4:13
Personally, I have preferred the Williamstown Theatre Festival Audio series of plays over Zoom productions. Likely, it is because audio encourages imagination, while Zoom shows only the faces of actors in boxes.
However, the newest release, “Wish You Were Here” shows all the negatives that comes from a piece written for the stage that isn’t altered for a new delivery system.
Strange as it may sound, for many who were raised with film and television, telling a story without visuals is a lost art.
Because theater is a collaborative art form playwrights depend on the actors to add depth to characters through physicality and voice inflections. Too, the work of other creatives like set and costume designers define space and mood.
Today there is a trend towards immersive and interactive experiences in all forms of entertainment.
Actually, the ensemble chamber group Musicians of Ma’alwyck has been ahead of the curve. For over twenty years, they ve been performing music in historical buildings that were inhabited in the same era the music was created.
They just released a new cd, “Hyde Hall and the Silver Goddess: Operatic Brilliance of Auber, Bellini, Meyerbeer and Rossini.” The cd was recorded at Hyde Hall in Cooperstown. It is a space where the same music was performed when the house was inhabited by the Clarke Family in the 1830s and 40s.
4:00
If there is one quality that is universal about clowns – it is they always seem alone.
Therefore, it’s appropriate that in the one-man show “A. Lone,” the performer Aaron Marquise is dressed in baggy pants and wearing a touch of white makeup accented by a bulbous red nose.
As the title suggests, the 45-minute digital film is about isolation. A wakes up on the stage of a theater, empty except for a huge stack of discarded shoes, sneakers and various types of footwear. There seems a war or armed conflict is going on outside.
Indeed, the war in “A. Lone” is more atmospheric than it is threatening. The battle is internal as A faces how to survive when everything has been taken away from him. Everything except his memories – which in this work morphs into hope for the future as much as it represents the loss of the past.
Credit Williamstown Theatre Festival
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – It must be some sort of reviewer’s jinx that the play in a season you are most looking forward to experiencing is often the most disappointing.
Well, it struck again.
“Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club,” the fourth play on the Williamstown Theatre Festival Audio season appeared to be a type of play that could inform, enlighten and entertain. In other words, it looked like the entire package.
Instead, it’s an uninterrupted hour and forty-four minutes of bits and pieces. It includes some very thoughtful and caring moments, but by including many wider-ranging political ideas it dilutes the emotional power of the piece.
“Animals” is the third play of the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s season recorded as an audio book. It is actually the first that make me realize how much