Into "The Woods" Darkly

"Into the Woods" -- Westport Country Playhouse

                             Lauren Kennedy as the Witch in Stephen Sondheim and

                          James Lapine’s “Into the Woods.” Photo by T. Charles Erickson

There are two kinds if people in the world: those who don’t like Stephen Sondheim musicals and those who do. For the latter, a good return on the investment of two and a half hours can be found currently at the Westport Country Playhouse, which has chosen to open its 2012 season with an energetic production of Sondheim’s 1986 musical “Into the Woods.”

            This pastiche of fractured fairy tales, with a book by James Lapine, is quintessential Sondheim, who can pack more words into a line of music than just about any other composer, and the words are, by and large, witty and often thought-provoking. In this case, the words are derived from multiple fairy tales, most of which were introduced to the world by the Brothers Grimm. We have Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk, their stories all held together by the that of a baker and his wife who, because of a witch’s curse, are childless. For various reasons, all and sundry must go “into the woods” to fulfill their various quests.

            The opening scene has many of the characters sitting lifeless on the stage like tossed aside dolls until they are brought to life by the Narrator (Jeffrey Denman). This is a visual allusion to the automatons that so fascinated the public during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, mechanical dolls that could walk and often talk, an allusion that is returned to several times during the evening, though what it adds to the overall production is debatable.

            Throughout Act One, which is the more vigorous and entertaining of the two acts, the various fairy tale stories intertwine as Jack (Justin Scott Brown) sows his magical beans, Cinderella (Jenny Latimer) runs away from her Prince Charming (Nik Walker), and gets to sing the very witty “A Very Nice Prince,” Little Red Riding Hood (Dana Steingold) confronts the wolf (also played, with delightful lasciviousness, by Walker), Rapunzel (Britney Coleman) lets down her hair for her prince (Robert Lenzi), and the baker (Erik Liberman) and his wife (Danielle Ferland) seek to find four items that the witch (Lauren Kennedy) has requested as the price to lift her curse on them. 

 

                              Justin Scott Brown (Jack) and Cheryl Stern (Jack’s Mother).
                                           Photo by T. Charles Erickson

             

Lapine and Sondheim’s take on all of this is, at least in the first act, fairly straightforward, although the dialogue and lyrics give a modern, often ironic twist to the various fairy-tale set-ups. The first act’s closing number, “Ever After,” has all of the characters achieving their goals and the implication is that the fairy-tale “Happily ever after” reigns. It’s a bring-down-the-curtain number, so much so that the Narrator must announce, “To be continued,” to let the audience know that it is, in fact, not over. There’s more to come.

            The fact that there is more to come is where the problems begin, for it is in the second act that Sondheim and Lapine get a bit ponderous, and there’s not much that director Mark Lamos can do but have his cast wade through all of the messages and morals that prevail as the show explores the idea of what “happily ever after” means. However, there are some high points here, especially the eleven o’clock song written for the witch, “Last Midnight,” and the baker’s wife’s song, “Moments in the Woods,” sung after she has had a romantic encounter with Cinderella’s prince. However, two hours into the show, “No More,” the ultimate “message” song sung by the baker and the Mysterious Man (Jeremy Lawrence) seems to go on for an eternity. Yes, yes, yes, we get the point…the sins of the father and all that. There is, however, a reward for sitting through the second act: the touching “No One is Alone” followed by the finale, “Children Will Listen,” which segues into a rousing and well-choreographed (compliments of Sean Curran) “Into the Woods.”

            For Sondheim fans, what makes the evening well worth the price of a ticket is the cast, which is, by and large, stellar. Although Lieberman is a bit too hyper as the baker, Kennedy’s witch is arch and world-wise (even though she does chew the scenery a bit), Latimer’s Cinderella is engaging and astute, and Steingold’s Little Red Riding Hood…well, she basically steals the show. If you look up the word “droll” in the dictionary you’ll probably find her picture attended to the definition.

            The show runs through May 26.  For tickets or more information call 203-227-4177 or go to www.westportplayhouse.org

Love Amongst the Frigid -- "Almost, Maine"

                        Clockwise from upper left:) Cynthia Hannah, Tim Reilly, Katie Sparer
                        and Jim Schilling in the MTC MainStage production of "Almost, Maine."

                        Photo by Regina Madwed/Capitol Photointeractive

Love is a game not to be played by the faint of heart, for it is (to mix metaphors) an emotional rollercoaster ride with no safety belts. The trials and tribulations of those falling into and out of love are well documented in John Cariani’s “Almost, Maine,” which recently opened at MTC MainStage under the direction of MTC’s Executive Artistic Director Kevin Connors.

            The play is basically a series of vignettes set in a village that, well, almost became a town (hence the play’s name) in the chilly reaches of Maine. There are some regional touches imbedded in the skits, but basically what happens could occur just about anywhere in the United States of Love. Given that four actors, Cynthia Hannah, Tim Reilly, Jim Schilling and Katie Sparer, take on nineteen different roles throughout the evening with minimum costume changes, as a new scene unfolds it’s often difficult, at least initially, to distinguish the “new” characters from the “old’ ones. This leads to a lot of “Okay, who are these two” thinking and pressure on Cariani to provide exposition for almost every scene.

            The structure of the play reminded me of the series of one-act plays that the Theatre Artists Workshop puts on each year, albeit Cariani’s “playlets” have the central theme of love being a many splintered thing. Some of the vignettes work better than others. The prologue sets the stage for the basic quirkiness of most of the scenes: Pete and Ginette sit beneath the stars and hesitantly profess love for each other, but Pete’s take on intimacy is captured in the snowball he holds in his hand. You see, he is on one side of the snowball and she is on the other, and in Pete’s mind, for her to finally reach him and share true intimacy, she must travel not through the snowball (a distance of inches) but rather take the great circle route by going all the way around the world to finally reach the other side of the frozen orb where Pete awaits. This she reluctantly starts off to accomplish. End of scene.

            Several scenes deal with thwarted love -- a woman with a broken heart she keeps in a paper bag comes to Maine to see the Northern Lights and possibly say farewell to her unfaithful, dead husband, only to run into a repairman who may just be able to mend the heart; a couple try to rekindle their love by going skating, but they find their hearts are as cold as the ice; a woman returns to find the man who once proposed to her, hoping that love can be rekindled, only to find that time changes all things; another woman wants to sever her relationship with her boyfriend by returning all of the love (bags full) he gave her – she asks for a return of her love and he presents her with a small bag – discussion ensues.

            In perhaps the quirkiest and most memorable scene of all, two good ol’ boys, Randy and Chad, sit outside sipping suds and regaling each other with their “bad date” stories. Each admits they hate the dating scene and would rather spend time with known company doing familiar things. Well, this isn’t Brokeback Mountain territory, but falling in love can be expressed in many different ways, including literally.

            Despite that many of Cariani’s characters are nearly interchangeable and no major effort has been made by costume designer Diane Vanderkroef to visually distinguish these characters, the evening moves along apace under Connors’ direction. There are few guffaws to be had, but each scene does elicit more than a gentle smile and a knowing nod. There’s little depth to be had here, but Cariani isn’t Chekhov or Ibsen and doesn’t want to be.

            If we think of “Almost, Maine” as a meal, it is not a multi-course gourmand’s delight but rather a sampling from a tapas bar, with some offerings more satisfying than others consumed in a pleasant milieu with a well-drilled staff that’s more than eager to please.

            “Almost, Maine” runs through Sunday, Feb 19. For tickets or more information call 203-454-3883 or go to www.musictheatreofct.com

“A Wonderful Life” and Pavlov -- Long Wharf Theatre

Dan Domingues in "It's a Wonderful Life"
Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Do we well up when Clarence, guardian angel second-class, gets his wings because we’re happy for him and for George Bailey and for…well, just being alive, or is it because we’ve seen “It’s a Wonderful Life” so many times that, like good old Pavlov’s dog (who was conditioned by the Russian physiologist to salivate when a bell rang), we just can’t help ourselves. The bell hanging on the Christmas tree rings, Zuzu tells us an angel has just gotten his wings, and suddenly there’s a catch in our collective throats and tears start to flow.

As an experiment, I invited someone who has never seen Frank Capra’s film (yes, there is someone living right here in Connecticut who has never seen the movie) to the opening of Joe Landry’s adaptation at Long Wharf Theatre. I said nothing about the film or the adaptation, just sat next to her for the 80 or so minutes the show runs and when the lights went up turned to see her response. Her eyes glistened as she said, “I loved it.” So much for Pavlov.

There really is quite a lot to like and…well, love… about the show, although there’s a bit of a false step at the start, which I must ascribe to director Eric Ting. The premise is that we are an audience viewing a radio broadcast of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with five actors playing all of the roles and a foley artist (Nathan A. Roberts) providing the myriad sound effects.

For some unknown reason, Ting opts to begin the evening with the studio (designed by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams) in mothballs – equipment shrouded in sheets, dust on the scripts. The rear door opens and a young man (Alex Moggridge) enters with a flashlight. He wanders around the studio as if he is investigating a crypt. Suddenly the other actors appear, the studio comes to life, and the announcer (Dan Domingues) proclaims the name of the evening’s production, which will star, much to his surprise, the young man as George Bailey.

Okay. An interesting premise, I guess, but it goes absolutely nowhere because Ting chooses not to develop the idea that our young man is a fish out of water (nor does Landry’s script support this idea), though there are occasional moments when the character (not the actor) seems a bit confused as to what it happening, as a sub-plot it’s a non-starter.

I guess our take on this premise is supposed to be that this young man gets so caught up in the proceedings (as is expected of the audience) that he suspends his disbelief and actually becomes George Bailey. Maybe…maybe not. It’s all an unnecessary directorial spin on a pretty straightforward premise. Fortunately, it’s also not central to enjoyment of the production, which has a script that is a feast for character actors.

Along with Moggridge and Domingues, Kate MacCluggage, Kevyn Morrow and Ariel Woodiwiss bring the townspeople of Bedford Falls to vivid life. Besides George, there’s the cold-hearted Mr. Potter (played by Domingues, who does a great Lionel Barrymore impersonation), Mary Hatch (MacCluggage’s main assignment), the love of George’s life, Uncle Billy and Clarence the angel (both played by Morrow), and Violet, the tease and potential tart (Woodiwiss’s characters).

           

When they aren’t playing their main roles, the actors convincingly (and in rapid fire) shift responsibilities to the lesser characters: Ma Bailey, Ernie, Bert, Mr. Gower, Sam Wainright, George’s brother, Harry, Giuseppe Martini, the three Bailey children (Woodiwiss gets to be Zuzu) and Nick the surly bartender (Domingues also does a great Sheldon Leonard). They also gather together on occasion to provide crowd noises.

           

The power and magic of the theater is in evidence here in this production, for the audience is being asked to watch actors in a radio studio putting on a play…and buy into what is going on in the play and care about the characters. That this, in fact, is what happens, as was evident from the heartfelt standing ovation given to the cast at the end of the evening, is a credit to the audience, to Landry, the actors and to Ting, who once he sheds himself of the opening trope, gets down to business with a vengeance, giving us non-stop dialogue, movement and sound effects that allow the evening to span 30 or so years in the lives of the characters without giving the audience time to take a breath.

           

Pitch this play to a producer in 1911 and you would have been laughed out of the office: “They’ll never believe it. The audience will be confused. Where is this supposed to be happening, a radio station or a town? You mean the actors play different characters but there ain’t no costume changes? Get outta here, kid!”

           

Yes, the audience believes it. No, the audience is not confused. Yes, it all happens in a radio station and in Bedford Falls and…in the audience members’ minds. So, as the bell rings and George says, “Way to go, Clarence,” we can also say, “Way to go, Long Wharf,” you’ve created a wonderful holiday gift for Connecticut theater-goers.

           

“It’s a Wonderful Life” runs through Saturday, Dec. 31. For tickets or more information call 203-787-4282 or go to www.longwharf.org.

"The Laffer" and the Doctor -- A Review of "A Doctor in Spite of Himself"

                        Liam Craig, Justine Williams and Stephen Epp. Photo by Carol Rosegg

I once had a student who couldn’t stop laughing. He’d start to answer a question and then begin giggling. Any attempt at repression caused the reverse: he’d end up laughing so hard tears rolled down his chubby cheeks. At first his uncontrolled giggling and guffaws was humorous, but soon it became a distraction and, finally, a royal pain in the derriere. I bring this up because it may explain my reaction to Moliere’s “A Doctor in Spite of Himself,” which recently opened at the Yale Repertory Theatre under the direction of Christopher Bayes, who also adapted the work, along with Steven Epp, who stars in the comedy as the pseudo-doctor, Sganarelle.

            The opening-night audience was well primed for the shenanigans and tom-foolery to follow when, minutes before the curtain, the ushers and house manager started dancing to Harry Nilsson’s “Lime in the Coconut.” Soon audience members were on their feet clapping and dancing in the aisles, setting the mood for the light-hearted farce to follow – benign silliness would rule the evening.  

            The lights dimmed and across a bare stage, with brick back wall revealed, hobbled an Old Man (Chivas Michael – who also plays Leandre) doing what might best be called a geriatric goose-step. The sight was mildly humorous, but a lady sitting immediately behind me in the center of the theater (I will henceforth refer to her as The Laffer) began laughing as if the punch line to the greatest joke ever written had just been delivered…and she didn’t stop laughing for the entire performance. Far be it for me to suggest that the Rep has stooped to planting a shill in the audience, so I will lay her unbridled hilarity on the doorstep of having ingested more liquids than solids during her pre-theater meal.

            Her constant braying – yes, it was that loud – was immediately distracting and soon engendered the aforementioned pain. Thus, the lime/coconut mood quickly evaporated, at least for me, replaced by a growing exasperation not conducive to truly appreciating what was going on up on the stage. I guess you might say I viewed the play through glasses coated in sour grape juice.

The cast of "A Doctor in Spite of Himself" Photo by Carol Rosegg

            To the play. The Old Man wheels out an out-house which is quickly transformed into a puppet stage, which Bayes uses for a sight gag that initially is amusing but, with repetition, loses its humor. Sganarelle quickly appears along with his wife, Martine (Justine Williams), whose bouncing dugs elicited shrieks from The Laffer. Martine, harridan-extraordinaire, soon begins railing against her husband, who gives as good as he gets. He is quickly sent off to chop wood (much is made throughout the evening of how he handles his wood), leaving Martine to devise her revenge. She doesn’t have to think long, for Valere (Jacob Ming Trent) and Lucas (Liam Craig) quickly appear on the scene. This Laurel-and-Hardy duo are in search of a doctor to cure the sudden selective mutism of Lucinde (Renata Friedman), daughter of their master, Geronte (Allen Gilmore). As Martine’s has suggested, the two beat Sganarelle with sticks until he agrees that he is, in fact, a renowned doctor, and off to Geronte’s mansion they go.

            To allow for a set change there is a scene-in-one that has most of the cast dressed as masked Renaissance doctors wearing blood-stained smocks and white cones on their heads and doing a song and dance routine, accompanied by Greg Powers and Robertson Witmer, that satirizes the medical profession, Unfortunately, what with The Laffer roaring behind me I missed many of the lyrics – I must assume they were very funny.

            At the mansion, Jacqueline (Julie Briskman) fills in Geronte on his daughter’s current plight, her sudden silence brought on by her father refusing to allow her to marry the penniless Leandre. Sganarelle et al soon appear on the scene and what follows is a series of skits in which much is made of Jacqueline’s breasts and Geronte’s belly. All is brought to resolution when Leandre, disguised as Sganarelle’s assistant, agrees to disguise himself as himself so that Lucinde will marry him and will be shaken out of her mutism when she finds she has married the wrong man who, of course, is the right man. Get it? Got it. Good!

            There is, of course, a lot of physical comedy – outright slapstick – which is performed with a great deal of panache by the entire cast, and Bayes and Epp have updated the script to allow for quite a few theatrical and topical allusions (including the “Occupy” movement). There are many moments to smile at, especially if you are at all familiar with the stage stereotypes and acting techniques associated with commedia dell’arte, but somehow, save for the magical Briskman as Jacqueline (she does an extended scene in which she is a Blanche DuBois clone, a cockney maid, and a foul-mouthed version of Ethel Merman), the performances seem a bit forced – everyone is working just a bit too hard at being funny to be funny. Then again, maybe everyone was very funny but I was so busy being bedeviled by The Laffer that I missed it all.

            “A Doctor in Spite of Himself” runs through Dec. 17. For tickets or more information call 203-432-1234 or go to www.yalerep.org

Sherlock Holmes and Scrooge...and more

The case is afoot...

Long before Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce gave us Sherlock Holmes on the silver screen, the famous detective was brought to life by Hartford's William Gillette (he of Gillette Castle).

The story of how Gillette brought Arthur Conan Doyle's character to the stage is being presented by the East Haddam Stage Comapny in performances at the Mark Twain House Auditorium on Dec. 8 and 9 at 7:30 p.m.

The production will cover how Gillette, a fine Victorian actor, went from farce to historical drama to, finally, the defining role of his lifetime, along the way meeting the sleuth's creator.

Tickets are $20 -- call 860-280-3130.

Don't Look Now --But Christmas is On the Way (What a bummer!)

The turkey hasn't come out of the oven yet, but we're already getting info on various holiday productions.

Bummed out by the Holidays? You might want to try the Theater Artist Workshop's "Cheer Up! A Holiday Revue," which will be presented Friday through Sunday, Dec. 2 - 4, at the workshop at 5 Gregory Blvd. in Norwalk.

The revue is, so the relase would have it, "a light-hearted survey of the often stressful final months of the year." There will be "merry monologues," seasonal songs suitable for sing-along, and holiday sketches that will deal with Thanksgiving mishaps and holiday misanthropy -- a mixture of grumble and glee!

Tickets are $20 -- call 203-854-6830

Then, of course, there's Scrooge --

Once again, the Hartford Stage is presenting its version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," with Bill Raymond returning for his twelfth shot at the title role. Dickens wrote the novella as a ghost story, and the Hartford Stage pays tribute to the "spirit' in which the classic tale was written by giving you more ghosts than you can shake a stick at. Featuring local children and a host of professional actors, this production has become a family tradition, and rightly so, for it is vivid theater with something for everyone. There are a host of special events scheduled to dovetail with the production, including "Market Days," with gift items featured in the lobby, "Santa Saturdays," "Behind the Magic" Sunday (Dec. 18) and a "Christmas Carol Character Brunch" (Dec. 11). The production runs through Dec. 30.

For tickets or more information call 860-527-5151 or go to http://www.hartfordstage.org/

Next Season at Goodspeed

Goodspeed Opera House has announced two of the musicals for its 2012 season -- "Mame" and "Carousel." -- both safe bets. "Mame" will run April 20 - July 1 and "Carousel" will follow, running from July 13 - Sept. 23. The season's final show is yet to be announced.

Behind the Scenes at Long Wharf

Long Wharf Theater will again be running its SPARK! program, which allows audience members into the creative process that brings a play to the stage. This year, the program will focus on "Macbeth 1969" -- participants will be invited to the play's first rehearsal, or they can participate in a discussion on interpreting Shakespearean text. Additionally, audience members can watch a technical rehearsal of the play (an often grueling process for the actors) or meet with director Eric Ting for a discussion on how a classic play is adapted for a modern staging.

This is a unique opportunity for theater-goers to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the lights as a play is ever so slowly brought to life. For more information call 203-787-4282 or go to http://www.longwharf.org/

For reviews of current productions, plus more theater news and casting calls, go to http://www.ctcritics.org/

For movie reviews, go to http://susangranger.com/

Review - Cabaret at MTC

Melissa Carlile-Price in the MTC MainStage production of "Cabaret."

Photo by Regina Madwed

The hottest ticket in town right now should be for “Cabaret,” which recently opened at the 45-seat MTC MainStage in Westport. Hot because it’s probably “Cabaret” as you’ve never seen it before, pared down to its bare essentials and presented with verve, style and a great deal of feeling by a superb cast.

           

Directed by Kevin Connors, MTC’s executive artistic director, and choreographed by Lainie Munro (who gives a nod to, but does not slavishly follow the Fosse format), this “Cabaret” is more intimate, and thus more pointed and, at times, heart-wrenching, than the film version you are probably most familiar with, and it features Kander and Ebb songs that were in the original production but were cut for the film or assigned to different characters.

           

The book by Joe Masteroff, based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood, focuses on a young American writer, Cliff Bradshaw (Ryan Reilly) who comes to Berlin at the time of the rise of the Nazi party, seeking inspiration for his novel. He immediately connects with Ernst (Robert Daniel Sullivan), who, unbeknownst to Cliff, is making money runs for the Nazis. Ernst directs the American to a boarding house run by Fraulein Schneider (Dorothy Stanley), where he soon meets fellow borders Fraulein Kost (Marty Bongfeldt), a dancer at the Kit Kat Klub, and Herr Schultz (Stuart Zagnit), the owner of a fruit store who also happens to be Jewish. On his first night out on the town he drops by the Kit Kat Klub, hosted by the Emcee (Eric Scott Kincaid) and has a table-to-table phone conversation with another Kit Kat dancer, Sally Bowles (Melissa Carlile-Price), a waif-like British ex-pat who “absolutely adores” his spoken English.

Eric Scott Kincaid in the MTC MainStage production of "Cabaret."

Photo by Regina Madwed

           

The lives of these characters quickly intertwine as Germany’s political skies darken, and much of the musical deals with various aspects of the Nazi’s rise to power and the decisions individuals must make (or not make) when confronted with the growing terror. In this focused version, the audience’s attention is riveted on the two doomed romances that are at the heart of the show: Cliff’s love for Sally, who refuses to see what is happening around her and clings desperately to the philosophy that “Life is a cabaret,” and Herr Schultz’s more mature love for Fraulein Schneider, equally doomed because of his heritage.

           

Given that all of this – the Kit Kat production numbers – the arguments between Sally and Cliff – Herr Schultz’s touching courtship of Fraulein Schneider – occurs mere feet from where the audience sits means, among other things, that the audience is inexorably drawn into the milieu in which these characters live and work. It is powerful theater, especially given the quality of the cast.

           

Kincaid’s Emcee is lascivious and brash, but you can see beneath the façade, see the concern, the disdain for the rising powers, and the fear. His Emcee is perhaps the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen, and his final exit, executed brilliantly, is one of false bravado – the “clown” facing off against the brute. It’s a star turn, equaled by Carlile-Price’s Sally, for Carlile-Price manages to convey a brittle gayety masking both fear and self-doubt, and her take on the musical’s signature song, “Cabaret” (sung just after she has told Cliff she has aborted their child), rips your heart out, for she is spitting in the face of death, defiantly walking away from her only hope of salvation by embracing the ephemeral.

           

Most revelatory, however, is the fragile romance between Stanley’s Fraulein Schneider and Zagnit’s Herr Schultz, for these characters, given song assignments and song cuts, were essentially shoved to the side in the film version.

Dorothy Stanley and Stuart Zagnit in the MTC MainStage production of "Cabaret."

Photo by Regina Madwed

Here they come to the fore, and in scene after touching scene (including one that focuses on a pineapple), Stanley and Zagnit, with great poise, delicacy and feeling, present the musical’s essential moral conundrum – what do you do in the face of tyranny? Do you bow and accept, believing you will survive as you have before, or do you deny its very existence, claiming that, after all, it cannot be as bad as people say?

           

What makes this production so satisfying is that the entire cast, including Johnny Orenberg, who does yeoman work as a Kit Kat waiter, several lustful German sailors, a Nazi rabble-rouser and a German guard, can not only sing and dance, they can act up a storm. There’s not a false note or forced emotion the entire evening – Sullivan’s Ludwig is subtly menacing; Bongfeldt’s Fraulein Kost suitably louche and world-weary; Reilly’s Bradshaw engaging and earnest. Coupled with the riveting performances given by Stanley, Zagnit, Kincaid and Carlile-Price, it all make for a marvelous evening of musical theater.

           

“Cabaret” at MTC MainStage runs through Nov. 20, which means you only have two more weekends to see a version of “Cabaret” that will stay with you long after you leave the theater. For tickets or more information call 203-454-3883 or go to www.musictheatreofct.com  

Review...and News

Voices From the Past

            In a recent review of Yale Rep’s Belleville, theater critic Rosalind Friedman bemoaned the fact that many of the plays she has recently seen have “been loaded with alcoholism, drug addiction, self-destructive behavior and suicide.” The result, for her, is that the “past few weeks in the theater have been depressing.” Well, there’s an antidote, and it can be found at Stratford’s Square One Theatre, which is presenting A. R. Gurney’s Ancestral Voices through Saturday, Nov. 19.

            Under the steady direction of Square One’s artistic director, Tom Holehan, this “play” (more on the italics later) is an appropriate antidote for those currently fighting off suicidal tendencies brought on by all of the angst-driven productions currently bedeviling theater audiences. That’s because Ancestral Voices has the feel of an old, comfortable robe, one that’s perhaps showing a bit of age but, if you allow yourself to become wrapped up in it, soothes and satisfies.

Janet Rathert, David Victor, Pat Leo

seated: Davina Porter

            Staged with minimal scenery (basically five white columns), with the actors seated in front of music stands throughout the entire evening, this is one of Gurney’s hybrids (much like his Love Letters) in which the audience is called upon to “create” both the time and place of the action and the actors are called upon to create emotional moments in time while not being allowed to move from their chairs or, for the most part, interact with each other, since the dialogue is directed at the audience rather than at the assembled characters.

            If it sounds boring, it’s not, although the show does take a little bit longer than it should to build up some steam, and that may well be because the introduction of the characters, beginning with Eddie (at the opening night performance played by Steve Scarpa) is, oddly enough, a bit rushed. The play, which embraces three generations of a family living in Buffalo (with the rise and fall of the city mirrored by the dissolution of the family), is something of a dreamscape, with time treated as malleable. Given that, the initial entrances are a bit too abrupt and establishing lines are lost (over the evening, other lines are stepped on and some sound effects are off a beat or two – but this was opening night).

            As Eddie explains in the opening moments, the “play” started out as something else – a novel (which Gurney actually wrote), and it could have become a film, but…it is what it is, more than a staged reading, less than a fully staged play, a radio drama without the radio, a collective theater-of-the-mind piece. Labels aside, what we have here is a generational saga that opens with Grandmother (Davina Porter) having ditched Grandfather (Pat Leo) for the charms of “Uncle” Roger (also played by Leo) – nothing shocking here, except this is pre-World War II Buffalo and the families are entrenched in the city’s class-conscious WASP hierarchy. Thus, Grams’ kicking over the traces is, well, scandalous, and places her family, daughter Jane (Janet Rathert) and son-in-law Harvey (David Victor), in a bit of a bind (Who to side with? How to keep up appearances?), with young Eddie trying to figure it all out, mostly by eavesdropping and asking inappropriate (out of the mouths of babes) questions.

            There’s no high drama here, but there is movement as Eddie moves backwards and forwards in time, setting scenes and relating incidents (verbal snapshots), some minor, some pivotal, that in sum make up a family history.

            Especially moving is the set-piece that finds Gramps taking Eddie on a trip up to a hunting cabin in the Adirondacks. In dialogue that echoes E. B. White’s famous essay, “To the Lake,” Gramps reminisces and passes on lore, learning and a love of the land to his grandson, who in response writes a school essay about Gramps that evokes a certain amount of jealousy in grandmother.

            The play’s primary tension comes from Jane’s attempts to keep her parents from confronting each other after the separation and Grandmother’s marriage to “Uncle” Roger, and Eddie’s desire to see his grandparents reunited. Grim news from Europe darkens the edges of family life, and then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and the extended family’s young men prepare to go off to war, but first there is to be a wedding to which Gramp and Gram have been invited. Jane creates an involved timetable that will insure the two will not meet, but that is subverted by Eddie, and in a wonderful series of “what might have happened” scenarios, the audience gets to have its emotional cake and eat it too.

            Although the five actors all give admirable performances, it is Porter and Scarpa who provide the greatest range of emotions. As Eddie, Scarpa “grows” over the course of the evening from a somewhat nosy, obnoxious little boy to a mature man with a family of his own, and the ever-reliable Porter animates both Grandmother and “Aunt” Fanny (a brief love interest for Gramps orchestrated by Jane) such that in retrospect you would swear she moved about the stage, especially during her “standing” speech (she doesn’t actually stand) at a family Christmas dinner.

            If you are seeking release from the current spate of post-modern agony being offered on Connecticut stages, an evening spent with Gurney’s ancestors should do the trick. They will speak directly to you and by the end of the evening you will feel like one of the family.

            “Ancestral Voices” runs through Nov. 19. For tickets or more information call 203-375-8778 or go to www.squareonetheatre.com     

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On Tuesday, Nov. 15, Fairfield University's Quick Center for the Performing Arts will present John Malkovich in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer for one performance at 8 p.m.

John Malkovich. Photo by Nathalie Bauer

The show features, along with Malkovich, two opera singers and an orchestra, and deals with real-life serial killer Jack Unterweger, an Austrian who preyed on prostitutes in several countries, eventually hanging himself in 1994 (using shoelaces and a cord from the waistband of a jogging suit) after being sentenced to life in prison.

Currently, the performance is SOLD OUT -- to be put on a wait list call 203-254-4010.