The Mount, Edith Wharton’s summer home in Lenox, is now a museum that preserves memories of her Gilded Age life and times. When Shakespeare & Company shared the premises with the Wharton Restoration, the troupe staged original dramatic adaptations of her trenchant, often satirical portraits of Gilded Age society. That tradition has been revived in recent years by The Wharton Salon, an ensemble of Berkshire-based professionals.
This weekend sees a pair of short-story adaptations, performed in the intimate Drawing Room of Wharton’s mansion. The Rembrandt (pictured), adapted and directed by Michael Burnet, concerns a spurious work of art that represents an old woman’s chance to avoid destitution, and a museum curator’s act of honorable but unbusinesslike charity. The Long Run, adapted by John Hadden and directed by Andrew Borthwick-Leslie, concerns an extramarital passion that represents two people’s chance at happiness, and the honorable but self-defeating actions that derail it. The show is co-produced with Pythagoras Theatre Works, a new company that shares with the Salon an interest in the Wharton period, with an emphasis on Berkshire themes.
Nov. 26, 28-30, The Mount, 2 Plunkett St., Lenox, $35, whartonsalon.org, 800-838-3006.
