Time was, at the end of August the summer theaters would fold their (figurative) tents and wait for spring. While that’s still true of the Valley theaters that brighten our hot-weather months, three of the Big Four Berkshire festivals now extend their seasons into the fall and even through the winter. (Williamstown is the only one that hibernates.) This month of turning leaves and gathering chill brings three thoughtful, emotionally compelling plays to Berkshire stages.
Donnetta Lavinia Grays and Hend Ayoub in Veils.
Veils, at Pittsfield’s Barrington Stage Company through Oct. 18, follows the friendship of two college students in Cairo. Intisar (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) is an African-American Muslim on a semester abroad. Her roommate, Samar (Hend Ayoub), is Egyptian. Intisar wears a veil, but Samar wonders why, since the American has a choice and is no doubt considered odd, “foreign” and perhaps threatening at home for doing so.
The two start a campus blog to debate the practice of veiling, which can range from a hijab head scarf to a full-body burqa, and around which flow strong competing feelings about cultural traditions and women’s rights. Then the Arab Spring sweeps across the Middle East and North Africa, and the two are caught up in a revolution that tests their friendship and values.
Michelle McGrady photo
In The Homecoming, at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge through Oct. 25, a woman’s arrival in an all-male working-class family upends familial and marital relations. Harold Pinter’s enigmatic 1964 drama is a masterpiece of what one critic called “the eloquence of the unspoken,” its elliptical dialogue rife with Pinter’s trademark unfinished sentences and tension-filled pauses.
The plot, too, is equivocal, glancing at themes of absence, class identity, sexual exploitation and role reversal. Directed by Eric Hill, the cast includes Valley native Rylan Morsbach as a young tough — a role reversal in its own right, following his recent appearance as sunny Bert in BTG’s Mary Poppins.
A one-man epic plays at Shakespeare & Company through the end of this month. An Iliad is a contemplation and expansion of the Homeric tale of pride and power, conquest and compassion. An ageless poet, witness and participant in the centuries-old cycles of warfare, is compelled to recount the archetypal Trojan War story over and over until enduring peace finally comes.
Michael F. Toomey stars in Endurance and An Iliad. Jon Hed photo.
The piece conflates ancient and modern, pairing the antique saga of “the rage of Achilles” with reflections on all the wars since then. There are also flashes of antic humor, including a comparison to a present-day shopper’s “rage” in a slow-moving checkout line.
An Iliad is directed by S&Co stalwart Jonathan Epstein and performed by Michael F. Toomey, a familiar face on the Lenox stage over the past few seasons. As it happens, Toomey is also in another production in the area this month. Split Knuckle, the physical-theater troupe he co-founded, is performing an intriguing historical mashup, Endurance, at the UMass Fine Arts Center on Oct. 16.
Here, Toomey plays a Hartford insurance executive trying desperately to keep his department afloat in an economic crisis. He turns for inspiration to Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer who sustained his men during an epically disastrous Antarctic expedition a hundred years ago. The action swings between the downtown tower and the South Pole, as the desk jockeys double as Shackleton’s embattled crew, the office furniture becomes ships and ice floes, and the bleak landscapes of Antarctica and corporate America merge.•
Chris Rohmann is at StageStruck@crocker.com and valleyadvocate.com/author/chris-rohmann.
