www.scribblers.us/tj/

Bookmark it, please.

If I can move the archived stories from here, I shall. But all new stuff will be over there.

Thanks for joining me here for the past few years.

Chris

Shakespeare on Theatre; edited by Nick de Somogyi

Chekhov on Theatre; translated with an introduction and commentary by Stephen Mulrine

(Opus on Theatre series, published by Opus Book Publishers and distributed by Hal Leonard Publishing Company, 2013)

I’m not big for primers or anthologies or “introduction to”s.  I prefer to muddle through Complete Works and pick out bits I like rather than have the stuff predigested for me.

These books suit me, however. First off, they don’t generalize. They focus on what two of the greatest playwrights in the history of the world actually wrote about theater. Of course, in Shakespeare’s case these thoughts emanate from the mouths of characters he created rather than the bard himself. But editor Nick de Somogyi makes sure that Shakespeare on Theatre is much more than an exercise than sticking the word “acting” in a search engine of Elizabethan texts. All the obvious theatrical references are here, such as Hamlet’s advice to the players and the Mechanicals in the forest. But there’s also subtle commentary on allusions to props and audience reactions and critics. There’s a brief and useful look at Ben Jonson’s revised prologue to Every Man in His Humour, which ridicules theater customs of its era. Hard to tell exactly what readership this book is intended for, but it won’t scare away Shakespeare fans that are college-age or younger, and it speaks plain talk to actors who don’t want to be scholars.

Chekhov on Theatre, edited by Stephen Mulrine, takes a different tack. There’s much less commentary and many more quotes—not just from Chekhov’s plays (Seagull, duh) but from essays and letters and journals. The book opens with two separate appreciations of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, which Chekhov wrote for weekly humor/culture periodicals in Moscow. There are only brief introductions to the essay and journal sections, then an eclectic grouping of quotes corresponding to each of Chekhov’s major works. Useful appendices run down “the genesis of Chekhov’s Plays” (some of the most expressive writing in the book that’s not penned by Chekhov) and list the repertory shows at the Moscow Art Theater between 1898 and 1904 (showing how Chekhov’s plays compared, in number of performances, to works by Tolstoy, Ibsen, Hauptmann and Shakespeare).

Chekhov on Theatre and Shakespeare on Theatre have similar titles, similar cover designs and clock in at under 250 pages. Their similarities are noted. But the great virtue of this new publishing venture (which, while published in the U.S. by Opus and distributed by Hal Leonard, bears the imprimatur of major British theater-book publisher Nick Hern) is that the format is adjusted to each subject. The distinction of the Shakespeare volume is Nick de Somogyi’s easygoing overview of Shakespearean culture. The Chekhov book is noteworthy for Stephen Mulrine’s fresh crisp, clear-headed new translations of Chekhov’s writings.

Volumes are on on O’Neill, Strindberg, Williams, Beckett, Ibsen and Shaw and other playwrights who wrote a lot about themselves are promised in the future.

These are not cookie-cutter critical-essay compilation or fact-organizing homework aids. They actually attempt to distill key information about theater itself in the words of those who helped shape that artform.

I can’t bring myself to say these are be-all and end-all collections that completely nail their subjects. I still distrust quote-books and best-ofs in general. But these held my attention, felt substantial, and sent me scurrying to sources I hadn’t accessed before. Taken as short, general-interest courses in theater studies as pondered by famous writers, they’re refreshing and entertaining and a bit oddball.

As the Bishop of Winchester puts it in Henry VI Part One, “with sudden and extemporal speech/Purpose to answer what thou canst object.”

Whitney Dibo, Lauren Dubowksi and Kelly Kerwin, the new co-artistic directors of the Yale Cabaret.

Whitney Dibo and Lauren Dubowski and Kelly Kerwin have been hunkering down over a pile of play proposals since last week, figuring out what will make it into the Yale Cabaret’s 2013-14 season. Nearly 20 proposals were received for the remaining six slots of the fall semester.

Tomorrow we’ll all know what they decided, but there’s a lot more to a Yale Cabaret season than scripts and schedules. This is an institution which, by design, gets a whole new management team every year. Then that group produces some 20 separate plays, for a six-performance weekend each, during the school year. They do this whilst juggling their academic obligations at the Yale School of Drama. This can lead to a kind of inspired extracurricular chaos. Projects change shape quickly. Back-up plans are as important as plans. Artistic relationships blossom. Audiences come in order to be surprised.

This is a rare year in which the entire co-artistic team is female. Just as rare is the fact that Dibo, Dubowski and Kerwin all come from the Yale School of Drama’s Dramaturgy program; Cabaret artistic directors have most frequently come from the Directing program. But since even the most hands-on artistic directors tend to direct only one or two cabaret shows a year themselves, and there are plenty of directors around, it’s possible that the dramaturg incursion makes more sense managerially. “Artistically, one of the most useful things a dramaturg can bring to the table is the outside eye,” Dubowski says.

Perhaps rarest of all, as the three partners told me in an interview yesterday afternoon in the Cabaret garden at 217 Park Street, they will be changing how Cabaret shows are prepared.

This does not mean that the co-artistic directors are imposing some overarching conceptual vision, or altering work for ulterior motives. Far from it. Dibo, Dubowski and Kerwin see themselves as curators. They seek a balanced season, but have wisely not decided beforehand what that balance might entail. They are open to all sorts of fresh ideas. They will contribute heavily to each show’s production process by doing what they have been trained to do as dramaturgs—serve as extra eyes and ears, guiding the work with the useful insight that comes from being slightly removed from what the directors and actors and designers are doing.

To this end, they are creating a new role at the Cabaret: the Creative Producer. Each show will have one, charged with the task of making the show the best it can be. “It’s something we’ve seen at the theaters we’ve worked at,” Dibo says. “The institution has a vested interest in every production. We want them to flourish. It’s a ‘the buck stops here’ mentality.” To which Kerwin adds, “It’s one thing to take a risk. It’s another to not feel the institutional support when you take a risk.”

The new co-artistic directors have seen a lot of new plays developed, here at Yale and also in the thriving small-theater cities from which they hail. Dibo and Kerwin are from Chicago, while Dubowski comes to Yale from Philadelphia. “We come from ego-less cities,” they allege, where they’re used to friendly and open collaborations among artists.

While championing new works, these dramaturgs are also highly respectful of Cabaret traditions. They’ve remodeled the walls of the basement theater’s lobby area to highlight shows from the Cabaret’s illustrious past, going back to the 1970s and spotlighting such esteemed alums as Meryl Street, David Duchovny and Mark Linn-Baker.

“It’s about how we see the Cabaret as an institution, and how we see our team,” Dubowski says. “We knew we could work together, and create something that’s greater than the individuals involved.”

“We’re very much on the same page,” Kerwin adds. “Very different people, but complementary.”

This shared goal of “wanting to elevate artists in our communities,” as Dubowski puts it, involves asking the same questions over and over. “Why here?,” Kerwin says, “and why now?” Projects should be “relevant to now” but also “uniquely suited to the Cabaret space.” As working dramaturgs, the co-artistic directors all know of great scripts that are getting workshopped around the country. But it would be wrong, they feel, to produce something which doesn’t fit the special needs of that long low-ceilinged underground Cabaret room, or its particular audiences. “One of the questions we ask,” Kerwin says, “is ‘Could that get a production elsewhere?’ There are shows which are great shows, but wouldn’t have anything added to them by being done at the Cabaret instead of somewhere else.”

Kerwin, Dubowski and Dibo picked the initial three offerings of the Cabaret’s fall semester well in advance of the others, to demonstrate the sort of balance they’re seeking. First up, Sept. 19-21 is We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun, a new work directed by Kelly Kerwin and co-written by her, Helen Jaksch and Emily Zemba. It is a mystery of sorts, which “dives into the sensationalism surrounding the life and death of a fabulous drag queen.”’

September 26-28 brings a suitably claustrophic production of Amiri Baraka’s subway car-bound classic Dutchman. Amiri Baraka (who wrote the play in the early ‘60s when he was still going by the name Leroi Jones) has spoken at Yale many times, as well as at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Dutchman remains as vital as its playwright does, examining modern social relationships and civil rights in a manner that remains provocative and relevant.

The third show of the Cabaret 2013-14 season, and the only other one to be announced thus far (patience—we’ll have the rest tomorrow) is The Most Beautiful Thing in the World, conceived and directed by Gabe Levey. The last show at the Cabaret conceived by Gabe Levey also starred Gabe Levey (now in his final year of the Yale School of Drama acting program), but this one doesn’t. It stars Kate Tarker, and involves motivational speaking, audience participation, clowning and other empowering stuff.

So… balance. Old, new, dark, light, new faces, veterans.

“We view this very much as a curatorial position,” says Dubowksi of the trio’s artistic director obligations. Besides measuring out the tones and tempos, they’re looking to involve a wider range of students, especially from the 2015 and 2016 graduating classes, in the Cabaret when possible.

Along with new Yale Cabaret managing director Shane Hudson, the co-artistic directors’ communal goal is to “acknowledge the past, and break new ground.” Sounds like the Yale Cabaret we know and love, with a wonderful sense of self-awareness about why this little theater is so immensely important.

The interview in the Cabaret garden. Photographed by Sally Arnott, age 9.

Megan Chenot (as the Stage Manager), Mallory Pellegrino and Christian Shaboo in rehearsals for New Haven Theater Company’s production of Our Town, opening Sept. 19. Photo by Josie Kulp.

Tonight is opening night of the New Haven Theater Company production of Our Town. Any presentation of this show, one of the most often produced plays in the history of the American theater, comes with the annotation that the playwright was a longtime New Haven/Hamden resident. This year, there’s the added hype of it being the 75^th anniversary of Our Town’s Broadway premiere.

So, there’s special community interest in this most community-driven of dramas. Director Steve Scarpa, who’s acted frequently and directed occasionally for NHTC, says he proposed this project to the group not just because of its strong local flavor but because “there are so many good people” in the company right now that he knew casting such a large show wouldn’t be a problem.

This doesn’t mean he didn’t keep an open mind, and take a few risks. The Stage Manager, for instance—played over the years by everyone from Frank Craven to Hal Holbrook to Spalding Gray to Paul Newman to Thornton Wilder himself, has been cast with a female actor, Megan Chenot (who played opposite Scarpa in NHTC’s production of Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow last year). This is not unheard of—Geraldine Page has stage managed in the show, as has Helen Hunt—but it is uncommon. “I had only ever seen it with a male Stage Manager,” Scarpa confesses. One of the cast members in this show, George Kulp, played the Stage Manager in a previous production of Our Town which Scarpa directed, yet this time Kulp is playing the newspaper editor, with Kulp’s wife Susan playing his wife onstage. Which leads to a separate, intriguing batch of casting choices—there are three real-life married couples in the show.

As for the characters, Scarpa says there are plenty of well-thought-through interpretations. The director sought reality and truthfulness, and was pleased to find that “every character in this play, even the tiny little supporting characters, has a story.” He encouraged the actors to bring out those stories, and also not to play into social or theatrical stereotypes. The choirmaster character Simon Stimson, often staged as comic relief, is being done by local actor Jim Lones with a measure of gravity. “Jim was in the Paul Newman Our Town as a dead person in the third act,” Scarpa says. “We talked a lot about his character here. He and I both see him as a tragedy.”

While serving its many loyal company members with rewarding roles and the sort of ensemble endeavor they crave, Our Town is also a departure for the current regime of New Haven Theatre Company. The company began in the ‘90s doing Shakespeare and contemporary classics (Look Back in Anger) in the dance room at BAR, then shifted under a different group of performers and directors into improv comedy, new works and more contemporary dramas. The current organization has chosen a lot of gritty shows—two Mamets; Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio; the musical Urinetown—amid lighter yet still sassy stuff such as Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Our Town is among the most “traditional” things they’ve attempted, and nearly the oldest. (The company did Odets’ Waiting for Lefty a few years ago; that union-happy sketch-play is three years older than Our Town.)

It’s only sensible, given the change in tone and era, that NHTC has once again found itself a new venue to stage the show in. Our Town is being performed in the back of the English Market antiques boutique on Chapel Street. “It makes a wonderful theater space,” Scarpa says, and “we’ve found a great way of carving up that space” with the set design: large, almost pillar-like structures meant to evoke both “musical notes” and the ancient civilizations Wilder alludes in his play about modern living (and dying). Scarpa also promises “no New Hampshire accents” and no period costumes. “Like it says in the script, it’s a neutral time and place—it could be anywhere.”

“It’s an effort to create something beautiful,” the director sums up. “Yet it can also be harsh. It’s a play about death.”

For Steve Scarpa, he also feels it strongly as a play about generations, and aging, and changing times. “I love this play. I’ve always loved this play,. I react differently to it at different times. The last time I directed it, my sister was getting married. This time, she’s recently had a child, my niece. And this play is really good for our guys. They’re really going for it. Being truthful.”

The New Haven Theater Company production of Our Town plays Sept. 19-21 and 26-28 at 8 p.m. in the back room of the first floor of the English Market Building, 839 Chapel Street, New Haven. $20. $12 students. www.newhaventheatercompany.com

The cast of New Haven Theater Company’s Our Town, Sept. 19-28 at English Market on Chapel Street.

Richard Foreman.

It’s not like I don’t get all excited at Tony Awards time, seeing whose careers will be validated and uplifted by overdue recognition. But I’m frankly more fascinated with the Obies and  various regional arts awards which honor those for whom Broadway isn’t necessarily the be-all end-all career goal.

The New York Innovative Theatre Awards, dedicated to acknowledging the high standards of Off-Off Broadway, announced its Honorary Awards for 2013. I dig honorary awards; they’re not competitive in the sense of nominations and sports-mentality horserace-calling. They’ve just given to folks who deserve them. The IT Awards has a whole other slate of awards which is nomination-based (in several categories pitting Shakespeare against 20^th century standards against modern works); that list is here.

http://www.nyitawards.com/news/newsitem.asp?storyid=342

These are those to be honored by Honorary Awards:

• Richard Foreman.

• The Dramatists Guild Fund

• terraNOVA Collective

Foreman, the eternal maverick Ontological-Hysteric artiste, deserves every award he’s ever been up for. His range extends well beyond small dimly lit spaces above churches. He was, for instance, entrusted with Suzan-Lori Parks’ play Venus when that playwright was on the cusp of major glory, in a production which played the Yale Repertory Theatre before moving on to New York’s Public Theatre. Foreman’s getting the IT’s Artistic Achievement Award.

The Dramatists Guild Fund funds non-profit theaters doing plays by American playwrights, and has extended its mission in the last five years or so due to its reclassification as a 501c3 charity. The DGF gets the IT’s Ellen Stewart Award, named for the provocative leader of LaMama.

terraNOVA collective gets the Innovative Theatre Awards’ 2013 Caffe Cino Fellowship Award. In this case, fellowship means “consistently produces outstanding work,” and the award comes with cash to help produce more. terraNOVA, founded by former Abbey Theatre artistic director Ray Yeates, develops new works through multiple strategies, from readings to workshops to festivals.

The Ninth Annual IT Awards Ceremony happens 7 p.m. Sept. 30 in New York City, at the Baruch Performing Arts Center’s Mason Hall (corner of 23^rd Street and Lexington). That website again: http://www.nyitawards.com/

On September 21 at the Shubert Theater, there’ll be excerpts from a musical theater piece originally staged in 2010 at the Abbey Theater in Ireland. It’s a song cycle based on the works of William Butler Yeats, the legendary poet and playwright who happened to co-found the Abbey.

Plus they’ll do “Fisherman’s Blues.”

It’s a Waterboys concert. Many fans of Mike Scott’s band may be unaware that the acclaimed new album An Appointment with Mr. Yeats began as a theater piece, with a lead actor (Michael Harding) and special guest musicians.  The show played Dublin again a few months later, and then Barbican Hall in London. (That’s the concert hall part of the Barbican Centre, not the theater part. But still.)

The album version of An Appointment with Mr. Yeats was released in the fall of 2011.  Most of the reviews don’t really delve into the songs’ theatrical or literary qualities. There’s a Mike Scott interview in PopMatters where he describes the Abbey Theatre concerts, here.

Nearly all the songs’ lyrics are taken from Yeats’ poems, but “Let the Earth Bear Witness” contains lines from the 1902 one-act Cathleen ni Houlihan, and there are apparently a few other quotes from Yeats plays.

Not that the Waterboys’ Shubert show, despite the venue’s own rich dramatic history, will seem much more playlike than a typical theater pop concert. And not that Scott and the Waterboys are heading in a more scriptlike direction: the next Waterboys turn may be nostalgic, with the fall release of a box set feting the band’s classic Fisherman’s Blues album. The next new album appears to be made up of songs Scott wrote himself. Yeats, for his part, died in 1939. But Irish theater scholars can happily join the ranks of pop fans Saturday for a show celebrating a major dramatist and poet at a landmark New Haven theater.

The Waterboys play Saturday, Sept. 21 at the Shubert Theater, 247 College Street, New Haven. Tickets are $35-$45. www.shubert.com

Romeo & Juliet

Adapted from William Shakespeare. Directed by Annie DiMartino. Musical Direction by Carol Taubl. Stage manager: by Mallory Pellegrino. Lighting design: Daniel Gookin. Student assistant stage managers: Ally Kaechele and Jennie Davies.

Summer wouldn’t be over without a glorious, anything-goes burst of Shake-It-Up Shakespeare, the summer youth ensemble program run by Long Wharf Theater for the past several years. The shows merge Shakespeare scripts (or large chunks of them, anyway) with modern music sensibilities. With serious lighting and sound design and running times in the two-and-a-half-hour range, these are not minor endeavors. They push hard, sing strong, and hammer you with earnest, well-rehearsed high-school-age professionalism.

One area where Shake-It-Up-Shakespeare doesn’t shake it up is in the casting of lead roles. The male stars are invariably the sons of the company’s music director Carol Taubl. This time, Jeremiah Taubl is Romeo, James Taubl is Benvolio (a role which has been cut a lot less than the other supporting roles in the play, giving Romeo’s cousin more stage time than Juliet) and Sam Taubl as a tightly wound Tybalt.

A little Taubl goes a long way for me. I feel that Romeo could get his moony-eyed points across with several fewer songs. But it’s those songs, rather than the ubiquitous Taubls, which are the biggest distinction of Shake-It-Up Shakespeare shows. The creative team finds over a dozen modern pop songs which they feel correspond to the play’s themes, then insert full renditions of these songs into the drama, using a live band (headed by Taubl matriarch Carol on keyboards) and arrangements which deftly play to the young actors’ vocal strengths.

When a particularly well known song such as Creedence’s “Bad Moon Rising” or Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” (in a slow, balladic arrangement similar to Fountains of Wayne’s cover version) or The Lumineers’ “I Belong to You” (replete with “heys” and “hos”), I’ve noticed that this can be jarring for the audience, whose audible reactions can include snickers and guffaws. But when there are songs well-known to the cast but not as familiar to their parents (because, face it, 90 percent of the people in the auditorium are related to someone in the show)—songs like Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years” or Taylor Swift’s “22,” some real dramatic traction may be gained.

For one thing, a lot of the performer have more affinity for the songs than they do for the Shakespearean dialogue. All of singers are impressive, and the band is neatly organized to allow for a lot of guest players (including Taubl boys on violin). The setting is similar to past Shake-It-Up Shakespeares I’ve seen, with a central bandstand, a scaffoldy tower off to the side (which in this case serves as Juliet’s balcony) and clearly marked playing areas at right, left and center.

Do such productions overreach? Of course they do—are you kidding? The kids (and their adult enablers, director Annie DiMartino and musical director Carol Taubl) lay on the pop and the sharply (if cleanly) condensed Shakespeare. Then they also pile on outrageous directorial concepts. I’ll quote from the program: “Our production takes the familiar tale of star-crossed lovers and recasts the families in terms of social class—the Montagues are from impoverished Appalachia and the Capulets live in the Gatsby-esque glamor of wealth and privilege.” No matter that the cultures they describe are geographically specific and hundreds of miles apart. The production makes no attempt to explain how the stereotypical flappers and stereotypical hillbillies they’ve devised could end up at the same costume party, let alone meet in the streets of Verona every day. Other than a few bluesy interludes, the income disparity isn’t particularly played up in the sets and costumes, let alone the accents or attitudes.

Sometimes you don’t know where to look. But if you think I’m describing a train wreck, I’m not. It’s kind of the opposite. This summer program seems to be bursting with creativity, concepts, cockamamie schemes and yes, Taubls.

But, to me, that’s the joy of these Shake-It-Up Shakespeare endeavors. They might as well be called Throw-It-Against-a-Wall-and-See-What-Sticks Shakespeare. I came away happy to have seen the merits of a female Mercutio (Lilly Holmes, shifting easily from glittery jazz dancer to  tomboy) and the demerits of a too-violent father Capulet (Henry Tobelman, whose violent physical rages, which included ducking his daughter’s head in a bathtub and slapping his wife repeatedly, seemed superfluous to the character’s already severe verbal outbursts).

Personally, I welcome extreme interpretations of classics; they don’t displace whatever a “classic” version might be, and some leeway is required when your cast, buy design, is young and pop-driven (and overwhelmingly suburban and white, but that’s another story).

If I have a big issue with this rendition of Romeo & Juliet, it’s not the Appalachian/Jazz Age dichotomy, or that overdone Creedence tune, or the tyranny of Taubls. It’s the imbalance of tragedy and romance. Much is made of death, and grief, and murderous encounters; those scenes (and songs) are drawn out to extreme length. But the love scenes are brief, or concealed, or underdone, or left out altogether, and the songs which accompany them are uncomplicated and light. I totally get that anger is easier, and funner, for young folks to act than mushy scenes. But this is Romeo and Juliet, and with so many interesting problem-solving choices already holding the show together, more effort should have been taken to make sure that the titular lovers really appeared to be in love. Luckily, there’s lots else to admire: the energy, the stellar singing voices, the ensemble feel, and, oh yeah, the Shakespeare.

What the lights are supposed to look like in the Elm Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar, continuing through September 1 in New Haven’s Edgerton Park. Photo by Mike Franzman. 

When it is lighted, come and call me here.

—Brutus, in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Act II Scene 1

Edgerton Park was dark on Wednesday night. It wasn’t meant to be. The actors of the Elm Shakespeare Company were in their places backstage to perform the tragedy Julius Caesar. ESC marketing manager Barbara Schaffer had done the opening speech thanking all the sponsors, basking in a soothing blue onstage light.

Then, just as we were all set to beware the Ides of March, another Shakespeare conceit took precedence: Out, out, brief candle. No lights. Not a flicker. No sound. No performers.

Within moments, ElmShakes founder James Andreassi had come out to soothe the crowd, who were literally in the dark about what had just happened.

Andreassi explained that, apparently, “the power in the whole park has gone out.” He joked, encouraging the crowd to sing while they waited. He cajoled: “If you brought your car into the park, please direct your lights towards the stage.” It didn’t appear to be a serious offer, though there is a precedent in Connecticut summer theater. I quote from the book Broadway in a Barn by Charlotte Harmon and Rosemary Taylor, which chronicles the authors’ adventures running the Chapel Playhouse in Guilford and the Clinton Playhouse in Clinton:

I remember one night when the lights went out along with a big crack of thunder in the middle of the first act of Life With Father.

After about twenty minutes of darkness we phoned the power company. They didn’t know when the power would be restored, maybe not for a couple of hours. Holding a flashlight, I went before the curtain and told the audience I was sorry but we couldn’t give a show and they could stop at the box office for a refund.

Suddenly a man in the third row stood up and said, “Mrs Harmon, I don’t think you have to do that. If  you’ll open the doors I’ll drive my car right up on the sidewalk. With my strong headlights I’m sure I can throw enough light on the stage for the show to go on.”

We’ll always be grateful to that man. Business wasn’t so good that week, and it would have killed our whole season if we’d had to refund. Who was the man? Sherwood Day, grandson of Clarence Day, who wrote the original book, Life With Father.

Back to Julius Caesar. After 15 minutes or so or the audience amusing themselves with potential causes for the blackout—did someone say “Good luck”? Mention the Scottish play? Was one of the show’s acknowledged “major sponsors,” the United Illuminating Company, aware of this?—James Andreassi emerged again. He had bad news. UI was indeed on the case, but wouldn’t arrive for at least another quarter hour, and there was no guarantee that things would get fixed even then. Andreassi declared the performance cancelled. He tried to comfort the audience by telling them all they’d missed: the character Andreassi plays, Brutus, stabs Caesar, and that’s pretty much it.

“Show the stabbing!,” someone heckled. But this was not one of those situations where the actors could brashly will a production to life despite a technical mishap. For one thing, the battery-operated mics would not last the length of an unelectrified performance. (One also suspects that the Actors Equity union, which represents all the principal players in the show, would frown on a situation where actors were encouraged to stumble around on a multi-platformed stage in the dark.) Andreassi said that if we wanted to see the cast, they’d be at Delaney’s Pub. “We’ve lost this and that,” he said, “but never the full electric power.”

Exiting the park, I learned that the culprit appeared to be the company’s own electric transformer. Nobody to blame, just a machine. Jamie Burnett, who’s done the electrical design (and many many other things) for Elm Shakespeare since the company started, says it wasn’t overloaded. It just didn’t work.

The show will presumably go on Thursday night. I hope that all the elderly people who were bused in from Hamden’s Whitney Center will be able to return. I was planning to review last night’s performance, but can’t attend again until at least Sunday due to a different summer Shakespeare offering (a teen pop-music take on Romeo and Juliet at the Long Wharf Theatre), the opening of the new play Oblivion at Westport Country Playhouse, and other commitments.

Nice that there are so many theater things to do in August, from light entertainment to pitch-black tragedy. I will return to praise Caesar at a later date, when he is not buried in darkness. And I think this would be an appropriate time to suggest that we all consider making generous financial donations to the Elm Shakespeare Company. Sucks when you can’t afford to keep the power on.

The season-opener, April 29 through May 17, has already been known for a while, since it’s a co-production with Hartford Stage, which announced its own season months ago. It’s Noel Coward’s A Song at Twilight, the final play in which this eminent thespian served as both author and star. The co-produced revival is significant since this is the first show Lamos has done at Hartford Stage since he was the theater’s artistic director from the late ’70s into the mid-’90s. Interestingly, of all Noel Coward’s dozens of plays, A Song at Twilight was also chosen by Arvin Brown to direct at the Long Wharf Theater shortly before he left his post as artistic director there in the early ’90s. The play clearly has some special charm for Connecticut. It’s set in Switzerland, and concerns an aging writer (allegedly based on Somerset Maugham, with some attributes of Coward himself) who’s been covering up his homosexuality for most of his life and now confronts a visitor who calls him on the foul manner in which he treated a particular ex-lover.
The second slot, June 10-28, is yet to be announced, but whatever it is, Lamos has already attached himself to it as director. Mayhaps it’s a new work? The last couple of seasons, WCP has brought in some new plays, including the one there right now.
The July 15 through August 2 choice is inspired, for a regional theater that prizes its history as an all-star summer stock house but also wants to connect with the modern theater world. David Kennedy will direct the Frederick J. Marker/Lisa Lone Marker translation of stage/screen genius Ingmar Bergman’s late 20th century adaptation of Hendrik Ibsen’s early 20th century masterpiece A Doll’s House. Again, there’s some local precedent for such programming: two of Bergman’s own films were adapted for Yale Rep and Yale Cabaret stage productions in recent years. Doll’s House, of course, has been done all over the place forever.
Cheery Brit farce, a mainstay genre for the WCP, rears its bubbly head August 19 through September 6 with Alan Ayckbourn’s little-seen-in-the-states Thing We Do For Love, which the prolific playwright/director wrote in 1997 and which concerns sibling rivalry and relationship hijinks. There’s a neat BBC adaptation of the play which occasionally gets rerun on the BBC Radio 4 streaming radio site, which uses the 1997 song “Things We Do for Love” by 10cc as its theme song. No director or other details have been mentioned for the Westport production.
The main season ends October 7-25 with a Lynn Nottage play, Intimate Apparel. Nottage was a regional theater favorite long before she won a Pulitzer. Another strong choice in a diverse and potentially delightful season.
One reason for announcing seasons over half a year before they happen is so a theater can sell subscriptions. So subscribe: Westport Country Playhouse, (203) 227-4177, www.westportplayhouse.org

I’ve had to endure so many summers without a new Charles Paris mystery that I savored this one for weeks. It’s been well over a decade since Simon Brett last published an adventure of this professional actor/ amateur sleuth. In the meantime, the Paris character has gained new cultural cachet through a series of BBC radio adaptations of the earlier novels, with Paris played by Bill Nighy.
The new book’s title, A Decent Interval, would seem to comment on the long wait since the last time Charles Paris appeared in print. Reading it, one suspects it might have been written long before it was published. There are several references to Facebook and tweeting and cell phones and other proclivities of what Charles sees as a much younger generation. But it’s a sort of extreme cluelessness which comes off as years out of date. This is especially true when you consider that many of the earliest users of new personal communications devices, be they pagers or mobile phones or texting devices, were actors who needed to be constantly accessible in case their agents called.
Granted, Charles Paris has a lousy agent, Maurice, who seldom calls. And some quaintness is necessary in these mysteries set in fancy old theaters, in which the most villainous types tend to come from suspicious newfangled media like radio and television. (Simon Brett writes even quainter stuff in his Fethering mysteries, about elderly women sleuths in a British seaside village.) But a running gag about Paris and some of his sexist male drinking companions having to constantly remind themselves not to say “actress” anymore and refer to all members of the profession as “actors” seems beyond dated, practically Paleolithic.
The best lines in A Decent Interval aren’t, as can be said of the earliest Paris adventures, the memorably bad reviews which Paris parenthetically adds to his recollections of his past stage triumphs. Here’s a current underwhelming example:
The chauffeur ushered him into a reception area almost exactly like the hallway set of a television play in which Charles had played a young member of an Edwardian family about to be decimated by the First World War. (“Charles Paris showed about as much backbone as an overboiled piece of macaroni.”–The Spectator.)
No, the wittier asides this time around, in a series that is nearly wholly built of such asides and where the central crimes tend not to happen until a third of the book has transpired, are at the expense of Shakespeare, not Charles Paris. In the play-within-the-book this time, he’s playing Ghost and Gravedigger in an overconceptualized production of Hamlet which stars two American Idol-type TV celebs, and is overseen by a bottom-line bums-on-sears commercial producer. The cast has been filled out with reliable old-school theater types like Paris, which gives Brett the conflict he needs to create both amusing indignation and a suspenseful murder scenario.
There’s muttering of Hamlet without a prince. The set design is a detailed gigantic model of Hamlet’s brain. When the mental strain of trying to solve several crimes at once affects his performance as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, he mangles Shakespeare’s phrase “wit and gifts” as “git and wifts.”
That’s where the joy of a Charles Paris novel lies, in a sheer theatricality. The most fully drawn characters tend to be theaters and plays, not the crime solvers and criminals. I often find myself immediately forgetting whodunit when I’ve finished reading a Charles Paris mystery, but with lasting memories of the stage shows in which the hapless Charles Paris has appeared.