‘War of the Worlds’ is a comedy split down the middle

By David Begelman

 

Theater Critic

In playwright Howard Koch’s imaginative—if not occasionally runaway—adaptation of H. G. Well’s “War of the Worlds,” a team of eager radio broadcasters enacts a simulated invasion on the world by Martians.

A similar scenario was dramatized in the now famous 1938 version of a Mercury Theater broadcast by a 22 year-old Orson Welles. Across the years, its aftermath took on a legendary, albeit overinflated aspect. The broadcast did not ignite a national panic, as was subsequently advertised. Only a lesser number of radio listeners who failed to hear the announcement at its end were ready to take to the hills.

In Shakespeare & Company’s current production, the setting is the “Jack Holloway Show,” a listener-friendly evening of “Song and Dance” preceding its “Mystery Theatre” presentation. This turns out to be a simulacrum of the hour-long 1938 treatment of the theme: extraterrestrials launching an attack on New Jersey.

In director Tony Simotes’s treatment of the Koch script, the First Act briskly sets the stage for news of the invasion. Before minor performers in walk-on roles can hurriedly deliver ominous bulletins to announcers during the Second Act, the show has a charm that all but dissolves in later flurries of tumult.

“War of the Worlds” opens with a lively introduction to life among backstage studio collaborators. With a garnish of audience participation, a number of very funny personages step forward to do their thing. These include radio announcers with bouncy vocal deliveries (Scott Renzoni), hilarious mimics (Josh Aaron McCabe), female vocalists who prettify the goings-on (Elizabeth Aspenlieder, Dana Harrison), flamboyant thespians doing their part-time radio gig (Jonathan Croy), the show’s host, Jack Holloway, who does a fetching rendition of the ballad, “Smile” (David Joseph), and the indispensable “Foley Artist,” a fellow in charge of sound effects (Michael Pfeiffer).

The company of players, the very best around when it comes to artfully executed farce, is a gifted group of performers with an aptitude for skillfully calibrated ensemble work. Were only the scripted Second Act up to the standards of the First!

The comedy’s ongoing conceit is that the cast is performing for an assembled radio audience. So it is not clear why they start to behave in the studio as they imagine the listening audience might, hearing their broadcast. Either one is a performer or a panicked citizen—but not both at the same time.

The Second Act is also encumbered by an overdone, kitschy enactment of the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude from “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” a tedious final speech by McCabe as Professor Pierson, and a pious insertion of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” doubtlessly added to assure everyone of being on the right side of the Lord in the face of alien attack.

The company ends with the ditty, “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” the last line of which is “If You Believe in Me.”  Only, it may be conjectured, when you are in the First Act.

“War of the Worlds” runs through November 6 at the at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre of Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, MA 01240. Show times are 11:00 AM, 2:00 PM, and 7:30 PM. Tickets are $48 and may be purchased online at www.shakespeare.org or by calling the Box Office at (413)-637-3353.

 

 

 

 

‘As You Like It’ is a big, beautiful blast at Lenox

                David Begelman

 

Theater Critic

If you’ve ever harbored any reservations about the capability of Shakespeare & Company, your doubts should be dispelled on the spot while savoring its current production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” This is as stellar a staging of a Shakespeare play you’re likely to see in many a moon.

It’s not the only comedy of the bard in which a female character hides her true identity in male garb (“Merchant of Venice” and “Twelfth Night” contain such conceits), nor the only one in which a woman seeks refuge in a forest (“Midsummer Night’s Dream” includes this scenario.) But for a heroine bestowed with a mother load of ingenuity and personal resources, Rosalind is up there with the best of them. Exile in the Forest of Arden is pretty much a cakewalk for her.

The actress who portrays her in this production, Merritt Janson, is such a bundle of talent, her every word, gesture—and even her gymnastic sallies—are delightful, springing as they do from an obvious wellspring of ability topped with a fetching smile.

Janson is surrounded by a team of performers whose portrayals only enhance the attractiveness of this production. Although many different styles of performance grace the latter, Director Tony Simotes has calibrated them so deftly, there’s not a downbeat or discordant note anywhere in the effort.

The comic relief in this staging simply has to be seen in order to be appreciated. Humorous touches, delivered with on-cue precision by several cast members entrusted with the lion’s share of creating jollity, need to be mentioned. They are: Jonathan Epstein in a wily and hilarious rendition of Touchstone, Malcolm Ingram as the faithful, but doddering retainer Adam, who always manages to convey the impression he is on the brink of death, Kevin O’Donnell as the puffed-up Charles the Wrestler, Dana Harrison as the flighty Phebe, and Jennie M. Jadow as the lusty Audrey.

In less comedic characterizations, Tony Roach was full of youthful vigor and romantic longing as Orlando; Johnny Lee Davenport turned in sturdy portrayals as the competing potentates, Duke Frederick and Duke Senior, while Wolfe Coleman crafted a commendable performance as Orlando’s nasty brother, Oliver.

Kelly Curran was especially riveting as Rosalind’s close friend, Celia, and the scenes between her and Janson were in the opinion of this reviewer among the highlights of the show.

Director Simotes chose to adapt a Parisian 1920 ambience for the setting of the play, and if you failed to consult the playbill, you’d be a bit perplexed why the sound of the “La Marseillaise” was being piped in, or military types on stage were prancing around in French legionnaire uniforms. Maybe Simotes attached more importance to this than necessary; the setting and costumes could have been Elizabethan, Jacobean or Edwardian without any appreciable sacrifice to the overall quality of this production.

Serious theatergoers shouldn’t forfeit the opportunity to catch this impressive show. Bravo!

“As You Like It” runs through September 4 at the Founders’ Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass. Performances are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinees 2 p.m. Tickets are $10-$85 and may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-637-3353 or online at www.shakespeare.org.   

 

 

 

 

‘The Liar’ is hilarious comedy in Lenox 

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

 

           Pierre Corneille was one of those writers of French tragedy for whom humor

 

 was a sleeping giant. After all, his first drama, “Mélite” was a comedy. It represented

 

 a deviant example of the farcical style in disfavor among seventeenth century French

 

 intelligentsia, and was peddled to a group of traveling players in 1629. They happily

 

 incorporated it into their repertoire.

The playwright was forever hassled by authorities like Cardinal Richelieu (the real life prelate who was the nemesis of “The Three Musketeers” in the fictional Dumas novel) and his hand-picked toadies in the Académie Francaise. Corneille refused to abide by the dramatic conventions of the day, leaning as they did on Aristotle’s rules for drama. He went so far as coauthoring a work with Molière, a playwright who likewise had to deal with accusations of immorality. (In those days, bad drama was an affront to heaven.)

But there was light at the end of the tunnel: witness “The Liar” (Le Menteur), authored in 1643. Today it may be hard to capture the flavor the play had for audiences of its time. After all, it was penned in French, and debuted in the early modern period of history.

Whatever the separate contributions of author, a riotously clever adaptation of the play by David Ives (in rhyming blank verse, to boot), and the hugely inventive direction of Kevin G. Coleman, Shakespeare & Company’s current version of the comedy is something to savor, whatever the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” audiences must cope with these days, to quote a contemporary of Corneille’s.

Coleman has hit just the right note with his company of eight seasoned performers. And he couldn’t resist the temptation to lace the dialogue with quotes from the dramas of the English guy. Included in the Ives adaptation are lines borrowed from “Antony and Cleopatra,” “Othello,” “As You Like It,” and other familiar plays of the bard. Oddly enough, they work beautifully in this comedy, a play in which all characters have to bounce—happily or otherwise—off the fabrications of its central character, Dorante.

David Joseph tackles the role of intransigent liar with gusto, as though telling whoppers were second nature to him. He and his fellow performers maintain a perfect pacing in the dialogue, often a rapid-fire verbal barrage in which all characters face the challenge of coming up for air.

Ives and Coleman are not above the use of contemporary idiom to spruce up interactions. “She called you a liar,” says one character. “Why?” queries another. “Maybe because your pants are on fire” is the response. Not exactly in the seventeenth century mode, but funny all the same.

Douglas Seldin is Cliton, Dorante’s stocky servant, whose asides to the audience have you on the floor. Emily Rose Ehlinger and Alexandra Lincoln are Lucrece and Clarice, alternating deliciously as objects of Dorante’s shifting attentions. Enrico Spada is fittingly agitated and furious as Dorante’s competitor, while Jake Berger as Geronte and Marcus Kearns as Philiste attempt to make the most of the paternal and friendship mode in the topsy-turvy world manufactured by Dorante’s continuing vacations from the truth. Dana Harrison supplies exceedingly comic interpretations of her double role as Isabelle and Sabine.

All in all, a production to tickle your funny bone to the max.

“The Liar” runs through March 24 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, MASS. Performances are Friday and Saturday 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00  p.m. Tickets are $15-$50, and can be purchased by calling the box office at (413)-637-3353, or contacting www.Shakespeare.org