Shakespeare
and Company,
vision-turned-reality of the indefatigable Tina Packer (Artistic Director and Unstoppable Force), is
barreling along in its 29th season with a happy blend of classical,
contemporary and premiere theatre works. The site, a magnificent thirty-plus
acres in the heart of the Berkshires, reveals an ongoing dream-in-process: the
main stage building appears complete, a tented lawn space hopes to evolve into
The Rose Project (anyone reading this with millions adding up to $20 million
will be warmly received), and several derelict buildings, rooftops collapsing
and gaping with holes, would prefer restoration to demolition. Seeing this all
with the focused gaze of Elizabeth Aspenlieder (Publicity Director and Company Member), helped
in no small part by a glorious day that makes Lenox the envy of all who visit,
was an ideal introduction. I should add that I attended many productions at
their former site, The Mount, but this was my first visit to the larger,
company-owned compound. My purpose: to see their current production of Enchanted
April.
The play,
adapted by Matthew Barber from
the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim,
examines the lives of four women who struggle to know themselves and grasp a
manageable future in England shortly after the First World War. The men in
their lives – three are present and one is recently deceased – add
considerable confusion to the equation.
Two women,
Lotty and Rose, rent a house in Italy and, in order to secure the money
required, advertise for two more tenants. Hence, Lady Caroline Bramble and Mrs.
Graves complete the quartet. They swear off the company of men and plunge into
the adventure of a lifetime. The first act introduces the women and how they
meet one another. To a lesser degree, the act also shows us the role of men in
their lives. The second act, set in the Italian villa, reveals the world of
possibilities in the daring escape from reality.
Diane
Prusha and Tod Randolph are deeply touching as the two central women. The
first act provides them with a series of careful, unforced exchanges with their
husbands and each other. Humour emerges honestly and their separate struggles
strike deep and painful chords. Corinna May and Elizabeth Ingram, as Lady Caroline and Mrs. Graves, have less to
work with and are, therefore, at an emotional remove.
The play’s
second act, however, is weak and fails to sustain or develop the tension
established in the first half. To re-work that old slogan for the Cunard Lines,
“Much more than half the fun is getting there”. What begins as an intimate
personal story devolves into a patchwork of lives hinted at rather than
revealed with much insight, and farce rears its unwelcome head as the dialogue,
delicate at its best, descends to cliché and the improbable.
Lotty inviting
her husband to join her at the villa suggests that the woman cannot exist
without her spouse, a prig who fails to allow his wife any space for herself.
When Rose’s husband appears and we learn that he is having it off with Lady
Caroline Bramble, the coincidence strains credulity, but even this is
manageable compared to the total non-moment when wife and mistress appear together
and absolutely nothing happens. Rose makes a passing reference to a dead child,
but the subject is dropped and we add it to the list of clichés quickly
dissipating the play’s power. Lady Caroline is a secret drinker, an alcoholic
perhaps, but she meets the young man who owns the villa and they scamper
offstage where, presumably, life is sweeter. The cantankerous Mrs. Graves, a
scowl in dark clothing, derides all and sundry until, late in the play, she is
transformed into a British marshmallow.
I don’t know
the novel and I’ve not seen the recent film adaptation, but the playwright’s
juggling of lives and intersections is faulty and the results are unsatisfying.
On the other
hand, the production is smart, tasteful and, until two or three inept bits of
farce staging in the second half (flying teacups and bare bums delight the
audience but, to my perhaps curmudgeonly eyes, they also trade humanity for
pandering), well aware of its script’s shortcomings. Normi Noel stages the play with precision and choreographs
scene changes with style. What she has yet to achieve is a more varied rhythm
and pace throughout. The multi-scene play, cinematic in style, demands greater
momentum which would, perhaps, help to distract from the plodding final scenes.
The women are
more impressive than the men, and this may be in part due to the fact that the
playwright likes the women and is entirely uninterested in the men, why they
behave as they do and why the women choose to endure their self-adoration at
such high personal cost.
Enchanted
April wants to overwhelm us as
the Italian seashore overwhelms its characters. The playwright wants us to
believe that people can change in substantial ways and for longer than a 2-week
vacation. But until the characters are set free from the restricted plot line,
the play is a minor achievement that can be added to the list of stock
characters forced to inhabit stock situations.