Glorious summer has turned to yellow autumn (to mangle the Bard), but the lights are still on at three of the Berkshires’ summer theaters. The Crucible opened last week at Barrington Stage Company (see StageStruck, October 7, 2010) on the heels of ongoing productions at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and Shakespeare & Company. Each company is moving toward year-round operations, and all this post-season activity represents that goal. These productions will be followed by holiday shows at all three theaters.
The plays now running at BTF and S&Co could scarcely be more different in tone and content—except that each one turns on a recent death.
No Wake, at BTF’s Unicorn Theatre, is an agonizing love triangle involving a divorced couple, Edward and Rebecca, whose grown daughter has just drowned herself, and the ex-wife’s new husband, a rather supercilious Englishman. The tragedy forces an unwilling encounter for the estranged couple at their child’s memorial service. The new spouse’s insensitive pronouncements draw them together, and his subsequent all-night drunk gives them time and opportunity to get even closer.
William Donnelly’s play, in its world-premiere production, is pretty predictable once you get the gist of the situation. Three strong performances keep it credible and engaging. James Lloyd Reynolds captures the Englishman’s ironic detachment and Jurian Hughes gives a brittle vulnerability to Deborah. But my eyes were almost always on the mesmerizing David Adkins as Edward. His hunched, tentative posture, his face a well of hope and melancholy, tell you everything you need to know about the man’s world-weary longings.
*
The corpse that kicks off The Real Inspector Hound is in full view as the audience enters Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne Bernstein Theatre. Tom Stoppard’s shameless parody of those 1920s Agatha Christie isolated-house murder mysteries also draws a wicked bead on the critical profession.
The mystifying (but farcical) goings-on at Muldoon Manor are idly observed by two self-absorbed newspaper reviewers, Birdboot and Moon, seated in the first row. Of course, since this is Stoppard, nothing is as it appears to be, onstage or off and, since this is Stoppard, the twists unwind with clockwork precision.
When I saw the very first preview of this production several weeks ago, things were not yet running like clockwork (but that’s what previews are for), but all of director Jonathan Croy’s gears were in place. The cast of eight were already enjoying themselves in their larger-than-life roles, and this reviewer didn’t identify at all—not at all—with the pompous, backbiting, professionally jealous, starlet-chasing critics in the play.
The Real Inspector Hound: Through Nov. 7 at Shakespeare & Co., Lenox, (413) 637-3353, shakespeare.org.
No Wake: Through Oct. 24 at Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stockbridge, (413) 298-5576, www.berkshiretheatre.org.
