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5.29.11
This is an Archival Site
There is now a new Rogovoy Report home



5.18.11
Weekend Preview May 19-24
Bob Dylan tributes, Deborah Voigt, Tom Paxton, Bill Kirchen, John Kirk and Trish Miller



5.18.11
Celebrating Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday in Style
Paying tribute to the greatest rock songwriter ever



5.17.11
FILM REVIEW: In a Better World and Of Gods and Men
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.17.11
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5.12.11
Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
Opera star to sing arias, show tunes on Saturday, May 21



5.15.11
Famed Spiritual Teacher to Speak on Nonviolence
Mother Maya in free talk at Sruti Yoga in Great Barrington, Mass., on Friday May 20 at 7pm



5.12.11
Special Effects Wizard to Be Honored by Film Festival
Doug Trumbull to be Feted by BIFF



5.11.11
Weekend Preview May 12-16
Cultural Highlights of the Berkshire Weekend



6.4.09
Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....



5.8.11
Berkshire Living to Cease Publication
A Farewell from Publisher Michael Zivyak



5.8.11
twiGs Branches Out
Lenox boutique launches new e-tail site



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy





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Ice Glen fires up summer '05

6.22.05
ICE GLEN
by Joan Ackermann
at Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, Mass.
through September 4, 2005

The world-premiere performance of Joan Ackermann's new play, ICE GLEN (seen on Sunday, June 19), at the Spring Lawn Theatre at Shakespeare & Company, kicks off the 2005 summer theater season in the Berkshires on such a high note that it's hard to imagine we have anywhere to go from here but down.

How can anyone top this production for its wit, intelligence, imaginative staging (making terrific use of the Spring Lawn space), and terrific performances? In ICE GLEN, Joan Ackermann has given us a well-told story in the guise of a period piece, the equal of any of the great American plays of the 20th century, yet brimming with themes and ideas presented and represented by a cast of characters that could easily be fleshed out in a full-length novel or film.

While ostensibly another play about the decline and fall of the Gilded Age, when Ackerman has really produced in ICE GLEN is a warm, serious, yet humorous look at the role of art in our lives -- at the various ways people approach, integrate, or allow art into their lives, whether they are making it, appreciating it, fostering it, or witnessing it.

By the time the 2.5 hour play sails by (and it goes down with the ease of a smoothie, without stinting on any of the nutritional value), playgoers will feel on intimate terms with any or all of the seven main characters that populate ICE GLEN, all of whom Ackermann affords a level of dignity and intelligence, and all of whom go through some sort of transition from the beginning of the play to the end.

It's hard to single out any standout performances in what is truly an ensemble effort. Brian Weaver's innocent Denby provides plenty of comic relief; Dennis Krausnick plays a wise old, Obi Wan Kenobi-like butler without coming across as too stuffy. The lovely Kristin Wold portrays an earth goddess with the soul of a poet, and Michael Hammond deftly executes the role of her would-be artistic and romantic suitor.

Perhaps the most challenging role is that of Dulce Bainbridge, played by Elizabeth Aspenlieder, who has to play vulnerability, loss, pain, desire, eagerness, stupidity, and anger, and sometimes has to turn from one to other of these on a dime. Aspenlieder, in what may be the role of her lifetime, does this seemingly effortlessly, and fully deserves the spontaneous burst of audience applause that concludes a totally surprising scene where her character does a full 180-degree spin and turns the tables on her tormentor.

It's fashionable, almost to a fault, for much new art to be about nothing more than art. What Joan Ackermann has succeeded in doing with ICE GLEN is to make a play that is fashionably up-to-date in that it is about the role of art in our lives, yet to do so using the most traditional tools of theater: plotting, drama, character, dialogue, mystery, and surprise.

Let's hope that instead of setting an impossible-to-top benchmark, Shakespeare & Co's ICE GLEN heralds a summer of many such theatrical triumphs. --Seth Rogovoy



You are stunningly, absolutely correct--the play was a pure joy, the performances strong, steadfast and moving. The actors (and direction) simply outdid one another, and Elizabeth Aspelieder was beyond stellar; when she outdoes herself in the future, as she surely shall, it will indeed be a pleasure to behold, and one worth the wait.
6/25/2005



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