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Tonight Barbara, David and I saw Shining City by Conor McPherson at Barrington Stage 2.
It is a puzzling play, at least to me. There are two protagonists. One is a former priest who is now a psychologist who has split with his girlfriend who has borne his child.
The other is a middle aged business man who has lost his wife in an accident and sees her ghost in their home. It turns out that he had an aborted affair with a woman shortly before the accident and blames himself for her death. He comes to the psychologist for help.
Mark H. Dold
Mark H. Dold is the psychologist and Wilbur Edwin Henry is the business man.
Wilbur Edwin Henry
Deanna Gibson is the girlfriend who shows up for an emotional scene with the psychologist in which he tells her he can't live with her.
Patrick Ball is a young man the psychologist brings home for sex in a later scene. They have a very awkward time trying to get it on.
In the end the businessman is doing much better and brings the gift of a lamp to thank the psychologist. The psychologist decides to go back to his girlfriend and their baby.
As the businessman, Wilbur Edwin Henry really steals the show in several emotional scenes. They are practically monologues.
Mark H. Dold, whom I have seen before, was good as the very mixed-up shrink. In the scenes with Mr. Henry, he basically just listens.
I feel part of the reason that I have doubts about the play is that I feel the part of the psychologist could have been written better. The scene with the young man seemed gratuitous. Possible it was to show the sexual confusion of the shrink. The title of the play is based on the quotation from the Bible about not hiding one's light under a bushel. I really did not see the connection with the action of the play.
Barbara and David read great significance in the gift of the lamp at the end. Light under a bushel and so on.
At the very end, as the businessman bids farewell to the shrink, as the door is closed, a very bloody image of a woman is there behind the door. Apparently the shrink has inherited the dead wife.
Other than that....
Tonight Peggy, Jim, David, and I saw Man of La Mancha at Barrington Stage. To put it mildly, I was underwhelmed. I'm not quite sure why. I saw the original production in New York at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square in 1965. As I remember, this was a temporary theatre, possibly even a tent. I remember that a large bridge-like stairway was lowered from the top of the stage into the audience. Other than that, I have no vivid memories.
Richard Kiley was Don Quixote and Joan Diener was Aldonza. I guess that they were fine. The show ran for several thousand performances.
Jeff McCarthy
Tonight's performance was a 'puzzlement' to me. (Sorry to mix Broadway shows). I had a hard time getting involved in the production. Jeff McCarthy played Don Quixote and Felicia Boswell was Aldonza tonight.
He is a stalwart of Barrington Stage and has appeared in many of their musical productions. I saw him in Sweeney Todd several years ago and felt he was just not a Sweeney Todd vocally. I had the same feeling tonight as regards his singing of the Don. I'm not sure whether he was trying to make his voice sound 'old', like the aging Cervantes, but it really didn't work very well. Gaspy phrases followed by very loud high notes.
Felicia Boswell
Ms. Boswell acted the part of Aldonza very well but has an even more problematic vocality than he. She pushes the 'chest' voice up to the point of pain and then flips into a tiny head voice for a few notes.
Several other of the male singers had really fine voices, especially Tom Alan Robbins as Sancho Panza.
Tom Alan Robbins
I just had a very difficult time staying involved with the often wandering plot. And the singing of the two leads really put me off.
Oh well, there speaks the voice teacher...
The show started life as a 1959 Television, non-musical presentation. Sometimes trying to expand a work pushes it out of context. This is what I felt tonight.
***********************
After finishing this blog last night, I went to You Tube to hear Richard Kiley's interpretation of the role. This is what was missing in last's night's production. He sang 'The Impossible Dream' with fervor, rich voice, and an effortless long musical line. No gasps. When he came to climactic high notes, they were the obvious emotional response to the text. Not a desperate attempt to gain applause.
The main character in any production has to hold the whole thing together. When lesser characters sing better than the star it weakens the whole thing.
Imagine Otello without a strong Otello.
I also just listened to Joan Diener as Aldonza. More of an operatic voice that still has the show-biz sound.
Tonight David and I saw a fascinating play, Butler, at Barrington Stage 2. Richard Strand, the author, has managed to treat a very serious subject in a hysterically funny way.
The play takes place during the Civil War and the Butler is Major General Benjamin Butler, an exceptionally colorful person.
The plot concerns a slave who tries to give himself up to the General at Fort Monroe. At this period escaped slaves were supposed to be returned to their masters without exception.
While the General likes to rant and roar, he has a soft heart and tries to find a way to avoid doing this. Over the course of the play the General and the slave have shouting contests which are very funny. Finally a Major from the Confederacy comes to take the slave back to his owner. The General refuses to do this on the basis that the slave is 'contraband'.
David Schramm is over the top as Benjamin Butler, shouting and slamming his fist on the desk as he and the slave argue.
Ben Cole plays Lieutenant Kelly, the General's aide who takes some of the General's ire but in the end helps to save the slave.
Maurice Jones plays Shepard Mallory, the slave, with energy and humor.
John Hickok is Major Cary who comes to collect Mallory to return him to his master.
The writing and the performances are all extraordinary. It was a fine evening in the theater.
This afternoon I saw a delightfully whimsical one man show entitled Character Man, written and acted by Jim Brochu.
Having seen Mr. Brochu do his show Zero Hour, based on the life and art of Zero Mostel, and doing it to the nines, I pretty much knew I was in for an interesting afternoon at Barrington Stage 2.
I was not disappointed.
Mr. Brochu grew up selling Orange Ade in the backs of Broadway theatres while getting to know many actors who were, as the title suggests, 'Character Men'. Some years ago a vocal student of mine in New Jersey who was getting started in the theatre world of New York City told me that he was advised 'Wait until you're 40. You are a character actor. That's when you will come into your own.' He has been teaching theatre in a high school in the south for many years and acting, as a character man, I'm sure, every chance he gets.
This is the same thing Mr. Brochu was told. Wait until you're 40.
In the meantime he had the opportunity to meet many actors including some great character men. Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Sid Silvers, Jimmy Cagney, to mention a few. He had some great quotes from some of the greats: Bert Lahr, on entering the Player's Club and being asked 'How are you today, Burt?' Burt answered 'Talented!'
Mr. Brochu's father, a very handsome man, who was on Wall street, dated Joan Crawford for several years. Mr. Brochu and others encouraged them to get married. 'What could be nicer than having Joan Crawford for your mother?' he asked (with a wink).
Mr. Brochu has played a number of character men on the stage including the Cyril Ritchard role of Sir in The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd. he was the winner of the New York Drama Critic's Award, the Helen Hayes Award, the Los Angeles Ovation Award, the Carbonell Award for 'Best Actor in a Play' for his performances in Zero Hour.
I must say it sometimes brought tears to my eyes as he spoke about these many wonderful actors, all of whom I had seen on Broadway in the days when I saw everything that was playing there. Theatrically, those were the good old days!
Good show!
In sixty-some years of theatre-going on and off Broadway, and even WAY off Broadway, I have seldom left a play or a piece of musical theatre in the middle of the show.
Years ago John and I walked out in the middle of Les Miz in Boston, which was driving us crazy, and tonight David and I left Celebrating the Music of William Finn at the intermission at Barrington Stage. In both cases we were tired of being assaulted by endless noise and pathetic lyrics. Had I seen Mr. Finn's Romance in Hard Times, which I reviewed last week, before buying the tickets for tonight's show, I would have skipped it. Too late. I bought the tickets before we saw Romance.
Tonight's excerpts from his various shows, two of which earned Tony Awards, was simply more of the same. Mr. Finn seems to like loud, shrill voices, who then are amplified to the point of pain, singing his autobiographical lyrics, which are not that interesting to begin with, or that well set to music.
I'm sorry to have to carp about these points, but suffice it to say this is the last musical of his I plan to suffer through.
To make matters worse, our dinner tonight at Spice Dragon, which is usually quite good, was a mess. It turns out that they are closing tomorrow night while the upstairs of the building is being reconstructed and they were out of various menu items as well as our favorite cocktail ingredients.
This was David's farewell outing before heading to Chicago next week.
Oh well....
I hope Victor Hugo gets royalties from Les Miz. If he stops rolling over in his grave, that is.
My late, dear friend, mentor, and boss at St.Paul's Chapel, Columbia years ago, Searle Wright, used to say: "Sing good! If you can't sing good, sing loud!!"
Well, tonight the cast of Romance in Hard Times at Barrington Stage 2 certainly sang loud!
The musical by William Finn with a book by Rachel Sheinkin was originally written and performed in 1989 at the Public Theatre in New York. It was one of Joseph Papp's Theatre Laboratory presentations and ran for three weeks.
The current production seems to be in the progress of being re-written by Mr. Finn. In fact, one of the characters is 'The Composer', who is re-writing the play as it goes along. We were told that the cast had learned 32 pages of new material today.
I'm afraid it needs more than thirty-two new pages to be a success. The almost non-existant plot concerns a woman who refuses to deliver the child she is pregnant with until there is a better future. Since this takes place in the depression of the thirties, it looks like it will be an elephantine pregnancy.
A number of out of work people gather in a soup kitchen and lament their fate. The father of the baby is mute and will not speak until he gets work. He finally gets sent to jail. He escapes. Eleanor Roosevelt appears in a tasteless parody of that fine lady to try to save the day.
Need I say more?
Well, I guess I have to. Mr. Finn seems to devise text that is un-settable and then attempts to set it to music. There is a lot of repetition of phrases. At several dramatic high points the musical monolog goes on for too long with no advancement of the already stalled plot. The end is just as gloomy as the beginning.
In case you haven't noticed by now, I didn't like the show.
The cast, David Benoit, Lance Fletke, Alan H. Green, Desmond Green, Matthew Gregory, Gabriel Kadian, Anne Kanengeiser, Theresa Kloos, Alix Korey (who we saw several weeks ago in a poor imitation of Ethel Merman), Andrea Leach, Michael Mandell, Jordana McMahon, Christina Acosta Robinson, Aaron Serotsky, and Ross Yoder all seem like talented actors with what could be good 'theatre' voices. But either the director or the composer must have told them to 'Give it all you've got!' Which they did.
Unfortunately.
