Barrington Stage Company’s 10th Annual 10×10 New Play Festival
“She still believes…”
For the tenth consecutive year, Barrington Stage Company has broken into the winter season to offer us 10 new one-act plays, mostly by playwrights whose work we haven’t yet seen. Assembling an ensemble of players who are able to swiftly change characters through comedy, tragedy, domestic thriller, and human parody, the show presents a wide and wild array of vignettes that mostly delight audiences.
In this year of COVID complications, the company has rehearsed these plays at Barrington Stage’s second space in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and taped them for remote viewing, but they have not abandoned the theater. Barrington Stage fans will recognize the basic set on which they perform, for Joseph F. Martin has recreated Brian Prather’s scenic design for the company’s “Time Flies and Other Comedies” from the 2019 summer season, adding one more familiar element to what we see. The perfect costumes for these ten plays have been designed by Azalea Fairley, with lighting by Scott Pinkney, and sound design by Alexander Sovronsky, bringing back familiar talents from years past. As an added element, Production Stage Manager Renee Lutz, who has been a part of this company’s lengthy history, is running the show.
The Order of Things
Appropriately for the season, the show begins on Christmas Eve (and later ends on election eve) in Brent Askari’s “Protecting the Innocent,” as two parents prepare gifts for their child who keeps threatening to come downstairs. Derrick and Laura, like their child, still believe in old-fashioned values, but struggle with the methods of keeping their child a child. Matt Neely and Maya Loren Jackson playfully twist reality in order to achieve their goals, including creating some truly gruesome possibilities.
That is just one twist in a well-packed group of variables this play expertly presents.
Neely appears two more times in the first half of this collection of new works. His third appearance is in Scott Mullen’s excellent “People Will Talk,” which pairs him with eternal favorite Peggy Pharr Wilson. Two very different people meet on a ledge above the twelfth floor of a downtown city building on a cold night. Each has something to drink; each has something to share. Neither intended to talk about themselves, for neither anticipated meeting a soulmate on this dark evening of souls. The sharing takes aim at their intentions and changes the outcome of these late-night adventures. We know what this is all about right away. What holds us to the end, in anticipation, is the combination of characters these two actors bring us.
It is a fine short play worthy of attention and applause, which the actors may never hear, but I hope they can sense how very meaningful their work is in this piece, one of the most serious in this year’s collection.
As stated above, Peggy Pharr Wilson is one of my favorite actors and, in this group of plays, she is allowed to shine throughout. In Marj O’Neill-Butler’s “Finding Help,” she plays a woman whose daughter insists on pairing her up with a critical care worker, very much against her will. Wilson’s strength and conviction, in the face of disastrous behavior, is critical to the believability of the play. There is no one I can think of who could do this any better. Her interplay with Keri Safran as the daughter and, eventually, with Doug Harris as the hired help is absolute perfection. It is one of those plays I could see every day and never find fault with. The first of her four appearances in this edition of 10×10 (she has been in all of them) makes me yearn for an evening of Peggy Pharr Wilson. Maybe the company will one day make that possible.
There isn’t enough space in a review to fully chat about all ten plays, so the more unusual grab the space. “Speed Play” by Alex Dremann is one of those. Two people on their lunch hours meet to improvise the characters and plots of short plays. The imaginations of Jackie and Harry are baffling and beguiling. In the same way, their relationship confounds us. Both Doug Harris and Maya Loren Jackson do great work under the direction of Matthew Penn, who keeps the simplicity of joy both at bay and at large — not an easy task.
Harris is equally wonderful in the play that comes before this one, “A Dateless Bargain with Engrossing Death” by John Minigan. Here he plays a man challenged by an old college acquaintance who wants, or demands, he take on a technical task that will keep him alive and out of Hell. His challenger is played by Neely, who adopts a slick and resilient persona unlike anything else he has done in this show.
Both men play almost unwitting suitors in Ellen Abrams’ “Lizzie Borden Gets Engaged.” The title character is played with delicious and curious physicality by Keri Safran, as directed by Julianne Boyd. One of the silliest plays in the group, the director has used subtle movement and miniature props to keep us alert to Lizzie’s oddities. Still, it is Safran who adds elements of tightly held madness to her less than subtle characterization of a classic New England maiden lady, a reluctant spinster.
The collection ends in early November, two months before Christmas. An election is in process and Chester’s wife is doing well and he wants her to win for various reasons. She is almost the central character, though we never see her (I think Peggy Pharr Wilson is in the next room, actually; at least I sense her there). This is Jessica Provenz’s play “On the Rocks,” where cannabis, brownies, and dry ice are among the topics discussed. This very active four-character play is the token family drama in the group. For a serious work, it is a laugh riot and it did make me a bit sad not to be able to hear audience reaction to Provenz and Boyd’s collaboration. Robert Zukerman as the pot-inclined patriarch is simply exemplary. It is his play, to be sure, although each person, especially Safran, has a moment that quite simply explodes on the stage.
Zukerman almost steals away Christine Foster’s “Blind Larks,” as one of four people trapped in a cave implosion. Penn has directed this as four talking heads magnificently lit by Scott Pinkney. On stage, dimly lit, are Safran, Jackson, and Wilson as Zukerman’s undiminished companions. The story is a simple one not to be exposed here; it must be come by gradually. A humane drama about a dog, it deceptively reveals the flaws and foibles of people in a disaster. Uncredited, Neely and Harris appear near the end.
An Inspired Moment
I simply adore seeing Robert Zukerman in outlandish costumes. No one can bear up under the most comic variations the way he can. In Jonathan Cook’s comedy “Don’t Call Me Cupid,” directed by Boyd, he plays Eros, the God sometimes confused with Cupid, who accidentally hits his intended target with the wrong arrow. His interplay with Jackson and Safran is truly hilarious here and the play, which is really fluff, gains a heavy measure of odd reality through their work. If the show was in two halves, as it usually is, this play would open the second half and brightly get us back under the influence live theater has on our senses. As good as Jessica Provenz’s play is as the closer, it could easily change places with this one and truly send us home laughing if we weren’t already there.
The tenth play, “Happy Birthday, Leonard” by Walter Thinnes, was just simply not my favorite, even though Wilson gave a fine performance. In spite of that, this is a very, very good hour and 42 minutes of new plays presented by a group of top-line artists. It’s a short run, so I recommend you book it quickly. Nothing else this season will give you what you’ll find here. It’s pure entertainment.
"stage" - Google News
March 16, 2021 at 11:00PM
https://ift.tt/3vwvMbZ
Review: Barrington Stage Company's 10x10 New Play Festival - theberkshireedge.com
"stage" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2xC8vfG
https://ift.tt/2KXEObV
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Review: Barrington Stage Company's 10x10 New Play Festival - theberkshireedge.com"
Post a Comment