one mile down the road at 70
Kemble Street, in a 63-acre site once belonging to the National Music
Foundation.
Since then, the company has built an administrative building as well as
new theaters: Tina Packer Playhouse (named for the organization’s founder and
longtime artistic director), the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, The Roman Garden
Theatre, and the Rose Footprint Theatre. Its year-round activities include not
only a half-dozen or so productions, but also scores of workshops, multiple
lectures and demonstrations, and literally classes for professional and
aspiring actors, teachers, and directors.
Throughout its reinvention, the
company continued to dare mightily, day in and day out, year after year.
Audiences have grown accustomed to seeing it assign major Shakespearean roles
to the opposite sex; to dispensing with familiar Elizabethan costumes and
places in favor of the unconventional, such as staging The Merry Wives of Windsor in the Wild West; and even to premiering
unusual comedies or dramas, such as Wit,
Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a cancer patient.
In many ways, the organization drew
on the dynamism of Packer, who not only oversaw the organization but also acted
in and directed many of its productions herself. Not merely a theatrical
whirling dervish, she was also a promotional wunderkind. (At one point, she led
a professional development workshop for business/arts professionals and
co-wrote Power Plays: Shakespeare’s
Lessons on Leadership and Management.)
None of the productions I saw before
its move and reinvention, however, had ever involved Shakespeare, until my
latest visit. Staged in the new open Roman Garden Theatre, The Tempest was a brisk, imaginative production of a work that, for
clear reasons, is classified among Shakespeare’s late-phase “Problem Plays.”
Director Allyn Burrows, named Artistic Director of Shakespeare and
Company last year after nearly two decades with the organization, exhibited just about
all the traits you can think to maintain its high reputation in this
production: an ability to take actors through credible, well-motivated
performances; a sense of imagination yoked to solid stagecraft; and a coherent
vision for what theater should mean in this age.
In the Roman Garden, it seemed
natural that the performers would appear out of nowhere from the heavy shrubbery
surrounding the audience. With a performance set in the last few hours before
dusk on an unseasonably cool late summer day, a viewer could understand better
how the shipwrecked characters might feel at the mercy of their unaccustomed
surroundings. (Writing amid the age of exploration of the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, Shakespeare evoked, in this play, Europeans’ sense of wonder with his
line about a “brave new world/That has such people in 't!”) Clotheslines above
the action helped simulate ship sails—and, very helpfully, shielded the
audience from the glare of the fading sunset.
Nigel Gore thundered in righteous
fury as the exiled magician Prospero. Gifted with truly ugly makeup, Jason Asprey embodied Calaban,
the son of the witch Sycorax, now serving as Prospero’s servant, with all the
quirks and fury that a misbegotten, misshaped soul could be expected to have. Ella
Loudon brought beauty and fire to the
role of Prospero's daughter Miranda, and Tamara Hickey depicted, with considerable sympathy, the
plight of Ariel, Prospero’s sprite, who tries to balance devotion to her master
and her restless search for freedom.
The Tempest, with
its exotic setting and unusual characters in extremis, would probably have been
strongly considered by the company again sooner or later. But its parallels to
current events must have made it irresistible to Shakespeare and Company.
For instance: How
does a man, after suddenly gaining unusual power in a realm he’s never known
before, react when his enemies are at his mercy? Can his lovely blond daughter
soften his seemingly bottomless rage? What is the proper role of science in this “brave new world” and the one left behind? And, when all is said and
done, will there be any role for forgiveness, or will the world controlled by
power still be subject to personal caprice, storm and disruption?
Weighty questions all, but wrapped up
with all the wonderworking magic displayed by Ariel. In fact, it was the most
vivid and coherent version of this comedy that I can remember.
Equally breathtaking theatrical
conjuring was effected in The Wharton Comedies. One of these two one-acters was an adaptation of
“Roman Fever,” one of Wharton’s most anthologized short stories. Its power
derives from its final line, a surprise that leads readers to search through
all that has come before that would explain this moment.
Even though I’d read
the story years ago and had even seen it performed in the Parlor at The Mount
in the 1990s, that moment had lost none of its delicious power all these years
later. Ostensibly set in a Roman restaurant, it felt like an Edwardian
drawing-room comedy in the company’s intimate 200-seat Elayne P. Bernstein
Theatre.
Corinna May and Diane Prusha played
to perfection two longtime American friends traveling in Italy. With their
grown daughters out to visit the sights in the Eternal City, these two
not-so-merry widows linger at lunch on a languid afternoon that grows unexpectedly,
tenser.
May’s Alida Slade, the more svelte of
the two, was also the more unfiltered, eyeing her young Italian waiter (played
by David Joseph) with almost cougarish delight. Finally, she determines, after a couple
of glass of wine, to have it out once and for all with her friend about
unaddressed, unsettled business from their youth.
Prusha’s Grace Ansley
appeared passive and self-contained, continuing to knit as Alida launched an increasingly
heavy series of verbal assaults about what may or may not have happened to her
one particular night at the Coliseum decades ago. But Grace’s positioning was
deceiving: when the time came, she was ready with a line that left Alida—and
the audience—gasping.
Playwright Dennis Krausnick found another channel for Wharton’s arch wit in
the second half of these “comedies,” an adaptation of the short story “The
Fullness of Life.” Like “Roman Fever,” it dealt in rueful memories of past
desire, only this time Wharton (and, of course, Krausnick) took this notion to
its logical conclusion: the waiting room of the Hereafter. It is an almost
literal example of what Lawrence Selden was seeking in The House of Mirth: a “republic of the spirit,” where it was
possible to meet one’s soul mate.
The soul mate
for “The Woman,” a middle-aged matron burdened with a dullard of a husband in
life, is beyond anything she could ever hope for in life: a thoughtful romantic
who is also astonishingly handsome. Once again, Prusha brought forth, with
great economy, a woman coming to uneasy terms with the choices she made long
ago. Again, she interacted with two actors who brought out the best in her:
May, this time playing the figure known as Fullness of Life as a serene
goddess, and Joseph, as the heavenly mate who may well be too perfect
It had been a long time since I had last seen a Shakespeare & Company show. Based on what I saw this past season, it hasn't lost its touch. I hope to see the company again, much sooner than I had this past time.
