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Three Continents

From the ship at sea 1

From the ship at sea 2

From the ship at sea 3

From the ship at sea, 4

From the ship at sea, 5

From the ship at sea , 6

From Rio!!

The Trip Home

NEW SHORT STORIES

Nothing There For You

Nothing There For You, 2

Nothing There For You, 3

Nothing There For You, 4

Chase of The Thrill, 1

Chase of the Thrill, 2

Chase of the Thrill, 3

Chase of The Thrill, 4

Of Course, part1

Of Course, part 2

Of Course, part 3

Of Course, concluded

In Memory: Of My Cruise 1

In Memory: Of My Cruise 2

In Memory: Of My Cruise 3

In Memory: Of My Cruise 4

Las Vegas, 1

Las Vegas, 2

Las Vegas, 3

Las Vegas, 4

Las Vegas, concluded

Mad Moment #1

Mad Moment #2

Mad Moment #3

Mad Moment #4

Margaret Never Knows, 1

Margaret Never Knows, 2

Margaret Never Knows, 3

Margaret Never Knows, 4

Margaret Never Knows, 5

Remote, part 1

Remote, part 2

Remote, part 3

Remote, concluded

POETRY

April's Fools

Easter Sunday

...simple answers

And when they come at me

Fogged In

Barrington Stage 2018

7th Annual 10 x 10

BSC ARCHIVED REVIEWS

10x102017

10x10 Upstreet Five

10x10 Upstreet2015

10X10 Upstreet 2014

10X10 On North

10X10Upstreet

Absurd Person Singular

Alix Korey

All My Sons

American Son

An Enemy of the People

Art

Bashir Lazhar

The Best of Enemies

The Birds

BNelson's All-Male Revue

Breaking the Code

Brel in the Berkshires

Broadway Bounty Hunter

Butler

Camping with Henry & Tom

Carousel

Celebrating...William Fin

Character Man

The Chosen

Clybourne Park revisited

Company

The Crucible

Dancing Lessons

Dr. Ruth, All the Way

Engagements

The Fantasticks

Fiddler on the Roof

Freud's Last Session

Fyvush Finkel

The Game

Gaslight

Georgie - BSC

Going to St. Ives

The Golem of Havana

Guys and Dolls

His Girl Friday

I Am My Own Wife

Kimberly Akimbo

BSC's Kiss Me, Kate

KT Sullivan: Colored Lts.

Kunstler

A Little More Alive

Lord of the Flies

Lost in Yonkers

Love Letters

Lungs

Man of La Mancha

The Memory Show

Mormons, Mothers...etc.

Much Ado About Nothing

Muckrakers

My Name is Asher Lev

Mysteries of Harris Burdi

The North Pool

On the Town

The Other Place

peerless

The Pirates of Penzance

Presto Change-O

N. Coward's Private Lives

Ragtime

Romance in Hard Times

Scott and Hem. . . .

See How They Run

See Rock City. . .

Shining City

Sleuth

Southern Comfort

Speech & Debate

A Streetcar Named Desire

Sweeney Todd

Taking Steps

This

This Wonderful Life

To Kill a Mockingbird

Tribes

Trumbo

21st...Spelling Bee

Underneath the Lintel

Veils

Vincent

The Violet Hour

The Whipping Man

Working on a Special Day

Zero Hour

Berkshire Opera Company

Berkshire Fringe Festival

Le Nozze di Figaro

La Boheme

Berkshire Opera Festival

Ariadne auf Naxos

Madama Butterfly

Berkshire Theatre 2017

Lost Lake

BTG Arsenic and Old Lace

At Home at the Zoo

Children of a Lesser God

Million Dollar Quartet

BTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Anna Christie

BTF Archive

Babes in Arms

Bells are Ringing

Benefactors

Birthday Boy

The Book Club Play

Brace Yourself

Broadway by the Year

Candida

Candide

The Caretaker

The Cat and The Canary

Cat on a BTG Roof

Cedars

BTG's A Chorus Line

A Christmas Carol

Christmas Carol 2010

A Class Act

Colonial Christmas Carol

Constellations

Deathtrap at BTG

A Delicate Balance

Design For Living

Dutch Masters

Edith

The Einstein Project

Eleanor: Her Secret Journ

Endgame

Extremities

Faith Healer

Fiorello

Frankie and Johnny in the

The Guardsman

Ghosts

A Hatful of Rain

The Homecoming

Homestead Crossing

In the Mood

K2

The Last Five Years

The Lion in Winter

A Little Night Music

Little Shop at Colonial

A Lover's Tale

Eric Hill's Macbeth

A Man For All Seasons

Mary and Edith

Moonchildren

The Mystery of Irma Vep

Neighbor/Smile

No Wake

Noel Coward in Two Keys

Oklahoma!

Pageant Play

Period of Adjustment

Poe

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue

Puppetmaster of Lodz

Re-View Puppetmaster

Red Remembers

Same Time, Next Year

Sick

The Stone Witch

Sylvia

Thoreau or, Return to Wal

A Thousand Clowns

The Who's Tommy

Waiting for Godot

Bridge Street Theatre

F&J in the Claire De Lune

Bridge St. Thtr Archive

Dream Child

Frankenstein: etc.

Gamma Rays/Marigolds

Holiday Memories

How To Pray

...Kieron and Jade

Lucky Lindy

Redwood Curtain

Souvenir at Bridge St.

The Tavern

Broadway/Off-Broadway

Three Plays in NYC

Capital Rep

Blithe Spirit

Paris Time

She Loves Me in Albany

Sex With Strangers

CapRep Mamma Mia!

Assisted Loving

Chester Theatre - 2017

Folk

Every Brilliant Thing

Skeleton Crew

I and You

Chester Theatre Archive

Almost, Maine

Animals Out of Paper

Chester's Amish Project

Annapurna

Arms On Fire

The Betrothed

Blackbird

blink

Body Awareness

The Dishwashers

The Gospel. . .Discord

An Iliad

Madagascar

Memory House

The Mountaintop

My Jane

A Number

Oh God

Sister Play

The Swan

Tilted House

Copake Theatre Company

Nine Months

I Do! I Do!

Sour Grapes

Talking Heads

Grace & Glorie

Dorset Theatre Fest 2017

American Buffalo

Legend of Georgia McBride

Baskerville

Downstairs

Tarnation Russell Colvin

DORSET ARCHIVED REVIEWS

All in the Timing

Barefoot in the Park

Boeing-Boeing by Camolett

Christie's The Mousetrap

Clybourne Park

Deathtrap

Dear Elizabeth

Dial "M" For Murder

Fallen Angels

Good People

The Hollow

I Hate Hamlet

Intimate Apparel

June Moon

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar

Marry Me a Little

Mauritius

Merton of the Movies

Murder on the Nile

Noises Off

Out of the City

Outside Mullingar

Red

St. Nicholas

S Holmes & the Jersey Lil

Superior Donuts

Table Manners

The Novelist

The Pavilion

The Scene

The Way of The World

The Whore and Mr. Moore

A Year with Frog and Toad

Ghent Playhouse 2017/2018

Cabaret in Ghent

Clever Little Lies

The Little Mermaid. . .

Greater Tuna

Ghent Playhouse Archives

Ghent's "Almost, Maine"

Ali Baba...4 Tea Thieves

Ayckbourn at Ghent

Belles

Boeing-Boeing GPH

The Boys Next Door

Clue: The Musical

Complete Wm Shakespeare

The Countess

Dancing at Lughnasa

Enchanted April

Coward's Fallen Angels

Fantasticks

Ghent's "Dial M...."

Grapes of Wrath

Hair Loom!

Hay Fever

The Heiress

Heroes in Ghent

House of Dwarfs

The Imaginary Invalid

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jerry's Girls

Lettice and Lovage

Ghent "Little Shop"

Lost: The Grimm Years

Madwoman of Chaillot

Menagerie A Trois

Mothers and Sons

Mrs. Farnsworth

My Cousin Rachel

O.P.M. at Ghent

Once Upon a Mattress

Over the River, etc.

Pack of Lies

Picnic

Prisoner/2nd Avenue

Puss in Boots

Rabbit Hole in Ghent

Robin Hood: 50 Shades. .

6 Women...

Ghent's 39 Steps

True West Ghent

The Turn of the Scrooge

The 25th Annual Putnam...

Urinetown

The Weir

You're a Good Man, Charli

Goodspeed Musicals

Rags

Thoroughly Modern Musical

Chasing Rainbows

Bye Bye Birdie/Goodspeed

Goodspeed's Anything Goes

Hubbard Hall

The Velocity of Autumn

Mystery of Edwin Drood

menagerie

Book Club Play

HH - Crucible

Illiad

Tartuffe

Shakespeare's King Lear

Parellel Lives

Ondine

Hubbard Shirley Valentine

Shakespeare's Macbeth

The Drawer Boy

You Can't Take It With Yo

Literature

An Unlikely Hero

Antibes

B ob Dylan

Christmasville

A Lesser Saint

Upstreet, #1

MacHaydn Theater-2017

Hello, Dolly! '17

Spamalot

McH's Sweeney Todd

Saturday Night Fever

McHs Anything Goes

Dirty Rot. Scoundrels

Dreamcoat

MACHAYDN ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Mac-Haydn's Addams Family

The All Night Strut

All Shook Up

Annie

Anything Goes

The Baker's Wife

Beauty and the Beast

Best Little Whorehouse...

Brigadoon

Bye Bye Birdie

Carousel at the Mac

Chicago

Chicago (2016)

Chorus Line

Crazy For You

Damn Yankees

Drowsy Chaperone in Chath

Fair Lady

Mac Fantasticks

Fiddler in Chatham

forty-second Street

Machaydn's The Full Monty

Guys and Dolls in Chatham

Gypsy

Hairspray

Hairspray 2015

Hello, Dolly!

High Society

Into the Woods

Joseph. . .Dreamcoat

Jekyll and Hyde

The King and I

Kiss Me, Kate

La Cage aux Folles

Legally Blonde

Les Miz

Love a Piano

Mac-Haydn's Grease

Mame

Meet Me in St. Lou

The Music Man

Nice Work If You Can Get

9 to 5

Nunsense

Oliver!

Phantom

The Producers

R.D. Housewives of C.C.

Rent in Chatham

The Secret Garden

Show Boat

Singin' In The Rain

Sister Act

Smokey Joe's Cafe

Sondheim Putting It Toget

The Sound of Music

South Pacific

State Fair

Sweet Charity

Swing!

Thoroughly Modern Millie

West Side Story

Xanadu

Yng Frankenstein

Music

10 mini trios

Journeys by Robert Baksa

Mary Verdi: Precious Love

Mahagonny

New Stage Theatre Company

Death and The Maiden

Blood Sky

Fahrenheit 451

The Maids

Northern Stage

Living Together

NYSTI

Romeo & Juliet

And Then There Were None

King Island Christmas

A Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Philadelphia Story

Yours, Anne

Orphan Train

Of Mice and Men

Twelve Angry Jurors

Anastasia

1776

Macbeth

Miracle On 34th Street

Arsenic and Old Lace

American Soup

Ordeal By Innocence

Reunion

Oldcastle Theatre 2017

Broadway Bound

A Comedy of Tenors in VT

Mauritius at Oldcastle

Moonlight & Magnolias

Shipwrecked

OLDCASTLE ARCHIVED REVIEW

"Almost, Maine" in VT

Around the World in. . .

Beauty Queen of Leenane

Big River

Black Comedy

Cabaret

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The City of Conversation

ConsulTrampAmerica'sSweet

Doubt in Vermont

4000 Miles

Fox on the Fairway

The Grass is Greener

Last Days of Mickey & Jea

Oldcastle Lion-Winter

My Fair Lady

Night and Her Stars

Northern Boulevard

One Two Three

Other People's Money

Rembrandt's Gift

The Ride Down Mount Morgn

S. Holmes-Knight's Gambit

A Song For My Father

Strange Disappearance of

Tallley's Folly

Third

39 Steps

Time Stands Still

Proctors Schenectady

The Humans

Proctors Les Miserables

The Bodyguard, the musica

Finding Neverland

Fun Home

The Color Purple

Wicked

Restaurants

Bezalel Gables

Blantyre

Brazillian

Burrito Bound

SPICE!

Sand Lake Center for Arts

SLCA Crucible

Sand Lake Annie

In the Heat of the Night

Schenectady Civic Players

Other Desert Cities

An Inspector Calls

Shakespeare & Co - 2017

Carnage, God of

Perfect Pair of Wharton

Tempest in the Garden

S&Cos Intimate Apparel

"Dream" in the Dell

Cymbeline 2017

S&C4000miles

Shakespeare & Co - 2016

Sotto Voce

The Two Gentlemen/Verona

Cry "Havoc!"

S&Co's "Or,"

Twelfth Night in the Dell

The Merchant of Venice

The Emperor of the Moon

Ugly Lies the Bone

The Taming

Shakespeare & Co. - 2015

An Illiad at S&Co

Red Velvet

Mother of the Maid

The Unexpected Man

The Comedy of Errors

Henry V

The How and The Why

Shakespeare & Co. - 2014

Private Eyes

Vanya, Sonia, Etc.

Henry IV, Parts One &Two

6-Actor Romeo and Juliet

TCWOWSabridged

Julius Caesar in Lenox

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Servant of Two Master

Shakespeare's Will

Shakespeare & Co -2013

Private Lives

It's a Wonderful Life

Accomplice

Kaufman's Barber Shop

Beauty Queen/Leenane

Mother Courage...

Richard II

Love's Labour's Lost

Heroes

Master Class

Shakespeare&Co - 2012

The Liar

2012 Santaland

S&Co's The 39 Steps

Satchmo at the Waldorf

The Tempest

Parasite Drag

King Lear

Tale of Allergist's Wife

Cassandra Speaks

Shakespeare & Co-2011

The Learned Ladies

Cymbeline

Santaland

War of the Worlds

Red Hot Patriot

Broadway in the Berkshire

Baskervilles (Revisited)

Romeo and Juliet, 2011

The Hollow Crown

As You Like It

The Memory of Water

SHAKES & CO ARCHIVES

All's Well That Ends Well

Bad Dates

The Canterville Ghost

Cindy Bella

Real Inspector Hound

Dreamer Examines Pillow

Goatwoman of Corvis Count

Golda's Balcony

Hound of Baskervilles

Irma Vep, The Mystery of

Julius Caesar

The Ladies Man

Liaisons Dangereuses

Mengelberg and Mahler

Othello

Pinter's Mirror

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

The Santaland Diaries

Sea Marks

Shirley Valentine

The Taster

Twelfth Night

White People

The Winter's Tale

Sharon Playhouse - 2017

Sharon's Music Man

Far Away

Minor Character

Sharon Playhouse Archive

Big River in Sharon

Georgie

Gypsy in Sharon

TriArts' Les Miz

Little Shop of Horrors

Merrily We Roll Along

Quartet

Special Attractions

The Last Flapper

Karaoke Killer

Capitol Steps 2017

Masked Man

capitol steps 2016

Die Fledermaus

Grinder's Stand

Babylon Revisited

John

Dracula's Grandmother

Mock the Vote-CSteps 2015

The Aliens

It Shoulda Been You

Cranwell's Capitol Steps

Kill Me Now

The Garden of Martyrs

Capitol Steps 2013

The Capitol Steps

Doubt

Four Dogs and a Bone

Zara Spook & Other Lures

Trial of F.D.R.

Autres Temp. . .

Real Desperate Housewives

Capitol Steps for 2011

Ludwig Live!

The Seagull

On The Verge

Seascape

Starcrossed

"Earnest" in Albany

Paris, 1890--Unlaced

BCC's A Christmas Carol

Sister's Christmas Catech

The Pajame Game

Her Name is Vincent

Property Known as Garland

12th Night

I Know I Came...Something

Doubt, a Parable

Voices' A Christmas Carol

Dickens A Christmas Carol

Marie Galante

Machinal

Capitol Steps

Late Nite Catechism

Rabbit Hole

Taming of The Shrew

Mystery of Irma Vep

I Love a Piano

The News in Revue

The Mikado

Saturday Night Liv

A Chorus Line

BCC - Christmas Carol

Morgan O-Yuki

Rent

Stageworks Hudson 2013/14

Tomorrow in the Battle

Stockholm

Looped

Play by Play Unchained

Stagework Hudson Archives

The Amish Project

The Divine Sister

Forbidden Broadway

Imagining Madoff

Or,

Play By Play Blue Moons

Play By Play Shadows

The Rivalry

Tennis in Nablus

Theater Barn 2017

Lucky Me

Guys and Dolls TB

Godspell-2012

Nunsense at TB

Christie's Spider's Web

A Comedy of Tenors

THEATER BARN ARCHIVES

A. Christie's The Hollow

The Addams Family

Agatha Christie's. .None

Altar Boyz

The Andrews Brothers

Better Late

Black Coffee

Boeing-Boeing

The Cocktail Hour

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Don't Dress for Dinner

Don't Talk to the Actors

The Drowsy Chaperone

Evita

Forever Plaid

Forever Plaid-2016

The Full Monty

Funny Thing Happened

God of Carnage

Grease

Great American Trailer...

Gutenberg! The Musical

Half and Half

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda

Housewives of Columbia

How the Other Half Loves

TBarn's I Love a Piano

I Love You....Now Change

It Had To Be You

John & Jen

Leading Ladies

Lies & Legends

The Little Dog Laughed

Moonlight and Magnolias

Five Course Love

Moon Over Buffalo

The Mousetrap

Murder at Howard Johnson

A Murder is Announced

The Musical of Musicals

Red, White and Tuna

Romance, Romance

Same Time, etc.

Fantasticks at the Barn

Spider's Web

Stones In His Pockets

The 39 Steps

They're Playing Our Song

Towards Zero

The Unexpected Guest

Veronica's Room

Visiting Mr. Green

The Wedding Singer

You Should Be So Lucky

Young Frankenstein

Zanna Don't!

Town Players--Pittsfield

Prodigal Cow

The Rocky Horror Show

Love, Loss & What I Wore

The Whale

Win/Lose/Draw

The Shape of Things

Five Women..Same Dress

Skin Deep

Stop Kiss

Life Is Short

Visual Arts

Walking the Dog Thtr 2014

The Umbilical Point

WALKING THE DOG: ARCHIVED

BecomingFrederickDouglass

Bon Appetit!

Cyrano

daemons

Eurydice

The Gospel of John

i take your hand in mine

Lost Frontier of America

Our Town

The Owl and the Pussycat

Painting Churches

Under Milk Wood

Vritue, Desire, etc.

Walking the dog's HAMLET

Who Am I This Time?

WAM Theatre Company

The Last Wife

emelieredux

The Bakelite Masterpiece

Special

Holy Laughter

In Darfur

Emilie

The Old Mezzo

Attic, Pearls & 3 Fine Gi

Melancholy Play

Weston Playhouse -2017

Long Day's Journey Into N

Buyer & Cellar

Music Man

Tenderly

Once

Weston Playhouse Archived

Weston's All My Sons

Analog and Vinyl

Baskervilles in Vermont

Weston's Chorus Line

Educating Rita

Ella

42nd Street

A Funny Thing...Forum

Fully Committed

Weston's Guys & Dolls

The Light in the Piazza

Les Miserables

Mamma Mia

Weston's La Mancha

Murder For Two

Next to Normal

No Child. . .

Weston's Other Place

Peter and the Starcatcher

Pregnancy Pact

Pump Boys and Dinettes

A Raisin in the Sun

Rent - Weston

Round & Round the Garden

Souvenir

25th Spelling Bee

Weston's Uncle Vanya

V&S&M&Spike

Williamstown Theatre 2017

Actually

A Legendary Romance

Moscow, Moscow, . . .

The Clean House

Where Storms are Born

5x10

The Roommate

The Model American

WTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

A Doll's House

A Month in the Country

After the Revolution

An American Daughter

American Hero

And No More Shall We Part

Animal Crackers

The Atheist

Beyond Therapy

The Blue Deep

Broke-Ology

Caroline in Jersey

The Chinese Room

Children

Cost of Living

David Storey's "Home"

The Elephant Man

Far From Heaven

Fifth of July

A Flea in Her Ear

Fool For Love

Funny Thing/Forum

Funny Thing II

A Great Wilderness

Hapgood

Importance of/Earnest

An Intervention

It's Jewdy's Show

Johnny Baseball

WTF's June Moon

Kinship

Knickerbocker

The Last Goodbye

Legacy

Living On Love

Moon for the Misbegotten

Off the Main Road

The Old Man&The Old Moon

One Slight Hitch

Paradise Blue

Pygmalion

Quartermaine's Terms

Romance Novels for Dummie

The Rose Tattoo

Samuel J. and K.

She Loves Me

She Stoops To Conquer

Six Degrees of Separation

Streetcar Named Desire

Ten Cents a Dance

Three Hotels

Three Sisters

The Torch-Bearers

True West

Unknown Soldier

The Visit

What is..Cause of Thunder

WTF's Our Town

The Book Club Play by Karen Zacarias. Directed by Nick Olcott.

Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman

 


"Book Club is not life or death."


          Thank God for talented people. They can perform extraordinary surgery. They can inspire us to learn. They can remove our pain with a gallant sweep of a hand. Sometimes they can even turn the mediocre into the marvelous. A talented crew of seven superb players is performing that latter miracle at the Berkshire Theatre Festival where a new play, "The Book Club Play," is gracing the main stage for a few weeks.

          This is a play that has had only one previous production, also directed by Nick Olcott who has been a part of this show’s history since at least its first development stage at the Theater of the First Amendment in Fairfax, Virginia in March, 2005. He has hardly missed a single stage of the work required to hone and sharpen the playwright’s vision and it is possible he has spent too much time too close to the project. Even with a remarkable cast, as this production has, a fresh perspective could have made the difference between an acceptable, amusing evening and a truly wonderful stage work.

          There are laughs in this play. There is a bit of melodrama, too. At the end of the two hours, however, neither of those elements leaves an audience truly satisfied. The laughs have been sporadic and rarely more than chuckles. The melodrama hasn’t been broad enough to make us snicker, or sinister enough to make us smirk; it has only left us wondering where the honest drama might be hiding. And the problem isn’t the talent pool, it’s the swimming hole they’re caught in without the necessary inner tube to use for a flotation device.

          Here are five people, a book club that meets monthly to discuss an agreed-upon book. Three are old friends, friends since college and two of them are married. A young woman who has much in common with this trio has been a member for a while and a new, younger woman, a black woman, a woman of color, has been added to the group. Everyone in this group tries to remain civil and politically correct, but it’s hard when there are three old friends, a core, and two satellites who try not to collide. They are all being "best behavior" candidates because they have agreed to be filmed for a documentary on the book club phenomenon. They try to maintain an almost inhuman dignity for the camera, but they are too entrenched in one another’s lives to make that work for long.

          Styled as a cut version of the documentary, the show veers out of scenes for "talking heads" sequences spotlighting the members of this group, an interloper among them, and eight "stand-ups" or people who have been interviewed for comments on the group dynamic, or on books, or on reading - these are unfocused interviews. The principal difficulty with this technique is that it isn’t truly used in the visual sense. While a total blackout of the bright, white and beige set, its inhabitants and its props with a talking head isolated in a tight light would simulate the look of a documentary, this never happens in the show. Instead we soft focus on one or another player with everyone else, and everything else, fully visible. This deprives us of the playwright’s visual intention. In this presentation there is no proper introduction of the premise of the documentary, a dissertation project by and for unseen grad students, so we are dropped into the first full scene which addresses the camera idea without explanation or understanding. Not a good idea.

          Like a few other ideas, including deep discussions about literature and the proper food to accompany the right book, this documentary concept goes pretty much unaddressed. Instead it takes the opportunity to introduce us to a host of wonderful, minor characters, all played by one delightful actress, Sarah Marshall, whose range includes a Williams College co-ed, an aging Wal-Mart male employee and an octogenarian retired librarian sky-diver. Marshall seems to have no character role limitations and she manages to pull them all off brilliantly. Many of the funniest, most memorable moments in this play are hers, and hers alone. In retrospect the lines she delivers are not as funny as their delivery, not as memorable as the voice that pronounces them.

          Keira Naughton has the thankless role of Ana, the leader of the pack, who fears the loss of control over things in her life. She reaches into the deepest places in her heart and mind for ways to hold on to old friends and the club she needs for a certain personal fulfillment. She even plays the death card to try to instill loyalty in her very loyal compatriots. Ana goes too far and Naughton, with her talent intact, tries to make it work, but not even a genius could ultimately make Ana as likeable as she believes she truly is already.

          Her husband, Rob, is played by the handsome and muscular, particularly his chest development, C. J. Wilson. Wilson has the thankless role of a book club member who doesn’t read. Try to play that with much heart! Wilson pulls it off brilliantly, with a look, a sigh, a shrug. He’s the real McCoy in the acting world, a man who makes manliness inoffensive.

          Their best friend, Will, is played by Tom Story, a BTF favorite. Story’s Will is a pathetic man with oddly comic sensibilities. We want to sympathize with him, but cannot because he is such an ass, and then we fall for his shortcomings, pity him and want to comfort him. Story leads us through these changes with a simple ease that makes the character of Will into a dearly beloved fool.

          Jen, the slightly dopey, never-in-charge friend, is given a vigorous shot of life by Anne Louise Zachry. As the object of much affection in this play, Zachry moves her Jen in circles and lets her grip furniture, grip books tighter, and miss the arms of people entirely when she is in need of support. She has the loveliest voice and she manages to turn it into a spewing machine, now and then, without the slightest need of a breath. She gives new life to the concept of the monologue.

          Bhavesh Patel plays Alex, a neighbor who is roped into the club, kicked out of the club and restored on sufferance. He brackets his honest moments with the closest thing this show has to slapstick. He is a knee-slapper comic without a proper punch-line, and like the other characters in this play, he is more a caricature, a type, than he is a character with a human side, failings, desires, skills. He plays the man beautifully, but what Alex can never be is THE man. Patel manages to get all of these subtleties into an exquisite performance.

          Topping the charts in this show, barring Marshall’s show-stopping versatility, is Cherise Boothe as Lily, the younger, blacker woman. Boothe is the outsider, let in and loving it. Whether she is a snob about this or a sufferance I cannot tell, because the play is never clear about it. She is another of Ana’s friends and compatriots, but she is never made to feel a true profit-sharer in this profitless experience. Boothe can load a line for impact with the best of them, and she can also register the required emotional looks and gestures. She does it all with a naturalness that would be perfection in a play about anything natural, but we have the dysfunctional, and sketchy and caricature stylings of the author to deal with in this case and even Lily cannot escape that sense of being incomplete, a bit shallow and a bit compensated for in the playing.

          There are projections which help to form the visual concept of a documentary film. In their current placement on R. Michael Miller’s stark white set they can be easily missed by audience members concentrating on the actors. Some of them are funny enough to get their own laughs; others are helpful. There is even a credit role at the end which should be speeded up substantially.

          Laurie Churba’s costumes seem to get each character well defined, but these people are painted in such thin layes of watercolor that their costumes could be even more aggressive in creating that definition.

          Zacarias has good ideas but she has not allowed her cast of characters to live, only to be painted in their comic strip panels. She has imposed a device that is hard to make work and if we, the audience, try to ignore it we are jerked to one side for a monologue out of scene by one of the group or a monologue by a total stranger whom, we realize in short order, we’ll never see again so why care about this person. It would seem that the author has a lot to say but only says it in some sort of encoded shorthand. A new director might be able to pull some of that into the show and make it truly worthy of such a beautiful production and such superb actors. In this edition we simply have Saturday Night Live skits played over and over by the same actors in the same roles: not the stuff of stellar comedy or stellar drama either. This show’s shortcomings deprive it of true greatness.

◊07/11/08◊
Seen one performance prior to opening night

Sarah Marshall as an octogenarian sky-diver; photo: Kevin Sprague
Cherise Boothe, Keira Naughton, C.J. Wilson; photo: Kevin Sprague
Wilson, Bhavesh Patel, Tom Story, Anne Louise Zachry; photo: Kevin Sprague

The Book Club Play performs on the Main Stage of the Berkshire Theater Festival on Route 102 and Route 7 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts through July 19. Tickets range form $46-$80 but students with valid Ids may receive a 50% discount. For schedules and tickets, call the box office at 413-298-5576.


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