Why "Lend Me a Tenor" Made It onto our Signature Season

Posted by Bruce Miller
All right. I won't start out with a fib.

I wanted the first show in our 2011-12 Signature Season to be Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams. When Carol Piersol told me about her idea for a Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival in Richmond, and invited Barksdale to join in with the Firehouse and Triangle Players, I was VERY excited and I wanted to participate. (The pic of Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter, to the right, appears on the Firehouse website as a sort of Festival logo. You can visit http://www.williamscelebration.org/ for more information.)

I knew Summer and Smoke was the perfect show for us to enter into the Festival, because:
a. it's my favorite Williams play,
b. it's been on my list of plays I'm very eager to direct for a long time, and
c. Barksdale co-founder Stu Falconer left his job as stage manager of the landmark Off Broadway production of Summer and Smoke when he moved to Richmond in 1953 to co-found B'dale.

But life is made up of tough choices. Another project that will be taking place during the coming year, about which I am equally passionate, is our upcoming partnership with Cadence Theatre Company, and our co-pros of Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay Abaire, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, and In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl.

Once Phil, Tracy and I started adding up every nickel and dime that will make up our $5 million annual operating budget, it became clear that I had to choose between partnering with Firehouse and Triangle on the Tennessee Williams Festival or partnering with Anna Johnson on the Cadence co-pros. Obviously, I chose the latter.

But I can't wait to see the great programs planned for the Tennessee Williams Festival, and I encourage everyone to give this exciting Richmond event your full support, even if Barksdale is unable to be involved.

What those pesky budget figures made obvious was that I needed to open our 2011-12 Signature Season with a comedy instead of a drama. The simple truth is this: at Barksdale (maybe everywhere), comedies sell more tickets that dramas. Besides, for the last 58 years, our mission at Barksdale has been to create in Central Virginia national caliber productions of the GREAT comedies, dramas and musicals--past, present and future. I'm proud that we produce our fair share of each.

And I LOVE comedies. Who doesn't. Especially great American comedies like our opening production - Lend Me a Tenor.

When exploring comedies written for the stage, there are several time-honored traditions to celebrate, one of which is farce.

A farce seeks to entertain its audience by placing likable (if often misbehaving) characters within improbable and exaggerated situations. The stakes are high; discovery and disaster seem imminent. The characters negotiate their treacherous circumstances, often at break-neck speed, using trickery, mistaken identity, disguised persons or voices, and verbal humor of varying degrees of sophistication. Physical comedy, linguistic nonsense, slamming doors and broadly stylized performances are staples of theatrical farce.

Not counting our musicals (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, for one, includes many aspects of farce) Barksdale's previous farces include:
* Boeing-Boeing (a French farce written in 1960; revived at Hanover Tavern earlier this summer),
* Is He Dead? (written by Mark Twain in 1898; produced at Willow Lawn in 2010),
* No Sex Please, We're British (an English farce written in 1971; produced at Hanover Tavern in 2006), and
* Scapino! (an English adaptation of a 1671 Moliere classic, adapted in 1971; revived at Willow Lawn in 2005).

The last time we staged a contemporary American farce was our 1993 Hanover Tavern production of Arthur Kopit's wacky Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. Wow. Who knew it had been nearly two decades since Barksdale produced a contemporary American farce.

In our current sociopolitical environment, American farces seem particularly apt. That's why I decided it was time to end our 18-year fast. As I reviewed the GREAT contemporary American farces, Lend Me a Tenor was right there waiting for me at the top of the heap.

I'm excited that the show is now about to open. I hope to see you at the theatre.

--Bruce Miller

The Stratford and Shaw Festivals - Great Canadian Theatre

Posted by Bruce Miller
I returned on Monday from a five-day trip to Ontario, Canada. I was fortunate enough again this year to be able to make my pilgrimage to the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, the two largest repertory theatres on the continent. This time, for the first time, I went by myself, without Terrie and the kids and without Phil. I discovered, to no one’s surprise, that solitary theatre sojourns are not my thing. Nonetheless, it was a valuable and enjoyable experience.

I flew out of Richmond last Wednesday morning via Jet Blue into Buffalo, rented a car and drove the three or so hours to the quiet town of Stratford, Ontario--on the Avon, of course, complete with swans. I checked into my B & B at around 6 pm, the Palmyra House, www.bbcanada.com/3865.html, owned and operated by Steve and Meg Garden-Smith. My room and my very friendly, accommodating hosts couldn’t have been nicer. The photos on the Palmyra House website don’t do the beautiful home justice. I recommend the accommodations, the breakfast, and most especially the Garden-Smiths without reservation. Almost immediately after checking in, I walked to my first show. All Stratford theatres are within an easy walking distance from the comfortable and peaceful Palmyra House.

I saw shows at Stratford on the following schedule: Wednesday 8 pm – A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee (Tom Patterson Theatre), Thursday 2 pm – My One and Only by the Gershwins etc. (Avon Theatre), Thursday 8 pm – An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (Festival Theatre - pictured below), Friday 2 pm – The Odyssey by Derek Walcott (Studio Theatre).

I admired A Delicate Balance, which featured an amazing performance by David Fox as Tobias; I enjoyed My One and Only, but remembered why I had forgotten so much of the original Broadway production—it’s forgetable. I went nuts over An Ideal Husband, and absolutely hated not having anyone with me to talk to when the show was over—nothing worse for me than seeing a great show and having to keep my feelings to myself. I didn’t like The Odyssey at all, despite Derek Walcott having won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

After The Odyssey, I hopped into my Toyota Corolla and headed to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a gorgeous, flower-festooned town not far from Niagara Falls, and home to the Shaw Festival. I tend to stay at whatever accommodations are most affordable, and at the Shaw Festival that meant staying at the Comfort Inn in St. Catharine’s, a small city about 15 minutes east. There are some beautiful B & B’s in Niagara-on-the-Lake, but the ones that were available when I booked my room were outside my budget.

I took Friday night off, and then saw Shaw Festival productions on this schedule: Saturday 12 noon – The Kiltartan Comedies by Lady Augusta Gregory (Courthouse Theatre), Saturday 2 pm – The Philanderer by Bernard Shaw (Royal George Theatre), Saturday 8 pm – Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams (Royal George Theatre), Sunday 2 pm – Hotel Peccadillo adapted from Georges Feydeau (Festival Theatre), Sunday 8 pm – The Cassilis Engagement by St John Hankin (Courthouse Theatre).

I loved The Kiltartan Comedies, two folksy, very Irish one acts; I enjoyed The Philanderer, although I thought it became a little talky in Acts II and III, and I wasn’t sure where Shaw was trying to go with it. You could tell it was only his third play. I went nuts over Summer and Smoke, and again, missed my accustomed post-theatre fellowship in a neighborhood bar. Hotel Peccadillo started out fun (and wild and crazy), but seemed to me to run out of steam in the last third of Act I and all of Act II. I very much enjoyed The Cassilis Engagement, especially since I knew nothing of the show or the playwright before last week.

One of the best things about the Stratford and Shaw Festivals is the caliber of the acting. Many of the greatest U. S. actors relocate to New York and/or L. A. In Canada, the greatest actors seem to be drawn to Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake, at least in season.

The best known name in the Stratford company is Brian Bedford (pictured to the left), who is internationally recognized as one of the finest English speaking actors alive in the world today. (I saw Mr. Bedford with Tammy Grimes in the Broadway revival of Private Lives in about 1970, and I still remember it as the funniest play I’ve ever seen.) But aside from Mr. Bedford, the majority of the actors in both companies are first-rate, world-class talents. It’s great fun to see your favorites in one show, and then see them in a different show that evening or the next day, and barely be able to discern that you’re watching the same person.

Another great thing about the festivals is that you can see two or three shows a day, every day except Monday. I saw nine shows in four and a half days of playgoing. That's my kind 'a town.

My favorite thing about the festivals is the play selection. Go to Broadway these days, and almost everything is a musical. At the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, you can see Broadway-caliber productions of the wonderful but often less familiar plays of the world’s greatest playwrights. Of the nine shows I saw this trip, eight were shows I’d never seen before.

And, of course, I didn’t see everything. What I missed due to limitations of time and money were world-class productions of Oklahoma! (Rodgers and Hammerstein), King Lear (Shakespeare), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck), The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), Othello (Shakespeare), The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare), St. Joan (Shaw), Mack and Mabel (Jerry Herman etc.), The Circle (Maugham), A Month in the Country (Turgenev/Friel), and a couple other less familiar titles.

Fun fact: the Stratford Festival opened on July 13, 1953, 19 days before the founding of Barksdale Theatre. Fun coincidence: at my last performance, I caught up with Scott Nogi (pictured to the right), the very talented actor who appeared in Theatre IV’s production of The Music Man when he was still a student at Godwin High School in the mid-90s. Scott went on to get his BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in 2001, studied with RADA in London, and is now forging a wonderful career as an actor, director and fight choreographer in NYC. He was visiting the Shaw Festival with his beautiful wife, Haley, and was gracious enough to re-introduce himself to me. Hopefully, we’ll be able to reconnect with Scott soon here at Barksdale.

--Bruce Miller

When Off Broadway Began, Barksdale Was There

The strapping young man in the photo to the left is Stu Falconer, pictured with Nancy Adams in Barkdale's 1957 production of The Little Hut. When I was researching old newspaper articles for my five part Happy Birthday Barksdale! series, I discovered that not only was Falconer here for the founding of Barksdale, he also was there for the founding of Off Broadway. In all my years in Richmond theatre, I've never heard anyone make note of this before. So I've decided to make note of it now.

Two of the newspapers that wrote about the founding of Barksdale Theatre at Hanover Tavern in 1953 mention that one of our six co-founders, Stu Falconer, worked as a stage manager at Circle in the Square in New York prior to moving south to help begin Barksdale. One of these papers identifies the show that Falconer managed as Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke. Checking out the dates, it appears that he left the production in mid-run. Although Falconer may not have comprehended this at the time--the newspaper reporters certainly didn't--that particular production of Summer and Smoke is now credited as being the beginning of Off Broadway.

The Lortel Archive, named in honor of Off-Broadway legend Lucille Lortel (pictured to the left), is the semi-official internet database for Off-Broadway. When you look up the particulars of this production of Summer and Smoke, you’ll find the following quote: “Off-Broadway, for historical purposes, may be said to have begun in Sheridan Square on the evening of April 24, 1952 when Summer and Smoke with Geraldine Page opened at Circle in the Square and became the first major theatrical success below 42nd Street in thirty years.”

It seems that Stu Falconer left one legendary experience to start another.

Summer and Smoke was written by Tennessee Williams in 1948, shortly after the phenomenal success of The Glass Menagerie in 44 and A Streetcar Named Desire in 47. In the late 40s, Tennessee Williams was America's most famous playwright, even making it onto the cover of Time. With Smoke, Williams again wrote a play with a strong female lead, Alma Winemiller, a proper, unmarried minister’s daughter who is courted by her childhood sweetheart, the sexually-charged rake, Dr. John Buchanan.

Summer and Smoke opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on October 6, 1948, directed by Margo Jones and designed by Jo Mielziner. The play received decidedly mixed reviews, with the conventional wisdom being that Alma Winemiller was a pale facsimile of Amanda Wingfield and/or Blanche DuBois. It ran for a disappointing 102 performances.

In 1952, the brilliant director and Eugene O’Neill champion, Jose Quintero (pictured to the left), decided that Summer and Smoke was a much better play than its Broadway production had indicated. He revived Williams’ script at his relatively new Off Broadway theatre, Circle in the Square, located at 159 Bleecker Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. In the leading role of Alma Winemiller, Quintero cast a relatively unknown Southern actress named Geraldine Page.

The rest, as they say, is history. This Off Broadway production of Summer and Smoke was a smash hit with both critics and audiences. It ran for 356 performances, putting Off Broadway on the map for the very first time. The production catapulted Circle in the Square to the front of the Off Broadway movement. It also made Geraldine Page a star. She went from obscurity to being universally recognized as one of the finest actresses on the American stage. Her reputation was so great that, when Paramount made a film of Summer and Smoke in 1961, they insisted that Ms. Page play Alma. Her performance was nominated for an Oscar. The photo to the right is a publicity still from the film.

After her performance, Tennessee Williams himself began telling everyone that when he considered all the characters he had ever created, he considered Alma Winemiller to be his personal favorite.

Stu Falconer is not the only Richmond theatre connection to this story of the birth of Off Broadway. Due in no small part to the success of Summer and Smoke, the Circle in the Square became an Off Broadway icon, achieving so much success in the 50s and 60s that it chose to make the big move to Broadway proper in 1972. The Circle in the Square theatre we know today on W. 50th—home of Putnam County Spelling Bee—was build as the Broadway home for the Circle in the Square company. It is one of only two “thrust” theatres on Broadway, with audiences surrounding the stage on three sides, similar to our Barksdale spaces in Richmond and Hanover.

Over the next 20 years, the Circle in the Square company, with its Off Broadway sensibilities, found it increasingly impossible to succeed on Broadway. In 1994, the leadership of the company was passed from its co-founders, Jose Quintero and Theodore Mann, to former Richmonder Josie Abady (pictured to the left). Josie was the daughter of the late Theatre IV Board member Nina Abady. Josie had a tough time at Circle in the Square, and after only two years the reins were passed again to Gregory Mosher. More recently, Josie returned to Richmond to direct Wit at TheatreVirginia. It was to be her last production. She soon thereafter succombed to brain cancer, a disease she had been battling for years. It was a tremendous loss to American theatre.

In 1997, the Circle in the Square theater company closed its doors forever. However, the theatre facility that carries its name is still in operation today as a commercial Broadway theatre. In addition to housing smaller Broadway productions like Spelling Bee, the facility houses the Circle in the Square Theatre School, the only accredited training conservatory associated with a Broadway theatre. Our own Chase Kniffen is an alumnus of the Circle in the Square School.

As for Summer and Smoke, Williams revised the script in 1964, re-titling it Eccentricities of a Nightingale. Nightingale was produced on Swift Creek Mill’s Sunday Series in the late 70s, starring Janie Bushway and our own Phil Whiteway.

--Bruce Miller