PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Whether Harriet Harris had supreme confidence in her acting talents, desperately missed live theater or, most likely, a combination of both, the Tony Award winner and familiar presence on Berkshires stages took on two daunting roles this summer at venues 12 miles apart: Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's peerless comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest" in Stockbridge and Eleanor Roosevelt in the new, one-woman biographical drama "Eleanor" at Barrington Stage Company.
Harris had only five days off between the shows. In other words, at night she was imperiously and hilariously delivering Wildean epigrams as part of an ensemble; by day, Harris memorized and rehearsed a 90-minute script, resting wholly on her, in which she brings to life not only the nation's longest-serving first lady but also FDR, Winston Churchill and at least 10 others for a standout production that opened Wednesday night. While formidable women and roughly the same age, Lady Bracknell and Eleanor Roosevelt are otherwise utterly unalike. Harris' brilliance as an actor and her bravura professionalism are evidenced by her accomplishment of playing both so well.
As performed by Harris, directed by Henry Stram and given visual pop by scenic designer Brian Prather and Philip S. Rosenberg's lighting, "Eleanor" is the best sort of history, at once edifying and entertaining.
An absorbing, thoughtful portrait of a fascinating, ground-breaking woman that focuses mostly on Roosevelt's early life and 12 years in the White House, "Eleanor" last summer was offered by Barrington Stage as a Zoom reading with Harris. It is the latest of a dozen plays that the company has produced by Mark St. Germain, with whom it has a long artistic association. (Its smaller stage was named after him a decade ago.)
A writer with a keen interest in dramatizing the lives of historical figures, St. Germain has used BSC stages to explore a notorious spreader of disease ("Typhoid Mary," 2018), a woodsy outing with early 20th-century titans Ford and Edison ("Camping with Henry and Tom," 2016) and a Hemingway-Fitzgerald clash ("Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah," 2013).
In the richness of its emotions and scope of its storytelling, "Eleanor" more reminded me of "Gertrude and Claudius," St. Germain's superb adaptation of John Updike's best-selling 2000 novel of the same name, which BSC produced two summer ago. Unlike that play, essentially a prequel to "Hamlet" and thus with fictional if familiar characters, "Eleanor" is based on a real-life figure who has been much studied and chronicled. Though quite a bit of Roosevelt's life was new to me, my history-minded companion for Wednesday's opening said that it breaks little new ground in the facts and stories of her life.
More impressive are St. Germain's interpretation of that life and the way he structures the play. As it opens, Roosevelt acknowledges the audience as well as the incongruity of her, long dead and buried next to her husband on the grounds of the FDR National Historic Site in Hyde Park, appearing in the present day in a Washington, D.C., cemetery. Though the story at times moves among periods of her life, the overall arc is chronological, moving from schooling to small domestic moments with family, behind-the-scenes planning for FDR's return to politics in the 1920s after his legs became paralyzed and epic political battles of world importance.
As told by St. Germain, Roosevelt was a bold liberal, spurring her husband — often when he didn't want to be spurred — toward progress in racial equality, women's rights, working and living conditions for the poor and other social issues. Her personal matters were even more deeply felt. After an early infidelity by FDR, Roosevelt agreed to stay married, to further his political career, provided she be allowed to live a life largely independent of his his. Instead of dutiful White House hostess, she was First Lady as crusader, rallying World War II troops by visiting 17 Pacific-theater bases in two weeks, doing radio broadcasts and traveling the country with Lorena Hickok, an Associated Press reporter with whom she formed a deep and perhaps intimate bond.
"Eleanor" devotes little attention to the 17 years Roosevelt lived after FDR's 1945 death, and the play is lacking for it, one of its few flaws. Perhaps there's an entire additional play in those years. Rich with accomplishment and honor, her widowhood was about 50 percent longer than her time as First Lady. Freed of the office's constraints but overflowing with the wisdom and experience they imparted, Roosevelt continued to live boldly. If only there were a writer to tell the story and actor for the role. Oh, wait, there are. The St. Germain-Harris collaboration deserves an encore.
Theater Review
"Eleanor"
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Boyd-Quinson Stage, Barrington Stage Company, 30 Union St., Pittsfield, Mass.
Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Continues: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees, 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Aug. 7
Tickets: $25 to $69
Info: barringtonstageco.org; 413-236-8888
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Review: Harriet Harris dazzling as Eleanor Roosevelt in the Berkshires - Times Union
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