Playwright Andy Dolan says Robert Frost “was a bit of a ham.” He recalls that the poet once described hell as “a half-filled auditorium.” Dolan’s one-man play This Verse Business begins with a recreation of one of Frost’s public readings from his poetry?what he coyly referred to as his “talks”?then segues into a personal monologue touching his life and times. It’s performed this weekend at Amherst College, where Frost taught several generations of undergraduates. Impersonating the flinty poet is Gordon Clapp, the actor best remembered as the diffident Detective Medavoy on NYPD Blue, now older and nearly as craggy as Frost himself. Dolan says his play “is neither a ‘tribute’ nor a ‘biographical treatment’ of the iconic American poet… but a sort of testament to art.”
November 29-30, 8 p.m., Kirby Theater, Amherst College. Free, open seating, no reservations required.
