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
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Celebrating Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday in Style
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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
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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
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Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....
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A Farewell from Publisher Michael Zivyak
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twiGs Branches Out
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[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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[THEATER REVIEW] THE GLASS MENAGERIE AT BTF
5.26.07
BERKSHIRE THEATRE FESTIVAL
The Unicorn Stage
The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
through June 30
review by SETH ROGOVOY, editor-in-chief and critic-at-large, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine.
(Stockbridge, Mass., May 26, 2007) -- The Berkshire Theatre Festival got its summer season off to a great start last night with a stirring, intimate rendition of the quintessential Tennessee Williams drama, The Glass Menagerie.
The choice to stage the play in the Unicorn Theatre instead of upon the Main Stage was a smart one, lowering some of the more feverish, excessive tendencies of Williams's drama and
script, and allowing the actors to play their roles in a more realistic fashion than is often the case in works by Williams that have grown to become quaint in their hyperbolic mannerism.
But none of these characteristics plagued this rendition, which adhered to BTF's highest standards. As always, the show was mounted with near technical perfection, with an evocative stage set by Carl Sprague, suggestive music and sound by Scott Killian, and brilliant lighting design by Matthew E. Adelson, whose lights and shadows were as much
characters in the play as the four actors who inhabited the stage for two acts.
But the play, which takes place in Depression-era St. Louis and focuses on a family broken financially, emotionally, and psychologically, was in the end carried by the actors, and in large part by Kate Maguire, playing the achingly desperate mother, Amanda Wingfield. Maguire's Amanda was an astonishing revelation for this playgoer, who until now only knew Maguire as the theater's artistic director and had never seen her perform on stage.
Maguire so fully inhabited the role of the desperate, at times tyrannical and psychologically abusive Amanda that it was almost uncanny. Hers was not only an emotional and linguistic transformation, but Maguire seemed to shape-shift herself into a fully different being. Williams did not write this character with much sympathy -- that's left to her two children for the most part -- and it's easy to become annoyed with Amanda's hectoring and shrieking and her insufferable romanticizing of her past, present, and her children's future. But Maguire brought such charisma to the role that all that went by the wayside, and a viewer was simply riveted by her. By the end of the summer, Maguire's performance will undoubtedly be counted as among the best of the season.
This isn't to short-shrift the other actors, including Tom Story as Tom Wingfield, Aya Cash as Laura Wingfield, and Greg Keller as The Gentleman Caller. They all put in fine work next to Maguire's powerful Amanda.
What a great way to start the summer theater season.
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