Charming and endearing, feisty and tender...

June 2, 2005 performance, by Frances Benn Hall

Charming and endearing, feisty and tender, I Do, I Do! now playing at the Berkshire Theatre Festival's Unicorn Theatre is a two character musical to which anyone from young adults to senior citizens can bring empathy.

The book, written by Jan de Hartog, saw first life in 1951 as a Broadway play, The Four Poster. Its universal theme, tracing a marriage from its joyful but hesitant wedding morning through the fifty years of up and down connubial bliss and tension, (joy at birth of children, disenchantment of raising teen-agers, misunderstandings, envies, grievances, and final ‘moving on” faced by any marriage that endures the years.

The play was soon adapted to a film starring real-life marriage partners, Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, and then, in 1966, adapted into the musical I Do, I Do! by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt.

The wild success of this seemingly simple plot is witnessed by approbation such as the musical having run 22 years in Minneapolis and its winning a Tony Award. The fact behind its longevity and attractiveness is that it is not a simple light comedy about falling in love and living happily ever after, even though a certain kind of happiness is there at the end of the rainbow.

In the current production, two young actors, Sarah Kauffman as Agnes and Gary Patent as Michael, give us two delightful and developing characters from the opening of the play when they appear in their underwear until they leave the house of the four poster behind them and move on to acceptance of old age and their enduring, if bickering, love.

They play out their in-and-out romance in a marvelous setting designed by Audra Avery; a room dominated by the great four-poster of their wedding night, and one encircled by swinging panels that allow them to almost instantly exit and return as the years pass, the clothes (meticulously designed period pieces by Jessica Risser-Milne) and even hair styles, minutely but realistically, change.

Both Kauffman and Patent are well-cast and competent. They inhabit their environment and assume their increasing ages with apparent ease. They delight us with Jones’ witty lyrics, and move us with duets such as "My Cup Runneth Over," and Kaufman is especially poignant in her solo, "hat Is a Woman?" Patent brings a boyish charm to the couples' wedding night and a frustrated mid-life crisis to the duet "Nobody's Perfect." Both are excellent donning coats and sagging shoulders (but high heads) in their finally moving on.

Director Sarah Gurfield has served her cast well. I Do, I Do! is an enjoyable evening at the theatre, and its dedication to Jane and Jack Fitzpatrick, stalwart supporters of arts in the Berkshires is a touching homage well-deserved.

Berkshire Theatre Festival  |  berkshiretheatre.org
P.O. Box 797, Stockbridge, MA 01262
Administration Offices: 413-298-5536; FAX:413-298-3368
E-mail:info@berkshiretheatre.org