As The Festival Packs Up, so are the Summer Seasons of our Lives.

Come in. Come in! We promise we’ve turned down the AC. Yes, take off your coats, we promise that the theatre is warming up! But, the shift in temperature also means the end of another season at the the Dorset Theatre Festival. It’s okay to miss us, but before we say our goodbyes, let’s remember the good times we had. Now, don’t cry. Take the Festival’s kerchief. It’ll be alright! There’s always next summer. (We’ll announce our 2010 season in the spring!) We don’t want to dwell on how much we’ll miss Dorset! Right? Dry your eyes and let the Festival tell you a story. We promise it will make you feel better. Alright then. Just take a moment, indulge our dear Festival, gather round the Festival’s favorite recliner, and listen to some old stories about the fun we’ve had in 2009.

At the start of the season, the DTF brought vampires to Vermont! Yes, Connor McPherson’s ST. NICHOLAS was our first show of the season, and the DTF world was turned upside down when the audience actually sat on the stage! Bob Rose put it best, that “this fast-moving production continues artistic director Carl Forsman’s pledge to include entertaining one-person shows in DTF’s lineup each season.” We laughed as, Jack Gilpin who played the narrator, slapped his “fat bastard” belly, we got goosebumps as the we saw the lights in the garden, and we were all left stunned as we wondered “Where are you?”

For the second show in the season, George S. Kaufman’s MERTON OF THE MOVIES, we packed our bags for HOLLYWOODLAND! The world of the silent screen came alive and was played out before the audience with great comical voice. And as we met the zany as well as the harsh critics of Merton, we cheered him on until curtain. And when the curtain came down? We only cheered louder for Merton, played by Mark Emerson, as he bowed.

The third show of the season proved to be the triumphant return of Agatha Christie to Dorset, Vermont. THE HOLLOW ran to sold out performances during its limited run and received high praise from our audiences. And that’s what the Festival wants most of all, your happiness, though we were also pleases that our critics didn’t hate the show either! Peter Bergman wrote, “Director Carl Forsman has just the right touch for this material. He keeps things well paced and understandable and as tensions mount and suspicions are tossed from one set of hands to another he lets us see without pointing a finger how it is both easy and possible to misunderstand motives, to make decisions without facts, to come to conclusions that do not end at the stopping point. He has done a beautiful job with Christie’s play, and in doing so, has created a few new bright stars among his current resident company.” When the Festival scrunches up our eyes and thinks back on THE HOLLOW, we see those vivid greens (and reds!) and can’t help but be proud.

The fourth and final show of the DTF lineup, MARRY ME A LITTLE, brought stars and Sondheim to Vermont. Broadway starlet, Leah Horowitz, and CBS Guiding Light favorite, Paul Anthony Stewart, commanded the musical review as John Bell played the complicated score. The songs, originally discarded from Sondheim’s other musicals, COMPANY, THE FOLLIES, and others, were rescued and transformed into a story about two lonely hearts on a Saturday night. Though there were elements of reality, the musical review was also set in fantasy and allowed the audience to believe some impossibilities. (Like two people dancing together in different apartments!)

Other projects at the theatre this summer were the DTF Family Programming production, ALICE, and our collaboration with the Lark Play Development Summer. ALICE directed and adapted by Tracy Bersley was not only a hit with our targeted twelve and under crowd, but their parents as well. The company comprised of our four non-equity and three intern actors played over 30 different characters!

Our non-equity actors also helped bring life to the characters of seven in-progress and freshly completed plays written by the Theresa Rebeck Writer’s Retreat. The audience heard everything from frat-boy banter to a grieving father acting as Ralph Waldo Emerson to Shakespeare in Las Vegas.

Gosh. The Festival needs its kerchief back. All this talk of the glory days has got us teary-eyed. But! If we start getting excited now, the next season will be even better! Right? Right! We can’t wait.

As our 2009 season is winding down..

DTF's two final shows, Marry Me a Little and Alice in Wonderland are getting rave reviews! Chances to see these two critically acclaimed shows are running out.

Marry Me a Little runs through August 29 and tickets are going fast! Only six more chances to see Paul Anthony Stewart and Leah Horowitz onstage in all their glory.

Alice in Wonderland has been a hit with children and adults alike, and only has two more performances!

Call the box office to reserve tickets now.

Because everyone loves Stephen Sondheim!

Come one, come all to the Dorset Theatre Festival's one and only musical of the season!

Marry Me a Little tells the tale of two lonelyhearts, each alone on a Saturday night with their romantic dreams told through Stephen Sondheim songs. If you loved Into the Woods, Company or Follies, you'll love this show!

If you're not sold yet, Guiding Light's heartthrob, Paul Anthony Stewart stars in this production!

Marry Me a Little runs August 12-29. Seating is limited, so book your tickets now!

Read All About It!

Agatha Christie's The Hollow is making a very sexy splash in Vermont!

Here's what our critics had to say:

The Hollow by Agatha Christie.
Directed by Carl Forsman

Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman
(www.berkshirebrightfocus.com)

"It’s a question of the right values."

Painting pictures, portraits in words, was Agatha Christie’s finest accomplishment. Her mysteries are good ones, sound and sturdy, interestingly odd and loaded with twists, mis-direction, and often the excitement engendered by more than one death. But it is her people we remember, long after the book is laid aside, or the play has closed. We cannot forget Jane Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, Hercule Poirot or, indeed, any of her detectives. Some of her villains and victims are equally memorable and her plays have given us constant delights.

"The Hollow," which was originally published as "Murder After Hours," an Hercule Poirot mystery novel in 1946, was recreated by the author as a play in 1951 without her most famous detective. In his place she offered Inspector Colquhoon and his able, maid-enticing associate Detective Sergeant Penny. It is that play which is now on the stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vermont.

In this work Christie presents us with cousins among the uppercrust, the Angkatell family: Sir Henry, his wife and cousin, Lady Lucy, their cousin Henrietta - a sculptor, another cousin who has inherited the family Manse, Edward and a half-cousin Midge Harvey who works in a dress shop. Though not made entirely clear it would seem a distant relative John Cristow is also among the guests for the weekend at the "Hollow" the home of Henry and Lucy. With him is his wife Gerda and, in short order, his former lover Veronica Craye, now a successful Hollywood actress. As is inevitable in these situations there are the servants, Doris and the butler Gudgeon. Enough characters, with enough relationships, to keep the audience guessing right up to the last scene as to just who is the murderer being sought by Scotland Yard for the death of one of the above.

I am not one to give away too much information in reviewing a mystery play, so don’t expect spoilers in the copy to follow. I will say, however, that in this production the mystery crackles, the relationships tickle and the evening, three acts with two intermissions, comes in at about two and a half hours of bright and brittle conversation.

Director Carl Forsman has just the right touch for this material. He keeps things well paced and understandable and as tensions mount and suspicions are tossed from one set of hands to another he lets us see without pointing a finger how it is both easy and possible to misunderstand motives, to make decisions without facts, to come to conclusions that do not end at the stopping point. He has done a beautiful job with Christie’s play, and in doing so, has created a few new bright stars among his current resident company.

The actors, for the most part, are people who appeared earlier this season in "Merton of the Movies." With the true of a repertory company people who were featured in lead roles in the earlier play move into the support arena and those who had smaller roles in the first now take over the stage in this piece.

Chief among them was a scene-stealing actress from the "Merton.." Ann McDonough who plays the quick-witted, though daft, Lady Lucy Angkatell. McDonough takes the delicious monologues and movements of her character to subtle extremes, as she did in her landlady role last time. She can enter carrying a basket of eggs, leave them hither and yon, forget them, find them, see them without comprehension, ask about them and finally relinquish them with the softness of the confused mind while still remaining focused on the issues under discussion... All in all, if there was no one else in this play it would be recommended for her work alone.

Gardner Reed is a wonderful Henrietta, dynamic, filled with secrets, romantic and yet resolutely honest. Her classic features are just right for Henrietta; her voice is sharp enough to cut a thick-crusted baguette. In the third act she manages to pull of the nearly impossible - she becomes transparent. Her equal in the subtleties of interpretation is Mark Alhadeff as the Inspector. Clearly an individual from the upper set himself, his poise and his profile are almost classic British while his presentation of his character is quietly aggressive and controlling.

Kirk Jackson is a wonderful, almost stuffy, Sir Henry. It’s wonderful to watch him, pole-up-spine, reserved and proper, melt when his young half-cousin comes into the room. She is played beautifully by Kim Hausler. Her rage at being considered too young is thrilling in one so young.

The Cristow’s are excellently portrayed by Clark Carmichael and Crystal Finn. Her mixed heritage is perfectly played out in Finn’s use of a different accent from the others. His superiority is a visible one; attitude is everything with him. Ted Caine is just fine as Gudgeon and Larissa Goldberg is a marvelous Doris. Curran Connor is almost too lascivious as Penny, but it works for him, especially when Doris makes a confession.

... Mark Emerson’s Edward Angkatell [is exquisite]. There was not one moment over-played, under-played or out-of-keeping in his interpretation of this complex, yet simple, man. If Ann McDonough should be out of the show when you see it, the play will still have this opposite pole to support the fragile tenting of mystery that makes this play work so well. Emerson was "Merton" in the last piece and in combination with that character, it would seem that this actor has a major career in his future.

The gorgeous set by Bill Clarke is effectively lit by Josh Bradford and the costumes designed by Theresa Squire are one hundred percent correct for the characters. Physically and from the directorial point of view the production is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

You may not be a fan of mysteries, but if you are a fan of live theater that keeps you awake and on your toes, this is the play to see.

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'Hollow' offers Christie mystery

By BOB ROSE
Special to The Post-Star

Published: Friday, July 24, 2009
DORSET, Vt. - Agatha Christie returns to the Dorset Playhouse, and her "The Hollow" assures an entertaining time of murder, mystery and mayhem, including enough romantic intrigue to keep you in awe and amusement for more than two hours.

Cleverly directed by Dorset Theatre Festival’s Carl Forsman, "The Hollow" features a sterling cast, several of whom already have delighted us in "Merton of the Movies."

With a beautifully designed set by Bill Clarke, the cast takes us through a manor house murder mystery that challenges us to figure out who has killed Clark Carmichael’s John Cristow, an obnoxious, self-impressed doctor and a fellow who seems attracted to nearly every woman he meets, with the possible exception of his shy but adoring wife, Gerda, played by Crystal Finn.

Just about every character on the stage has a motive to do this fellow in. And, yes, that includes Ted Caine’s stiff and proper butler, Gudgeon, and even the new household maid, Doris, played by Larissa Goldberg.

An actress, Helen Farmer’s Veronica Craye, appears unexpectedly during a weekend family retreat at the Angkatell mansion, and we soon learn that John was once engaged to her. Right now, though, he is making advances toward Garner Reed’s Henrietta Angkatell when his wife’s back is turned. But he still has eyes for Veronica, of course.

John’s wife, Gerda Cristow, is played by Crystal Finn. Gerda is a patient, long-suffering soul who still loves John despite his romantic encounters.

The unique combination of characters also includes another weekend guest, Kim Hausler’s working girl Midge Harvey, Mark Emerson’s Edward Angkatell, who played the title role in "Merton of the Movies," Kirk Jackson’s Sir Henry Angkatell, and his wife, Ann McDonough’s odd ball Lady Angkatell.

This lady is worth the price of admission all by herself. Absentminded to a hilarious degree, she keeps the audience laughing throughout the show.

Finally, of course, we have Mark Alhadeff’s Inspector Colquhoun trying to solve the mystery with the aid of his assistant, Detective Sergeant Penny played by Curran Connor.

As events transpire, you will find yourself centering on one suspect after another, and in typical Christie style, the solution comes only at the last moment in this beautifully acted production that features excitement, mental challenge and well-delivered amusement.

The wait is finally over!

Tired of reruns of Murder She Wrote? Is PBS just not satisfactory anymore? Has Sherlock Holmes cracked yet ANOTHER case?

Well, come see a LIVE murder mystery at the Dorset Theater Festival!

The Hollow opens July 22nd and runs through August 8. Who doesn't love Agatha Christie, really?

Tickets are limited, so call the box office ASAP at (802) 867-5777.

There is still time!

Today, I overheard a young boy in a tweed cap say to his father, "Pa! I'm so scared there isn't enough time to see MERTON OF THE MOVIES at the Dorset Theatre Festival!"
Well this young man's father removed the pipe from his mouth, smiled, and assured him, "Son, there's still time. In fact, I'm such a fan of George S. Kaufman's work, we can go every night this week."
"What about the matinees on Wednesday and Saturday, Pa?"
"Those, too, son."
Let us all learn from this heartwarming tale, that there is still time to see Merton, not only in this still from the show featuring Merton (Mark Emerson) and Tessie Kearns (Larissa Goldberg) in Gashwiler's store, but tonight July 14th at 8pm, Wed. July 15th at 3pm, Thursday July 16th at 8pm, Friday July 17th at 3pm, Sat. July 18th at 3pm, and Sat. July 18th at 8pm.

"Merton of the Movies" Reviews are In!

Merton of the Movies

By BOB ROSE - The Post-Star

July 7, 2009

DORSET, VT--The third production in the Kaufman series promised by Carl Forsman, artistic director of the Dorset Theatre Festival, is a most amusing satire, "Merton of the Movies" by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. Directed by Jonathan Silverstein, it features a cast fully in tune with the mood that the writers intended.

Heading that cast is Mark Emerson as Merton Gill, the young store clerk obsessed with the then popular silent motion pictures. After taking a correspondence course in acting, he decides he is ready for Hollywood and heads west with great hopes and even greater assurance that success awaits him.He completely ignores the fact that he can't act, especially in the serious dramatic roles he yearns to have. He hates comedy. But it turns out that he is such a lousy actor, that his efforts provide great comedy.

At home his main benefactors have been store owner Amos G. Gashwiler, his friend Elmer Huff and a girl acquaintance, Tessie Kearns. Kirk Jackson, Curran Connor and Larissa Goldberg make these roles true to life and often very comical.Once in Hollywood, he encounters a variety of people starting with Ann McDonough's all business casting director and a temperamental director played by Mark Alhadeff. Merton is taken under the wing of Crystal Finn's The Montague Girl and they eventually fall in love, adding a dash of romance to this crazy comedy.

During his often hilarious experience with these and others, Merton learns many lessons about the motion picture world and about his own limitations and assets. His most painful discovery is that Hollywood stars, like his idol, Gardner Reed's enticing Beaulah Baxter, just aren't all their press agents claim they are.

Rapid set changes are interesting to watch as we move from one place to another. Costumes, lighting and sound all contribute to the overall enjoyment of this 1920 classic tale that continues to amuse as well as teach us something about the ups, downs and in betweens of every life.

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Merton of the Movies

by J. Peter Bergman - EDGE Contributor

Thursday Jul 9, 2009

Merton Gill, native of Simbury, Illinois, is everyman, is us, is the American dreamer. Clerking in a drygoods store, all he wants out of life is to meet his favorite movie star, and maybe even become a movie star himself.

Created in 1921 by playwrights Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman, Merton of the Movies succeeds where others fail, where we might fail, due to the intervention of true love and a few clever turns in the plot.

The play, produced in 1922, made a Broadway star out of Glenn Hunter who went on to star in the silent movie version in 1924. The show was filmed two more times, in 1932 with Stu Erwin and in 1945 with Red Skelton. The writing of this character, and of the play in general, is so good and so true to that American dream referred to above, that all three film versions were wonderfully accepted.

People turn to All About Eve for a film about the entertainment industry that takes a swing at how things work, but Merton of the Movies did it first and did it brilliantly.

On stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vermont, Merton has taken the stage again and taken it beautifully.

Directed with stylish grace and power by Jonathan Silverstein and played with a period accuracy that shouts "1922" by a wonderful cast, this show is the best yet in the company’s series of plays by Kaufman. In fact, this show is as good as their version of Theophilus North two summers ago, and that was just short of brilliant.

At the center of what is so right about this performance is Merton Gill himself, played by Mark Emerson. Emerson has a wonderful sense of physical expression and physical comedy. Not one gesture is misplaced or wrong for the character. His face and voice are wonderfully in line with the youthful enthusiasm that Merton feels for his future in Hollywood. Falling apart or taking charge of his destiny, Emerson manages to bring reality to a new level of delicious. This is a performance not to be missed, not if you like true acting, acting that doesn’t betray itself by feeling like acting.

As the Montague Girl, a Hollywood wannabe who does it all, extra work, doubling, writing, and saving the hide of a novice like Merton, there is Crystal Finn. She is quirky and delightful, the perfect match for Emerson’s Merton. Finn could probably do a triple take (she doesn’t get one here) if she had to and make each bit of it a scream.

Curran Connor makes movie comic Jeff Baird quite loveable and Kirk Jackson does well in both his roles, the storekeeper from Illinois and the stage actor turned film waiting-room drunk (a Kaufman staple, a character who makes it to Hollywood again in GSK’s first collaboration with Moss Hart, "Once in a Lifetime").

Mark Alhadeff is an excellent film director, Sigmund Rosenblatt - a combination of Victor Fleming and Eric Von Stroheim. As the film star Merton adores, Beulah Baxter, there is the stunning Gardner Reed.

Nearly stealing the show away from the leads is actress Ann McDonough as Merton’s landlady Mrs. Patterson. Silverstein has given her some of the funniest business and she carries it off with aplomb, making her repetitive gestures funnier each time she performs them.

In fact, the entire company of thirteen acts to a tee the nineteen roles they’ve been given in this slightly reduced cast list (the original play had 32 characters). Running just over two hours and fifteen minutes with a single intermission, the play, particularly the second act, zips by as laughter, charm and pathos, yes pathos, fills the audience’s brains and hearts while Merton plays out his story of love and desire.

The set for this show is absolutely ridiculous, and absolutely perfect. Four of its five sets utilize the same backdrop and once you know what it is, it fades into negative space letting the action play out where it should and the movement of other actors and stagehands become part of the panoply of life in Hollywood. Bill Clarke has imaginatively put this all together.

The period costumes designed by Theresa Squire wear wonderfully on these actors and Josh Bradford’s lighting does exactly what it should do in giving us highlights and low lights as well. All in all, this is a wonderful way to spend a summer evening, or afternoon, especially if it’s cold and wet. Or, come to think of it, hot and steamy.

Merton of the Movies plays at the Dorset Playhouse through July 18. The theater is located at 104 Cheney Road, Dorset, Vermont.

Gardner Reed as Beulah Baxter

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"Dorset Theatre Festival revisits celebrated comic playwright"

By CLARA ROSE, Thornton Herald Correspondent

Rutland HeraldJuly 6, 2009

American theater in the 1920s underwent massive changes in self-conception.
Prior to World War I, theater in the U.S. was primarily a safe form of distraction from the outside world. The sudden onslaught of a Western civilization plunged into chaos and the resultant tremors, which did not stop once the smoke cleared, caused theater to become a bit more participatory.

Broadway theaters began to throw charity shows for soldiers and new works with a political agenda experienced a rise. African-American actors were introduced to the big stage: Previous to Charles Gilpin in Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones" in 1920, black actors were usually only to be found in "second-rate" vaudeville revues, while white actors in blackface took on Broadway's "colored" roles. Repertory theater appeared such that theater productions could be sponsored, resulting in nonprofit productions with a low ticket price. Enthusiasts from a greater swath of the population could now afford to enjoy the art. And on top of it all, vaudeville, a previously lowbrow guilty pleasure, began to seep its influence into traditional theater — with all of its jazzy, sensory deluge in tow.

Essentially, theater got politicized, diversified, democratized and vaudevillian-ized.
From this atmosphere came a new crop of playwrights with a sharper ear for wit, a more broadly social take on subjects and a cooler attitude. George S. Kaufman was one of these playwrights, and his legacy has resulted in the acclaimed Dorset Theatre Festival's Kaufman Collection, a dedication to a series of productions rediscovering Kaufman's works for a modern American audience.

One of the Pulitzer Prize-winner's lesser-known plays, "Merton of the Movies," will form the second and final leg of this year's Dorset Theatre Festival. A preview was performed recently, with principal production now open to the public through July 18.

"Mr. Kaufman has an innate sense of comedy," said director Jonathan Silverstein via telephone from New York City, where he's based. "He has an innate sense of storytelling, sincerity and hopefulness. Kaufman wrote a lot of plays — he was just churning them out — and they all have this sharp comedy and heart to them. That is why they should still be seen today. ("Merton of the Movies") came out of a very fruitful period of American theater. You will see roots of sitcom comedy now from these plays in the 1920s. It's classic comedy."

"Merton of the Movies" focuses on an earnest man who makes it to California from his rural Kansas town in hopes of beginning a successful film-acting career during Hollywood's golden age.
"It was the material that hooked me — the lead character, Merton, is a character that I identify with," Silverstein said. "He's a very hard-working, earnest, hopeful man who comes from a small town and arrives in Hollywood with big dreams, who has to learn many lessons along the way until anything close to his dream can be realized — and yet realized in a different way from what he originally thought it'd be. It's about the silent-film era, of course, but I can draw many parallels with my life and the theater. So I really connected to it emotionally. That's always my key to a play; that's what makes me want to do a production."

Kaufman was a prolific writer and is a fixture in American theatrical lore. Known as "The Great Collaborator" because he passionately enjoyed working with other playwrights, he was a member of the Algonquin Table, a circle of witty writers and show business types. Alongside being a known playwright, he was an editor of the drama section of the New York Times. His dozens of comedies written in a uniquely sardonic and emotionally observant style that has not been matched were awarded with several Hollywood adaptations. It was his most famous work written with Moss Hart, "You Can't Take it With You," that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.
As for "Merton of the Movies," in a period as tumultuous and uncertain as the present, it is worth revisiting how clever minds of another, parallel time trumped up and smoothed out its own fears.