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SMALL IRONIES: Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Epilogue

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

BROADWAY/NYC THEATRE

Love, Linda

Curtains

Barrington Stage Company

Sweeney Todd

The Whipping Man

Freud's Last Session

BSC ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Carousel

The Fantasticks

I Am My Own Wife

Mysteries of Harris Burdi

Private Lives

See Rock City. . .

Sleuth

...Spelling Bee

A Streetcar Named Desire

This Wonderful Life

To Kill a Mockingbird

Trumbo

Underneath the Lintel

The Violet Hour

Berkshire Opera

Le Nozze di Figaro

La Boheme

Berkshire Theatre Fest.

The Last Five Years

K2

BTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

BTF Archive

The Book Club Play

Broadway by the Year

Candida

Candide

The Caretaker

A Christmas Carol

The Einstein Project

Eleanor: Her Secret Journ

Faith Healer

Ghosts

A Man For All Seasons

Noel Coward in Two Keys

Pageant Play

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue

Red Remembers

Sick

Waiting for Godot

Chester Theatre Company

Tilted House

The Dishwashers

Almost, Maine

Blackbird

Copake Theatre Company

Nine Months

I Do! I Do!

Sour Grapes

Talking Heads

Grace & Glorie

Dorset Theatre Festival

The Pavilion

DORSET ARCHIVED REVIEWS

The Hollow

June Moon

Marry Me a Little

Merton of the Movies

St. Nicholas

A Year with Frog and Toad

Ghent Playhouse

Prisoner/2nd Avenue

Mrs. Farnsworth

Complete Wm Shakespeare

Puss in Boots

Belles

Enchanted April

Dancing at Lughnasa

The Boys Next Door

Jack and the Beanstalk

Clue: The Musical

6 Women...

Picnic

Hair Loom!

Over the River, etc.

Literature

B ob Dylan

Christmasville

A Lesser Saint

Upstreet, #1

Mac-Haydn Theatre

The Secret Garden

Anything Goes

MACHAYDN ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Beauty and the Beast

Chorus Line

Crazy For You

Hairspray

Hello, Dolly!

High Society

Joseph. . .Dreamcoat

Meet Me in St. Lou

Phantom

The Sound of Music

Sweet Charity

Music

Journeys by Robert Baksa

Mary Verdi: Precious Love

Mahagonny

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 Company

Third

Beauty Queen of Leenane

"Almost, Maine" in VT

One Two Three

The Grass is Greener

Restaurants

Bezalel Gables

Blantyre

Brazillian

Burrito Bound

SPICE!

Shakespeare & Co.

Mengelberg and Mahler

Julius Caesar

Liaisons Dangereuses

Cindy Bella

Hound of Baskervilles

White People

Dreamer Examines Pillow

Twelfth Night

Golda's Balcony

Pinter's Mirror

The Actors Rehearse...

Shirley Valentine

Romeo and Juliet

Bad Dates

The Canterville Ghost

Goatwoman of Corvis Count

Othello

All's Well That Ends Well

The Ladies Man

Special Attractions

"Earnest" in Albany

Life Is Short

Paris, 1890--Unlaced

BCC's A Christmas Carol

Sister's Christmas Catech

i take your hand in mine

The Pajame Game

Her Name is Vincent

Property Known as Garland

12th Night

I Know I Came...Something

Vritue, Desire, etc.

Forbidden Broadway

Doubt, a Parable

Voices' A Christmas Carol

Dickens A Christmas Carol

Marie Galante

Machinal

Under Milk Wood

The Owl and the Pussycat

Capitol Steps

Late Nite Catechism

Rabbit Hole

Taming of The Shrew

Mystery of Irma Vep

daemons

I Love a Piano

Walking the dog's HAMLET

The News in Revue

Cyrano

The Mikado

Saturday Night Liv

A Chorus Line

The Gospel of John

BCC - Christmas Carol

Morgan O-Yuki

Rent

Stageworks Hudson

Or,

Theater Barn

Moonlight and Magnolias

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Romance, Romance

Zanna Don't!

Veronica's Room

Leading Ladies

Murder at Howard Johnson

Visiting Mr. Green

Grease

Forever Plaid

The Musical of Musicals

The Mousetrap

Same Time, Next Year

How the Other Half Loves

Visual Arts

Weston Playhouse

A Raisin in the Sun

Rent - Weston

25th Spelling Bee

Fully Committed

Les Miserables

No Child. . .

The Light in the Piazza

Williamstown Theatre Fest

Funny Thing/Forum

It's Jewdy's Show

WTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

The Atheist

Beyond Therapy

Broke-Ology

Caroline in Jersey

Children

David Storey's "Home"

A Flea in Her Ear

Knickerbocker

Quartermaine's Terms

She Loves Me

Three Sisters

The Torch-Bearers

True West

What is..Cause of Thunder

How the Other Half Loves by Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Michael Marotta.

Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman


"...being more incoherent than usual..."


Harry Vaughn, Kathleen Carey, Jenna Doolittle, Brian Allard, Amanda MaCallum, John Philip Cromie; photo provided

     I remember Alan Ayckbourn’s first hit play as being funny. Of course that was 1971 when just about everything was funny. I remember laughing a lot, though, at Phil Silvers and Sandy Dennis, Richard Mulligan, Bernice Massi and Tom Aldredge and in this new production at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, I only laughed a little bit. Almost nothing was funny and it wasn't the people involved, I'm sure, who made this so.

     Perhaps it stems from the amazing breadth of local farces: "The Ladies Man" at Shakespeare & Company with so many doors and windows and other exits, "Beyond Therapy" with its constantly changing face of humanity and the magical turntable, and now "How the Other Half Loves, with its two doors and two archways, its interlinking single set representing two apartments. The elements are there in the Ayckbourn play but the writing isn’t as clean and humorous as it might be, the plot is too contrived and the people are too unpleasant to be as funny as they might be.

     Two of the characters have had an affair, a one-night fling, and another character suspects the truth. A fourth has no clue, but has a sense of something changed in the general atmosphere. Two others, innocents in it all, become caught up in the plot and add the elements of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. A long first act sets this all up and then, in the second act the laughs start. At one hour and twenty minutes into a two hour show it is a bit late for the humor to enter the play.

     In the long tradition of this theater the opening show is usually a farce, more often than not a British sex comedy. Purposefully this play has been chosen. It falls short of expectation even under the masterful hand of director Michael Marotta who moves his company with perfection through the dual purpose furniture and in spite of a wonderful, talented cast who never miss a moment or slip an accent. In fact, the result of imposing such wonderful people on such a strange set and odd play is that the show becomes more a melodrama with laughs than a laugh-riot with tensions.

     As the Fosters, Fiona and Frank, we have Kathleen Carey and John Philip Cromie. Cromie excels at the distracted, corporate idiot whose lack of insight causes many of the problems the characters have to deal with in the course of the five days of the play’s duration. Carey plays the coy wife who can confuse her husband with a perfectly placed phrase and she plays this to perfection. She never emphasizes what she does but merely does it with ease and leaves chaos in her wake. Both actors are perfectly cast and play with crisp perfection.

     As the Phillips, Theresa and Bob, we have Amanda McCallum and Brian Allard. She is sharp as a tack and McCallum makes her points with a barbed attack. He is clever and slick and Allard is almost too slippery as he maneuvers his way around his wife, and the other two women in the play.

     Then we have the Featherstones, Mary and William. This couple are the phobias waiting to attack the brain trust. She cannot speak in company without great effort and when she tries to overcome her tribulations she merely causes more confusion and more misunderstandings. He is a man not given to impulsive behavior who loses it, simply said. This couple are the comedy, pure and simple. Mary is played superbly by Jenna Doolittle and William is easily her match in the hands of actor Harry Vaughn.

     Marotta, as noted, moves his company between the apartments brilliantly. In the second scene of the first act he also moves the Featherstones between two dinner parties set on consecutive nights and we never lose track of where they are or what they are suffering at the hands of their hosts. If there was ever a farcical setup - without a single slamming door - it is this one that Ayckbourn uses to challenge his directors and actors.  This company, under Marotta’s tight and decisive direction, makes the most of this. Oddly, it just isn’t as funny as one would expect.

     As usual in these affairs the team of Abe and Allen Phelps (set design and lighting design respectively) provides perfect settings for the goings on. Michelle Blanchard has provided excellent 1960s costumes. Technically it is all in place for fun and laughter. As one character says late in the second act "Apologize....it’s easier that way." I repeat the lesson. This show somehow doesn’t deliver on its promise. I think it is the playwright who needs to apologize - or to just keep writing the much better plays that followed this one. Which he did.

     As for my memory of the comedy I anticipated seeing this time around, I apologize to myself. It’s a good lesson for a critic to not anticipate having today what he already consumed yesterday.

◊06/16/2008◊

 


How the Other Half Loves plays at the Theater Barn on Route 20 in New Lebanon, New York through June 22. Tickets are $20-$22 and can be purchased through the box office. Call 518-794-8989 for tickets and information.


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