Coming up Roses
If irrepressible impresario Tina Packer has her way, it may soon be possible to experience life upon the wicked Elizabethan stage without going any nearer to merry old England than the Berkshires. A plan has been afoot for three years to build an accurate replica of the Rose Playhouse, the setting of the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love and the debut venue of Titus Andronicus, on the 63-acre Lenox campus of Shakespeare & Company, of which Packer has been artistic director since 1978.
Now Bostonians can get a closer look at what it’s all about without even venturing down the Mass Pike. An exhibit explicating the project (and the history of its namesake) opened to great fanfare last week at the Boston Architectural Center, 320 Newbury Street. " Designing the Rose " is displayed on two 32-foot-long series of panels festooned with quotes from the Bard and diagonally skewed across the BAC’s lobby-level McCormick Gallery. On one side of the long three-dimensional rectangle are drawings and information detailing the construction, renovation, and history of London’s Rose and the discovery, in 1989, of its original foundation and other artifacts, which had been buried under a 1950s office building that was razed to make room for a newer one. On the opposite side are illustrations of Shakespeare & Company’s ambitious $30 million plan for its property, including the authentic replication of the Rose and a " Rose Village " consisting of library and exhibition space and a rehearsal hall. Alas, no bear baiting or brothels, true neighbors to the Rose of Shakespeare’s day, are planned for Lenox.
The exhibit was kicked off in style on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, with a gala opening hosted by BAC president Theodore Landsmark and attended by members of the Rose USA team including renowned British Theater Projects Consultant Iain Mackintosh (who on Friday delivered the BAC’s annual Cascieri Lecture in the Humanities), English architect Jon Greenfield and English master builder Peter McCurdy (both of whom worked on the Globe Theatre replication in London), and architect George Marsh, a principal at Boston’s Payette Associates, which created the S&C master plan and will design the Rose Village. To cap things off, Packer delivered a spirited if rambling lecture tying the imagery of the rose to English history, the history of poetry, and the works of Shakespeare. The high points of her talk (apart from her irresistible cackles) were riveting performances of Queen Margaret from Henry VI Part III (in which she knocked off a BAC board member as York), the Princess of France from Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Juliet. Says the latter: " That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet. " As will success if this far-reaching project, which includes a year-round international center for Shakespeare performance and studies, is pulled off.
" Designing the Rose " is on display to the public at the BAC (617-262-5000) through June 1. And if that whets your appetite, a field trip to Lenox this summer to experience Shakespeare & Company (413-637-3353) might be in order. The troupe offers nine full-fledged productions, including the Bard’s Much Ado About Nothing and King Lear, as well as a festival of " prelude " entertainments intended to capture the feel of the Bankside in the 1590s, May 16 through December 21. From July 31 to August 31, the company’s Summer Performance Institute performs Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona on a diminutive outdoor platform called the Rose Footprint Theatre that marks the spot where the completed Rose will be. If you conjure a vision of 500 people seated at three levels of the timber-frame, plaster, and thatch replica, with 200 groundlings milling before the stage, you’ll get new insight into how much of a contact entertainment Elizabethan theater — an experience Packer hopes to duplicate — was.
Summer stages
There’s good news for theater junkies who stick close to town rather than toddle off to the Berkshires or Cape Cod in the summer months. First, the run of The Producers, the Broadway show that broke the record for Tony Award hogging, has been extended through September 13 at the Colonial Theatre. But it can’t be " Springtime for Hitler " every night. And now Alberta Hunter, George Gershwin, and Chopin have gotten into the act.
In June, the Huntington Theatre Company offers Cookin’ at the Cookery, Marion J. Caffey’s celebration of legendary jazz singer-songwriter Hunter. Born in 1895, she was a major headliner of the 1920s and ’30s who retired in 1956 to become a nurse. When forced to retire from that career, she launched a show-biz comeback at 82, at the Cookery, a club in New York’s Greenwich Village. Caffey also directs the show, which features such Hunter-identified tunes as " Sweet Georgia Brown " and " The Darktown Strutter’s Ball. " It plays on the Huntington’s mainstage June 20 through 29. Tickets are $32 to $47; call (617) 266-0800.
Across the river, the American Repertory Theatre will bring back last summer’s runaway hit, George Gershwin Alone, in which actor and pianist Hershey Felder both portrays and plays Gershwin in a sort of biographical concert, July 5 through 26. That will be followed by the world premiere of Felder’s new " imagination with music, " Romantique, August 1 through 17. This one centers on 19th-century Polish-born composer Frédéric Chopin, as played by Felder (no doubt with some ivory tickling), and his relations with the novelist George Sand, his lover of nine years, and the painter Eugène Delacroix. Stephanie Zimbalist, of television’s Remington Steele, plays Sand, and Tony winner (for Kiss of the Spider Woman) Anthony Crivello is Delacroix. Joel Zwick, who directed the hit film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, helms both shows. Tickets are $45 ($35 for seniors, students, and ART subscribers), or $65 for both shows; call (617) 547-8300.
Cape Cod’s adventurous Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater has also announced its season, which kicks off May 21 through June 7 with Tony winner Yasmina Reza’s The Unexpected Man. David Wheeler directs the show, which features Paul Benedict of Waiting for Guffman and The Jeffersons fame. This will be followed by the New England premiere of Billy Aronson’s The Art Room, which is inspired by a neglected Feydeau farce, June 12 through July 5; Frank Speiser’s one-man Jewbano, in which the writer/performer tells of a life that ranged from Cuba to the Catskills, Mondays and Tuesdays June 30 through August 26; the world premiere of Victoria Stewart’s Live Girls, an " exploration of race, sex, and ethics " stemming from the author’s experience as assistant to Anne Deavere Smith, July 10 through 26; David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning Proof, July 31 through August 30; Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, September 4 through 27; and Sam Shepard’s True West, October 2 through 19. Tickets are $21; a season subscription offers seven shows for the price of six. Call (508) 349-6835.
And after the fall
Looking beyond summer, the Lyric Stage Company of Boston has unveiled its 2003-2004 season. Well, most of it; a new African-American play has yet to be selected. The season will be the Lyric’s 30th, and artistic director Spiro Veloudos intends to honor its founders (and producing and artistic directors, respectively, for its first 24 seasons), Ron Ritchell and Polly Hogan, by producing one of their favorites, Noël Coward’s surefire comedy of love after divorce, Private Lives. Likewise a nod to the Ritchells will be a reprise of " the most requested show in the theater’s history, " the ingeniously costumed camp extravaganza Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly, conceived by the late Crabtree and Mark Waldrop, with sketches and lyrics by Waldrop and music by Dick Gallagher. The season also includes Pulitzer winner (for Talley’s Folly) Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days, which revolves around corruption in a Midwestern cheese factory and the politics of community theater; Christopher Durang’s " happy perversion " of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, titled Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge; The Spitfire Grill, a musical by James Valcq and Fred Alley based on the Lee David Zlotoff film about a young woman and a small town both looking for a new lease on life; and Michael Frayn’s hilarious backstage farce Noises Off. Precise production dates are not available, but season subscriptions are; call (617) 437-7172.
Once is enough for Audra
Soprano Audra McDonald, Broadway star of Marie Christine, Ragtime, Master Class, and Carousel, was scheduled to give two concerts at the end of the month, May 30 and 31 at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, but the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, which is sponsoring her appearance, has announced that the May 31 show is being cancelled. Showing a refreshing candor, the Celebrity Series acknowledged that the reason behind the consolidation of the two shows into one was " slow ticket sales. " McDonald’s Friday May 30 concert will go ahead as scheduled at 8 p.m. Ticketholders for the Saturday concert will be " relocated to the most comparable seats available for the Friday performance " ; those unable to attend on Friday will have the opportunity to make a tax-deductible contribution or else receive a ticket refund. Questions? Call the Celebrity Series at (617) 482-2595.
On the waterfront
For the past 28 years, the French Library has celebrated Bastille Day by closing off Marlborough Street and throwing a street-dance party. But this has taken an annual toll, according to the Library: " 37 city permits; 7500 staff hours; endless quantities of cups, glasses, plates, napkins, ice, flowers, beer, wine, water; plus signs, invitations, posters, T-shirts, meetings, discussions . . . "
This year, with corporate funding in short supply, the Library is taking advantage of the one thing Boston has that Paris doesn’t — a waterfront — and moving the festivities to a Boston Harbor Cruise boat, the James Doherty. It’s not a bad idea — remember what a romantic time Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant had on their boat ride down the Seine in Charade? (Cary: " When you come on, you really come on. " Audrey: " Well . . . come on. " ) For $65, you’ll be ferried around the Harbor, regaled with hors d’œuvre and beer and wine, and entertained by chanteuse Annie Royer and her group Les Garçons Musettes. There’ll still be the traditional singing of La Marseillaise, as well as the traditional Bastille Day cake. That’s Sunday July 13 (Bastille Day eve), from 6 to 9 p.m. For more information, visit the French Library’s Web site at www.frenchlib.org, or call (617) 912-0400.
Lyric Benson
Two summers ago, the Commonwealth Shakespeare Apprentice Company included in its ranks a young actress named Lyric Benson. She appeared in the ensemble of Commonwealth’s Boston Common production of Twelfth Night, and she was a spunky, accomplished Julia in the apprentice company’s performance of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Last Thursday, Benson, a 2002 Yale graduate, was shot and killed by her ex-fiancé, Robert Ambrosino, who then killed himself. She was just 21 years old.
