Summer's Harvest
A personal inventory of summer theater's
best and worst
The Valley AdvocateThursday, September 09, 2010
By Chris Rohmann
"Summer's lease hath all too short a date," quoth the poet. But its brief harvest sure is bountiful. In the three-month feast of performance just ended, 15 theater companies in the Valley and Berkshires mounted some 60 productions in 23 indoor and outdoor venues, and I managed to see almost all of them.
In the brief pause before the fall season unfolds, memory is replaying some of the keeper moments from a rich season. What follows is a subjective and incomplete rundown of some of my best (and one of the worst) experiences in the theater this summer-starting with two productions in particular that sent me out of the theater going, "Wow!"
One...that made my heart soar was a quiet little gem, Last Train to Nibroc at Chester Theatre Company. It's the first play in Arlene Hutton's Nibroc Trilogy, which Chester staged in sequence this summer and then in whirlwind, day-long marathons of all three plays. The first one, though, is the one that sticks. It's a deceptively simple story of shy, playful flirtation and tentative courtship that begins on a cross-country train on the eve of World War II and culminates in a proposal scene that is both sweet and funny. And the two performers in this all-but-perfect play were absolutely perfect as the young couple, Allison McLemore prim and wary, a foil to Joel Ripka's ironic teaser.
Two more characters show up in the second play of the trilogy and one more is added in the final installment. That one, a pregnant narcissist, was played by Sandra Blaney, and that was just one of the versatile actor's four gigs in the Valley this summer.
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