Posts Tagged ‘Gail Burns’

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Three Musicals plus Burton, Leonard, Martin for Williamstown Theatre Festival 2013 [Berkshire on Stage]

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
Touch(ed) (2011) by Bess Wohl, directed by Trip Cullman with Michael Chernus, Lisa Joyce, Merritt Wever. Photo: T. Charles Erickson.

Touch(ed) (2011) by Bess Wohl, directed by Trip Cullman with Michael Chernus, Lisa Joyce, Merritt Wever. Photo: T. Charles Erickson.

The historic and Tony Award-Winning Williamstown Theatre Festival revealed its plans for the Summer of 2013 at a news briefing at the Williams Inn today. Following the same format that Artistic Director Jennie Gersten introduced last year, there will be three Main Stage productions and four on the smaller and more intimate Nikos Stage.

Following is the official announcement, with some additional commentary on the upcoming season by Gail and Larry following each show’s synopsis.

The schedule was announced by Eric Kerns, the company’s director of marketing and development filling in for Jennie Gersten who was indisposed with the flu.

He noted that this year there would be three musicals, a major undertaking, and three plays with a world premiere in each category. A seventh production will be announced at a later date, since final details – involving well known names in the business – are still being finalized.

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Review: “You’ll Laugh, You’ll Cry” at the 10×10 Upstreet New Play Festival [Berkshire on Stage]

Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Peggy Pharr Wilson as Gertrude Stein in “There’s No Here Here”. . Photo by Scott Barrow.

Peggy Pharr Wilson as Gertrude Stein in “There’s No Here Here”. . Photo by Scott Barrow.

Much to the delight of us hardy New Englanders, this is the second year that Barrington Stage Company has co-produced the 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival in Pittsfield, MA. It’s where we get treated to ten new plays, ten minutes each, performed ten times between February 14 and March 3. Ten different playwrights are represented, and their new works are directed by four of the Berkshire’s best directors, and an ensemble of eight actors plays all the roles.

Let’s take the plays one by one, in the order they were performed.

There’s No More Here Here
by Craig Pospisil, directed by Christopher Innvar with Emily Taplin Boyd as Juliette, Peggy Pharr Wilson as Gertrude Stein, Scott Drummond as Jean Luc and Dustin Charles as Lance. At a Parisian café, a writer confronts his girlfriend when an unexpected guest butts into their conversation

Larry Murray: This was a fine opener, a bit of theatre of the absurd to start us off, complete with breaking that fourth wall between actors and audience. It skewered all of our usual cliches about dating, the French, Gertrude Stein and a waiter rising up to claim his own personality. There were both plenty of sight gags and meaningful metaphors making two parts of my brain work at the same time.

Gail Burns: I just felt like I had heard this story before. In fact, as a young writer, I think I wrote it more than once. Three characters in search of an author – except the author’s right there on stage with them. Ho hum…

Click to read the rest at Berkhire on Stage.

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Barrington Stage Raises the Curtain on 2013 [Berkshire on Stage]

Thursday, December 13th, 2012

Barrington Stage 2013

by Gail Burns and Larry Murray

Once again, Barrington Stage is the first Berkshire theatre company to announce its slate of shows for the 2013 season.

Seven new productions were announced at a lunchtime gathering attended by a dozen arts writers and reporters in the Berkshires, plus – suprisingly – Pittsfield Mayor Bianchi, the Berkshire Visitors Bureau and the Berkshire Bank, an impressive sample of the opinion and taste makers for the Berkshires. They knew that what the company’s artistic director, Julianne Boyd, had planned would affect them all, one way or the other.

Boyd did not disappoint. Once again she has firmly grasped the contemporary and traditional and smashed them together for an explosive 2013 season. Her nose for sniffing out the elemental human condition and finding ways to expand them theatrically is amazing. From a practical standpoint, full audiences for BSC means busy restaurants in downtown Pittsfield and beyond. The strong cadre of local ticket buyers is supplemented by a growing base of visitors who now add the company’s productions to their summer sojourns.

“In 2013,” Boyd observed, “our stages will be lit for a full six months of the year, not just during the peak summer months.” For a company that began on the stage of a high school in Sheffield 20 years ago, it has grown to become the trend setter of the Berkshires, typified by taking on its first Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing, putting it in the traditional late summer comedy spot, and mining it for its humor. Supplementing its community work via the Playwright’s Mentoring Project, the company will work closely with Shirley Edgerton’s Rites of Passage group to develop an evening of poems and stories written by Pittsfield residents that is inspired by Nozatke Sange’s play For Colored Girls which also gets a full professional production.

The ever reliable Mark St. Germain turns his attention to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in an imagined meeting of the authors and frenemies in Hollywood, the premiere of Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah.

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Burns and Murray: Oldcastle’s New Theatre, New Musical “Northern Boulevard” [Berkshire on Stage]

Monday, December 10th, 2012
Northern Boulevard at Oldcastle Theatre Company

Northern Boulevard at Oldcastle Theatre Company

by Gail Burns and Larry Murray
For the Berkshire-Capital region’s most comprehensive listing of theatre offerings, visit GailSez.org

The new facility

Larry Murray: It was a special night for Bennington, Vermont, with the opening of a brand new theatre by the Oldcastle Theatre Company and the premiere performance of Northern Boulevard, an impressive new musical by Bennington composer Carleton Carpenter, all watched over by a full house of residents, supporters and friends.

Gail Burns: From the opening comments by Eric Peterson, it seems to be a million dollar addition to downtown Bennington – neither of the company’s previous homes have been downtown. If the community embraces this new location, it could have the same sort of impact on Bennington that the Barrington Stage Company and the newly reburbished Colonial Theatre has had on Pittsfield.

Larry: I think the new facility is both efficient and flexible, design wise, being a large black box with movable seating modules, which are both nicely raked seating for great sight lines and quite comfortable. I didn’t think about my bum for 2.5 hours, which is not always the case in even the newest theaters.

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Gail Burns on “Robin Hood: Fifty Shades of Green” – The Panto Loons 2012 Edition [Berkshire on Stage]

Thursday, December 6th, 2012
The cast (l to r) Judy Staber, Mattew W. Coviello, Sally McCarthy, Johnna Murray, Cathy Lee-Visscher, Michael Meier, Mark “Monk” Schane-Lydon, Joanne Maurer, Tom Detwiler, Paul Murphy, and Paul Leyden. Photo: Daniel Region

The cast (l to r) Judy Staber, Mattew W. Coviello, Sally McCarthy, Johnna Murray, Cathy Lee-Visscher, Michael Meier, Mark “Monk” Schane-Lydon, Joanne Maurer, Tom Detwiler, Paul Murphy, and Paul Leyden. Photo: Daniel Region

For the Berkshire-Capital region’s most comprehensive listing of theater offerings visit GailSez.org

After this past presidential election cycle, it is only natural that the Panto Loons would select Robin Hood – whose hero robs from the 1% to give to the 99% – as the story they would send up this holiday season. And considering that the Loons start writing in July and the show goes up a scant three weeks after election day, they must be very clever indeed to get the political humor just right (or in this case just left) so that the show rings true whatever the outcome.

(Quick Introduction for Panto Virgins: The British Pantomime or Panto tradition has nothing to do with what Americans know as Pantomime or Mime. There is a LOT of talking and singing and no one wears white-face or a beret. The best analogy for Baby-Boomers is to imagine the Fractured Fairy Tales segment from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show live on stage, set to music, with everyone in drag. There is a lot of topical political and cultural humor, and the songs are all new lyrics set to old standards. Its all very, very silly.)

While I recognized, happily, several jokes from their 2004 staging of this same story – the female anthropologist joke and the epithet “You flatuent anchovy!” in particular – this is an all new 2012 version, retaining only Head Loon Judy Staber’s gently sloshed performance as Friar Tuck and Johnna Murray’s perfect turn as Maid Marion, a young woman with the riches and womanly virtues of a true princess, and the speech impediment of Elmer Fudd. Her love for Wobin, er, Robin Hood (Cathy Lee-Visscher) is as unswerving as her hate for Sheriff Cockalorum of Nottingham (Sally McCarthy), whom his greedy Mother Dona Trumpet (director Tom Detwiler) wants her to marry.

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Broadway’s Michael Wartella is bringing “Wicked Unplugged” Home to the Berkshires Nov. 19 [Berkshire on Stage]

Monday, November 19th, 2012
Michael Wartella is Boq in Wicked now at Proctor’s.

Michael Wartella is Boq in Wicked, now at Proctor’s.

by Gail Burns

Inspired by his Berkshire childhood as the step-son of musician David Grover, Michael Wartella is bringing his cast-mates from the national touring company of “Wicked” home to Massachusetts for an acoustic benefit concert for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS on Monday, November 19, at 7 pm. The company is currently performing at Proctors in Schenectady, NY.

“I grew up in the Berkshire folk music scene with my stepdad and Arlo Guthrie, so it was a no brainer for me to produce something here in the County,” Wartella explained. “This concert will feature ‘Wicked’ cast members singing hits and classics from all different musical genres, as well as a few songs from the show, in an acoustic environment.”

Wartella’s mother, Kathy Jo Grover, is directing the Undermountain Elementary School’s fall musical production, and the cast of that show will make an appearance at the concert along with David Grover to sing a very special number.

“Growing up here I took advantage of every theatrical opportunity that came my way,” Wartella said. “I was involved with Shakespeare & Company and the Barrington Stage Youth Theatre. But when I went into New York City with some friends of mine in high school to see ‘RENT’ that was the tipping point for me – the moment I said ‘I want to do this for a career.’”

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Review: “Hello Dolly” at Cohoes Music Hall – A Classic with Monica M. Wemitt [Berkshire on Stage]

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012
The cast of Hello Dolly at the Cohoes Music Hall November 2-11, 2012.

The cast of Hello Dolly at the Cohoes Music Hall November 2-11, 2012.

Review by Gail Burns

Monica M. Wemitt was born to play Dolly Gallagher Levi, which is why, after two monthes of pain and parsimony, I climbed in the car and drove over the Taconics to see her do it at the Cohoes Music Hall. I had seen her in 2009 at the Mac-Haydn and had exceedingly happy memories of her eating that chicken at the Harmonia Gardens.

Wemitt had understudied Carol Channing in this role in the 1995 production of “Hello, Dolly!” Channing is notorious for never missing a performance, although I believe Wemitt did get to go on for her once. But how terrifying is going on to house full of people who have paid to see Carol Channing? Yikes! But here everyone had paid to see Monica M. Wemitt and they were not disappointed.

I joked beforehand that I wasn’t excited about seeing “Hello, Dolly!” but about seeing Wemitt. My mind had lumped “…Dolly!” in with a bunch of other “classic” American musicals which were beloved for an iconic performance rather than for any merit of the script or score itself – “Funny Girl” springs immediately to mind – but I was very, very wrong. “…Dolly!” is a well structured show with a panoply of appealing characters and lovely melodies.

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Review: ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” from Theatre Institute at Sage [Berkshire on Stage]

Friday, November 9th, 2012
Welcome to fun and games at George and Martha’s! (l to r) Leigh Strimbeck (Martha), David Bunce (George), Alexandra Phillips (Honey) and Matthew McFadden (Nick).

Welcome to fun and games at George and Martha’s! (l to r) Leigh Strimbeck (Martha), David Bunce (George), Alexandra Phillips (Honey) and Matthew McFadden (Nick).

by Gail Burns and Larry Murray

Larry Murray: With the Steppenwolf production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf currently on Broadway through February 24, 2013, I was surprised to find that permission was given to the Theatre Institute at Sage College to do the play. But this being the 50th Anniversary of its original Broadway opening on October 13, 1962, there is cause to celebrate. The intensity that director David Baecker has brought to the venerable work actually took my breath away at times, and his superb cast ran the equivalent of a theatrical marathon. How did you find George and Martha, the most famous dysfunctional couple in theatrical history?

Gail Burns: There is nothing easy or pretty about George, Martha, or their marriage. They are messy and brutal and clearly hopelessly dependently in love. It is interesting for me to see this play again now that I’ve been married for 31 years – George and Martha can only claim 23. The more closely you examine it, spending a whole lifetime with another person is an odd concept that is pretty well guaranteed to lead to some sort of insanity! When I first heard that David Bunce would be playing George I felt he didn’t have the right “look” – physically he’s a Wally Cox/Woody Allen/Michael Jeter bespectacled lightweight, a man Martha could snap in two and use as the toothpick for the olive in her martini – but looks can be deceiving! While slight of build, Bunce’s George is positively demonic and not a man to be messed with.

Strimbeck was a no-brainer casting as Martha. She’s a feisty funny feminist in her own right. I love the logo some clever artist has created for her monthly “Read My Lipstick” series at the yBar in Pittsfield. It’s very Martha! Again, she lacks the physical size often associated with Martha. She is not big and blowsy, but she proves conclusively that size doesn’t matter as much as acting ability.

Larry: And she has that in spades. Then there’s Nick and Honey, who go to George and Martha’s for a cocktail and end up in their crosshairs.

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