Another good one

The Theater Barn
Love with a few winks and tears
By Jeffrey Borak, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Article Last Updated: 06/19/2008 07:43:00 AM EDT


Thursday, June 19
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. — British playwright Alan Ayckbourn knows his way around classic farce. He more than has his way with the form in "How the Other Half Loves," a sly, penetrating comedy that is being given a well-crafted, smoothly played season-opening production at The Theater Barn.
"How the Other Half Loves" begins where most good farce begins — a lie. This one involves two people, Bob Phillips (Brian Allard) and Fiona Foster (Kathleen Carey), whose lies to their respective spouses, the much put-upon Teresa Phillips (a remarkable Amanda McCallum) and the bumbling Frank Foster (the able John Philip Cromie), about their whereabouts on the evening of their illicit get-together involve, unbeknownst to one another, a third couple, the hapless and completely innocent Featherstones — William (Harry Vaughn) and Mary (Jenna Doolittle).

William is an eager-to-please, upwardly mobile, ambitious young man. He has a clearly defined sense of propriety and order and a fashion sense that makes him an ideal, and very colorful, candidate for "What Not to Wear."

William's proudest creation is the dutiful Mary. When William is lead to believe by the cuckolded Frank that Mary has been unfaithful, he erupts like Vesuvius as his perfect life suddenly falls into a disarray that is the emotional equivalent of the physical mess that marks the Phillips household.

In this class-ordered world, Frank calls the tune.

He is Bob's boss and William's soon-to-be-boss. At home, however, it is Fiona who is in control. She finds what Frank cannot, fixes what he breaks, keeps him on a straight path even while she is deceiving him, which is all-too-easy to accomplish. Frank has a way of coming up with five every time he tries putting two and two together. He has an unerring knack for reaching the wrong conclusions from all the right information. At the same time, for all Frank's helplessness and bumbling, there is a subtle suggestion that perhaps this is his way of maintaining control, manipulating. It's a very subtle game these two, Fiona and Frank, play.
There may be class distinctions among the play's three couples — each of whom is played vividly and insightfully under Marotta's direction — but feelings transcend class, even if behavior may not. Commonality is emphasized by Ayckbourn's conceit, which has the two households — the Phillipses and the Fosters — sharing one set with action in each house often going on simultaneously as characters from one household pass characters from the other without so much as a by-your-leave. The highpoint is a scene at the end of the first act that unfolds over dinner at each house on successive nights, with the Featherstones switching back and forth between the Phillips' marital meltdown and the cool, even-handed, barely contained civility of the Fosters.

Marotta orchestrates all of this with shrewd skill. He draws from his likable cast a series of finely tuned, insightful performances, even when Ayckbourn takes odd turns, as he does in an unsettling scene in the second act involving a cruel and particularly self-serving Bob and a compliant Mary.

Laughter comes readily here, if not easily, and always with a telling understanding of the price betrayers and the betrayed are made to pay for perfidy.

Hey - nice review!

Cast up to comic challenge in ‘How the Other Half Loves’
Monday, June 16, 2008
BY PAUL LAMAR


Casting is all, and director Michael Marotta has come up with a sextet of performers who lift Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy “How the Other Half Loves” a notch with crisply detailed characterizations and fine ensemble work.

In fact, they’re so good that you begin thinking about other parts you’d like to see them play.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This script is from 1969, when Ayckbourn was 30. Marotta wisely leaves the piece in that period, with Michelle Blanchard’s delicious costumes, Abe Phelps’ colorful set, and tunes such as “A Taste of Honey” and “It’s a Happening” aptly punctuating the proceedings.

Bob Phillips (Brian Allard) is having an affair with his boss’s wife, Fiona Foster (Kathleen Carey). To distract their respective spouses, Teresa (Amanda McCallum) and Frank (John Philip Cromie), the lovers concoct rumors about a third couple, Mary (Jenna Doolittle) and William (Harry Vaughn), he an up-and-comer in Frank’s office, and she a nervous young corporate wife. Lies lead to confusion; confusion leads — generally — to audience laughter.

Deft Handling
Ayckbourn’s stagecraft is clever. One set serves for the London living rooms of the Fosters and the Phillipses, and both couples play scenes on the set simultaneously: time and space conflated.

The last half of Act 1 provides an even greater conflation, as William and Mary have dinner with both couples at the same time on Thursday and Friday nights, a theatrical conceit that showcases the performers’ split-second timing.

These farcical elements are embedded in a play that has its darker moments. Husbands hitting wives? A neglected baby, whose presence throughout becomes the object of jokes and an inconvenience to his parents? There are tonal shifts that sometimes throw off your expectations of an unmitigated comedy; wisely, I think, Marotta and his cast don’t try to find lightness where it isn’t.

These richly layered characterizations are impressive. Cromie’s Frank seems a mere bumbler, but whenever he sniffs deception, he causes a sweat. Allard’s Bob is believably brutish, which may be the quality that attracts the upper-class Fiona. Allard doesn’t flinch from risking our dislike of Bob.

McCallum’s Teresa is a whirlwind of frustration, a housewife who would like to have a voice in the world, as well as her own home. Poignant and powerful.

Carey plays another kind of wife, one who has taken matters into her own, capable hands. A bit steely, this Fiona, yet Carey can quickly reveal her depths with a funny, panic-stricken look or a hesitant reply.

Doolittle’s Mary makes sounds and faces that hilariously manifest this young woman’s insecurities, but, like the other women, Mary finds a spine. And Vaughn’s William is a buttoned-up bundle of boyish enthusiasm until an emotional meltdown in Act 2, which Vaughn paces beautifully. It’s superb work all around, replete with British accents.

The Theater Barn is celebrating its 25th season. It’s a class operation.

‘How the Other Half Loves’
WHERE: Theater Barn, 654 Route 20, New Lebanon

WHEN: Through Sunday

HOW MUCH: $20

MORE INFO: 794-8989

Power and Memory Outages

So...it's been a while. Sorry about that. Things get crazy during tech week. Let me try to catch you up on stuff.

Tuesday night New Lebanon lost power.

All of New Lebanon. The whole city. There was a crazy thunderstorm and it must have taken out an electrical substation. It was quite the adventure, coming back to the cast house after rehearsal with no lights. We're also not allowed to burn candles in the house, so...it was something else. Trying to get by on flashlight power alone. My cellphone was dying, so I ended up talking to Erin on the cast house phone downstairs- that brought back some memories from years past, before cell phones worked in this town.

The heat finally broke after that. Thank the heavens.

Thursday night's preview went pretty well, though the audience was small and rather unresponsive, which is not always that helpful when you're doing a broad farce. But the opening on Friday - oh my.

This is the 25th anniversary year for the Theater Barn, and the opening of the show was the opening of the season, so they went all out. Performers and directors from years past were invited to the show, as well as many loyal patrons. It was a full, full house of very friendly types, and the show was smash. They gave Joan, the producer, a standing ovation before the show when she got up to make a pre-pre-show speech. Michael's pre-show speech was hilarious,and the show went brilliantly.

Afterwords there was a party at the barn, lots of food from the local eateries, more wine than was healthy for anyone...then to the cast house for jello shots and pretty much anything else you want. By the time Erin called that night I was pretty well gone. I don't recall much of the conversation - just the bits she related to me later. I apparantly decided to go for a walk as I do many nights, though I was not in any state to do so. I got to the end of our block, turned left on the main road as usual, and then fell in a heap in the grass on the side of the road. It apparantly took me a number of tries to regain my feet, and then guided by Erin I made my way back to the house. Erin talked to me for three hours that night, very little of which I remember. She has the patience of a monk. She got me up to drink water and take Advil before I went off to sleep. The next day she told me I was cute, and was in no way annoyed. Jealous yet?

The next day I was up at 11 because we started rehearsal for the next show "Same Time, Next Year" at noon with a readthrough. Two actor play. Holy shit that's a lot of lines. Especially when you have to be offbook in a week.

Bet you can guess what I spent most of my day off today doing? Yeah. And I think I have most of the first scene down. Of six. Holy monkey. But I also got my laundry done, and was able to talk to Erin for a while. And Barb. And I tried to call some others, but they weren't answering. Sad.

Oh, and my brother had his first Father's Day yesterday. Congrats!

Line!

Sometimes this is harder than it looks.

I got through that first off-book rehearsal pretty well, but maybe too well. I took a rest (as much as I can in this 95 degree heat and with this nasty ass cold) and seem to have backslid a bit. Today was a rough rehearsal, I was stumbling over lines I know I know, stuff I've had for ages.

The thing is, I think I was second guessing and double thinking because of a conversation I had last night. One of our actresses and I had a chat last night when she was quite drunk where she sort of laid into me. It's not really worth going into many of the specifics of the conversation, and she did apologize to me first thing this morning, which I really appreciated, but ultimately the debate was over acting styles. She's just come out of a "theatre training school" one which, while I haven't heard of it, she compares to NYU and Julliard. She's very concerned with technique and motivations and homework and theatrical buzzwords. She doesn't like to be talked to out of character backstage. I'm much more about working in the moment, reacting to the person I'm dealing with as things progress, being open to change and intuition, and when I walk offstage, my character ceases to exist. Our styles clash, to say the least. The problem seems to be that while I respect the way she chooses to work, she sees the way I work as lazy and was quite hostile and disrespectful last night.

I can shrug most of that off without too much problem, and in fact, some of the other actors suggested she may be intentionally causing hostility between us, because our characters frequently fight, and she may be using that as a technique for more "realism" on stage. OK. The thing is, she hit me one place that hurt. She attacked my accent (we are using british accents in this piece) and it's something I'm struggling with on this show.

My character is lower middle class, which means that he's going to have a lower class accent. But he's a social climber, in a job that is somewhat above his status, so his accent isn't going to be Cockney, per se, but it's also not going to be posh. It's somewhere in the middle. And I think trying to find this middle ground is muddling me up quite a bit. The one time I feel solid in my dialect is in a scene where I come in drunk, and we've made the choice that since he's drunk, he slips back into more of a Cockney sound.

Anyway, I think part of the problem I was having today was that I kept half-listening to myself to see how my accent sounded, and when I'm as tentative on the lines as I am, plus half-muddled because of this damn cold that refuses to go away, I ended up being kind of a mess. I've now spent the majority of my evening going over my lines again and again, writing them out, speaking them out loud, working with Jenna, one of the other actresses in the show... Hopefully things will be better tomorrow. But it does worry me for when we get to the next show, the one where I have a much bigger line load. But no accent, so maybe that will help.

It never feels good when the one line you get from the director at the end of the night, two days after off-book date, is "get your lines down." But he was right. I was a mess today.

In other news, I continue to melt from the 95 degree heat, my throat has not improved, my cough is worse, and I still miss Erin nearly every single moment of the day.

But I think this will be a good show in the end. And that's what matters. Right?

Oh, also, back home the Drammy Awards were held tonight. Erin's last show, Wild Party, took home three awards - Actor, Actress and Choreography. All were deserved, and it's very exciting for her, especially since she was the Dance Captain, and as such, shares a bit in the Choreography award. On the other hand, Tales of Ordinary Madness and Robin Hood were both completely snubbed, which makes me sad. I was hopeful for Kendall getting another Fight Choreography award for Robin Hood, and the fact that Dalene didn't win an award for Tales means someone just wasn't paying attention. And personally, I thought Tales deserved an Ensemble award as well. Of course, we're all biased toward shows we worked on, so what do I know?

I'm also sad that Emily and Katy weren't recognized in the tech awards. Though I'm not sure who did win, and I'm sure they were deserving. We should give more tech awards. We'd be lost without them, and we barely acknowledge them.

Too. Hot.

Ok. First, it's fucking hot. HOT. Mid-90's, humid as hell, had a thunderstorm earlier where the rain was actually warm to the touch. (Also had to stop rehearsal for 10 minutes because it was so loud on the tin roof.) I live on the 2nd floor, and there's no air conditioning. It's slimy up here. Yuk.

Second, this is officially the worst cold I have ever had. Ever. I not only have a nasty, awful, breathtakingly painful sore throat, but I have it at the same time as the stuffiness and the coughing. (I usually get those one at a time.) Add in the heat...

Thank heavens for Erin. Today she suggested Ibuprofen, which I had been avoiding because I was worried about it interacting with the Acetaminophen (Tylenol) in the Day/Ny Quil I've been mainlining. She did some research online and assured me that they would be ok to take together. Turns out that Ibuprofen is the magic elixir for this soe throat. It takes it from unbearably, gaspingly painful to swallow to merely annoyingly painful to swallow. Mix with hot tea with honey and lemon (also Erin's suggestion) and it almost makes it a mere ache. Repeat as needed. Which is frequently.

Today was our first full run of the show, off book. We started rehearsing Monday. Today we were offbook. Friday next we open. And you know, we were all there, or mostly there. I'm more comfortable with the lines than even I realized. Not perfect - still need to brush them up, get them as close to exact as possible, but it's to the point now where we know we're gonna make it. I never had any doubts, this being my third time through here. It always amazes me we can do it this fast, but we always do it. The next one still scares me, though. A two person show in just two weeks? It's a killer script, and I can't wait to do it, but sheesh.

By the way - here's the link to the theater: TheaterBarn. You should check out my facebook page for some pictures of the theater, me, the cast, the cast house, etc.

Had a good evening off after the show, with a late call in the morning (noon). Ended up spending a good chunk of time on facebook-chat with Erin. It was just lovely, spending time together that way. For some reason it's different than a phone conversation, more leisurely - more like spending time together in a relaxed manner - like sitting round the living room reading books and working on paperwork together. I don't know if that makes sense. But it was nice.

We had a nice long conversation about being distant (it's been almost a week now) and the challenges and opportunities it gives to us. As hard as it can be, there is an upside, if you look for it. You learn about yourself - learn about your relationship. It gives you a new way to look at things - at your own reactions, at your own strengths and fears. It also forces a different kind of communication, since you lose most if not all of the non-verbals. I can't kiss her or hug her or hold her, so I have to be more articulate, more careful in my speech. I also need to be more...thoughtful in my daily life. We have to work at the closeness that normally seems to come so easily - whether that's frequent text messages throughout the day or taking photos as I go through my day so she can see where I am (yes, the very photos you all can benefit from on my facebook page). It's interesting. To me anyway. Might be really boring to you. Though other members of my cast seem enthralled (some curious, some appalled) by the openness of our relationship. It's a frequent dinner-time conversation. (Lovely cookout on Friday night...)

Also over the last couple nights I've watched the movie "Atonement." A brilliant film, it makes me really want to read the book. But I was really struck at the end by the whole "being kept apart from the one you love and hoping to get together in the end" theme. Guess it came at the right time. And of course the twist ending is breathtakingly sad. I cried, of course. But nobody who knows me would be surprised by that.

OK, I'm off to the shower, in the hopes that it will cool me to the extent that I can sleep.

Acting Sick

Ok, this was a rough day.

Trying to get through eight-or-so hours of rehearsal when your throat is on fire and all you want to do is sleep is not a picnic. But I suppose it could be worse. We finished blocking the play today and then ran act II. We got out an hour and a half early. I was very thankful for that, and promptly fell into bed for three hours.

Up again, I made some soup and came over to our producers house to use the wireless internet (we don't have any at the cast house). It's nice of them to let us sit out on their porch (or in the car, as I am now. Buggy.) and connect up. I did download a dial-up program so that I can access from the cast house, too, though slowly, I'm sure.

I think this show is going to be rather good. It's funny, the actors are strong and easy to work with. Michael is always stunningly efficient at getting these farces up and running in the tiniest time frame.

Speaking of tiny time frames, we have to be offbook by Saturday. And really, ought to be off tomorrow. So that's my plan for most of the rest of the night before sleeping. Lines, talk to Erin, go to bed.

Poor Erin. After the whole oil-pan incident, the mechanic said that she really needed a new engine because driving with so little oil had caused some sort of metal shards in there or something... so $900 later, she got the car back yesterday. Today the battery quit on her. She had to have the car towed back to the shop, thinking it was something wrong with the new engine. Nope - needed a new battery. She practically has a new car now.

I hate being so far away from her when I know being there would be helpful - either just as support, or as a working car to drive her around (she has my car, but can't drive stick, so that does no good.)

Anyway. Back to work.

Sore Throat Blues

So....I seem to have ended up with Erin's cold after all. At least that's the indication I'm getting from my respiratory system. Fun.

Rehearsals are going well. We finished blocking/working Act I yesterday and started on Act II this morning. It always kind of astounds me how quickly you can work through things when you aren't being distracted by 200 other committments (though my Portland life is doing it's best to call out to me - various emails from both Northwest Academy and Blue Monkey. But it;s easier to keep them in the background when they are so far away...)

Speaking of being far away, the one thing that I am finding hard about being here is being so far from Erin. After reaching the point where we spent most nights together and saw each other nearly every day, suddenly being deprived of that generous source of love and affection is a shock to the system at the minimum. We are talking each night, and texting, but that's not nearly enough. I've been down the "long-distance" road before, but this is something new. All the others, they all STARTED as long distance. Throwing this in after three months...well. I'll live with it, but I won't like it.

The Obama stuff last night was very exciting. Our cast all gathered in the living room to watch whatever coverage we could find (we missed the speech, and then spent hours trying to track it down in its entirety on line. We couldn't. Information age my ass.) It felt like being a part of history. And I don't mean all the historical blah blah blah about having an african american major party candidate, though that is certainly historical. I mean the historical fact of having a major party candidate that people actually believe in, rather than just accept as a necessary evil. First time in my lifetime, anyway.

Well, I gotta pack up and haul my sore throat back to rehearsal. Thanks for checking in with me today, and I'll try to get these up as often as I can.

Arriving at the Barn

So its been suggested to me that I keep a record of my summer adventures this year, and I think that’s a marvelous idea. We’ll see if I can actually keep up with it. For now, I’m writing this on Word at home, and will have to copy/paste it into the blog when I can find an internet connection. I’m working on it.

It seems as if perhaps my trips to New Lebanon will always be predicated by car trouble. Girlfriend car trouble, in fact. Last year, Lisa’s car was stolen the night before I was due to leave. This year, Erin’s car broke the day before I was due to leave. Apparantly the bottom of the oil pan fell out or some such. On the entrance ramp from I5-N to 14-W in Vancouver. For those of you not in the PDX area, this is an on ramp that is truly difficult to get to if you aren’t going the right way. Since she was following me at the time it happened, I had to double back, go all the way back across the state line into Portland, get off the freeway, and turn back again to get to where she was. It was quite an adventure that included me going to get her mom from her apartment, calling AAA, and then having Andrew come to help out since I had to get to an early call at Northwest Academy. I was late. Erin was late to her call for Wild Party. But we got the problem solved, and in good humor, and that’s what matters.

Sunday was a very long day, and included much of Monday. Final show at NWA, then strike, finished that around 5:45. Then up to Vancouver, finish unloading my things into Erin’s apartment, say hello/goodbye to her visiting mother, a quick dinner at Burgerville, to the airport. Erin was rushing off to first rehearsal for Pippin, so a quick goodbye, and into the airport personmill. Check in was easy, security was easy, but my dreams of an empty center seat in my row were dashed by a rather large lady, who while being very nice, took up a percentage of my already meager seating space. Sleep was not to be had, though I did enjoy the showing of “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” But I hate not being able to sleep on red-eyes.

Layover in Newark was uneventful other than them choosing not to indicate which gate I was leaving from on the departure screens. That took some tracking down. Oh, and the fact that when I put my jacket back on as I exited the plane in Newark, I realized that I had inadvertently taken Erin’s keys with me. I had put my car key on her chain so she would have it, but when I had gotten some things out of the car, automatically put the keys in my pocket. She had her mother’s keys since she was driving her SUV with the car oilpan-less, so hadn’t noticed. Dread filled me when I realized that she didn’t have a way into the Yoga studio for her 8 AM class.

After landing in Albany, I called Erin, who had cancelled her classes anyway because she’s quite ill. I overnight mailed the keys later in the afternoon, so hopefully she won’t be too inconvenienced. Sorry sweetheart!

I landed at 10, so rehearsal was delayed until 11. We started with a company meeting and a read-through. The play, How the Other Half Loves, is a Ayckborne farce, very British, but a halfhearted attempt had been made by the publishers to Americanize it. But really, it’s impossible to do, so we just changed all the references back. Much better.

After a lunch break in which I went grocery shopping, mailed Erin’s keys, went to the liquor store and got a sandwich, we met back to start blocking the first of the four scenes. Bearing in mind that I had had no sleep for the last 24 or so hours, I think I held up quite admirably. I had only worked with one of the actors before (and the director and SM) but we all seemed to fall into an easygoingness with each other (you have to when you only have 10 days to rehearse) and everyone seems lovely. Everyone was very understanding of my sluggishness, and I am well appreciative. We blocked the entire scene (1/4 of the play) and managed a stumble-through before the end of the day.

Finishing around 7, I decided on a short nap, then up for a few hours before bed, trying to get back to a normal schedule. Got a chance to socialize a bit with the rest of the group, watch some TV, look over lines, have a long walk, and have an excellent hour-long chat with Erin, which was lovely, but never enough. The shooting star was nice, though. Which brings me to now. Just got out of the shower, where I realized I forgot to pack a towel. Oops.

Its really good to be back in this house. Its almost a second home to me now, coming back for the third time. Lots of the same people around – Joan and Abe, the producers. Michael the Artistic Director and director of the show. Michelle, our SM. Phil, who is in this play and is directing the next one. And a handful of new folk as well. Amanda, who is playing my wife in this one. Harry, who keeps accidentally stealing my food because he and I bought basically the same stuff and he gets confused. A few others (still working on names. I’m bad with names.)

Anyway, I’m still a bit sleep deprived. I’ll try to keep up with this, but no promises. I gots me lots of lines to learn.