AISLE SAY Berkshires

CEDARS


by Erik Tarloff
Directed by Keira Naughton
Starring James Naughton

Berkshire Theatre Festival
Fitzpatrick Mainstage
July 23-August 9

Stockbridge, MA//(413) 997-4444//www.BerkshireTheatreGroup.org

Reviewed by Joel Greenberg

 

The stage is sparely set with a couple of chairs, a small table, a lamp or two and a backdrop with an image projected (or lit?) to suggest an exterior world beyond the room itself. The lights fade, a man’s voice booms from offstage as lights come up and after a moment or two a man enters. His name is Gabe (James Naughton) and the location is a hospital room where his comatose father, unseen by us, lies. For the next ninety minutes the son has at his father. This is the premise of Cedars, a play having its world premiere at the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Fitzpatrick Mainstage.

 

Erik Tarloff, the playwright, has created a character that is plagued by life: he speaks hatefully of his former wife, has as little affection or feeling for his sister, expounds at length about his distaste for fat women – big emphasis on the ‘fat’! -  and is generally a miserable guy who prefers lashing out at others to looking inward. That could be a conflict well worth exploring, but the current draft is still in need of extensive rethinking and rewriting.

 

There is nothing wrong with a hard-to-like-or-admire central character – made the more challenging when he is the only one onstage and whose perspective we are forced to endure – but if we can’t care about this man, at least long enough to begin to understand his unhappiness and relentless anger, then we stop listening. And if we can’t stop listening because we are trapped in our seats, then we’ve as good as left the theatre, anyway.

 

With Benefactors playing at the other Berkshire Theatre stage, we are also struck by the important differences between a published play and a premiere production. The former arrives having worked itself out in others’ hands while the latter is laid bare to an unknowing public and critical audience. And even with a new play that is celebrated for its achievements, the writing and shaping may continue. There’s nothing more exciting and, at the same time, more difficult than shepherding the unborn, because with everyone’s best efforts there is no predicting what will finally emerge. In the case of Cedars, it is hard to tell whether future work will be beneficial. As it stands, the monologue has no conflict, though Gabe is definitely conflicted.

 

The production has opened prematurely, too. Naughton is still getting a firm hold on the massive amount of material he has to learn. He is not helped by working on a set that suggests a hospital room of extraordinary scale, a series of costume changes that demand too much time in blackouts and a meandering staging that appears to be without aim or purpose.

 

BTG is serious about the theatre they produce and they are wise to develop new projects because they have an audience that is engaged and willing. At the same time, putting a play in front of any audience before it’s ready serves to undermine the very process of new development. Better by far to test the material in workshop and/or readings because, regardless of the stature of the actor(s) contracted, without fully formed material there’s little hope of success.

 

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