Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023

Dear Jack, Dear Louise Ken Ludwig (26 May- 30 July) 

The Contention (Henry VI, Part II) William Shakespeare (17 June- 15 July) 

Fences August Wilson (22 July-27 Aug.) 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare (1 Aug.-10 Sept.) 

Golda’s Balcony William Gibson (5-20 Aug.) 

Hamlet William Shakespeare (staged reading, 1-3 Sept.) 

Lunar Eclipse Donald Margulies (15 Sept.-22 Oct.) 

Thieves of Love was the theme of Shakespeare & Company’s 2023 season, which, in the words of Artistic Director Allyn Burrows, offered “an immediacy that gives the heart something to beat for . . . all these stories provide a reason for you to get drawn in to these character’s journeys as well as reflect on our own of these past years.” Certainly, audience hearts were beating for the season opener, Ken Ludwig’s charming valentine to his parents, Dear Jack, Dear Louise. Told almost entirely in letters, it charts the unlikely romance of an army doctor and an aspiring actress who meet during the chaos of World War II. Director Ariel Bock kept the action moving forward as the letters flew back and forth. David Gow and Zoya Martin were irresistible as the innocent lovers, challenged by the vagaries of war.  

No one would mistake the Henry VI trilogy as a high point in the Shakespeare oeuvre, but director Tina Packer, with a game cast, made Part II, here titled The Contention, into a most entertaining three hours. The flexible Packer Playhouse stage got a thorough workout as soldiers and nobles stormed up and down the aisles, across the upper gangway, sometimes making the audience more participants than spectators in the battles and rebellions. Above the stage was suspended the crown that the weakling Henry holds and that Richard of York, Senior (a nasty Nigel Gore) and Jack Cade (a hilariously numbskull Allyn Burrows) seek. They, and most of the rest of the cast of ten, did double duty with the versatile Bella Merlin taking on no less than six roles, including a very funny and feral Richard of York, who would eventually become Richard III. David Bertoldi was alternatively hilarious and heartbreaking as the hapless Henry whose hold on the crown was perilously tenuous. The only admirable character in this snake pit was Henry’s uncle Gloucester, eloquently played by Jonathan Epstein.  Muffled war drums and the grisly sound of beheadings (there’s a record number of them for a Shakespeare play) provided an ominous backdrop to the dark deeds. But it was the spirited actors and the fast-paced direction that made this minor play into a major, if contentious, crowd pleaser. 

The second Shakespeare offering, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was set amid the tall evergreens of the outdoor New Spruce Theater, renamed the Arthur S. Waldstein Amphitheater this year. Director Burrows put his cast through its paces with rollicking hilarity that sacrificed a bit of the play’s magic for the comedy. Funniest of all was Jacob Ming-Trent’s Nick Bottom, a soulful, singing blue collar worker, tragic stage hero, and enchanted jackass. The rest of the mechanicals were a superb troupe of clowns, and the two pairs of bewitched lovers were uniformly fine and particularly funny in the fast-paced antics of the closing acts. Nigel Gore brought a needed majesty to Oberon and Javier David was a delight as both the princely Theseus and the half-witted Flute, making the most of his comedic and acrobatic skills.  

Successful one-person shows move past the events of the person’s life to reveal their character and how it affected those events. Golda’s Balcony, a monodrama that saw its first production here 21 years ago, managed to do that. Annette Miller brought Israel’s first woman prime minister to vivid life from her sensible shoes to her dramatic hand gestures, ably portraying her fierce devotion to  her fledging nation and the overwhelming guilt she felt for neglecting her family. William Gibson’s play is set in a tense moment in Meir’s administration during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 when she considers using nuclear weapons against her Arab adversaries if the U.S. doesn’t provide the promised military aid. “The struggle with her conscience is at the center of the play,” noted director Daniel Gidron in the program and Miller successfully captured the ongoing struggle within Meir in her electrifying performance.  

Fences, August Wilson’s most popular play, is, in the words of director Christopher V. Edwards, “a play about scaling down gigantic dreams to fit humble lives.” “ranney” as the flawed but heroic Troy in this enthralling production, captured the character’s aching loss, frustration, and anger, most of it directed at his son (an earnest JaQuan Malik Jones), who was chasing the same dreams of athletic glory. The supporting cast was uniformly fine, especially Ella Joyce as Troy’s long-suffering wife who brought an incandescent righteousness to the climactic scene where Troy confessed his infidelity and the child that would result from it. Jon Savage’s cluttered set with its multiple fences eloquently expressed the power of these objects to both trap people in, while keeping others out.  

Shakespeare & Company ended its season of love with the world premiere of Donald Margulies’s Lunar Eclipse, an enchanting two-hander about a starry summer night in the life of an aging farm couple. Life has disappointed the cantankerous George. Even the eclipse he came out into his meadow to view has let him down. Em, his wife, is the eternal optimist, while dealing with the loss of a son and a hard life that she never wanted. Reed Birney and Karen Allen inhabited their characters as comfortably as his old flannel shirt and her worn jeans. The subtle shifts in the lunar light were captured by lighting designer James McNamara and Nathan Leigh’s soundscape conjured up an enchanting chorus of chirping insects and other night sounds. The play ends in a flashback, a bittersweet coda that shows these two people at the promising start of a relationship that never fulfills that promise. Birney and Allen made the convincing transformation from age to youth with voice and body and without the help of makeup or costume. An officious off-stage voice that announced the phases of the eclipse was an unnecessary distraction to this intimate drama.  

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