Berkshires arts reviews

August 2, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

There is so much to praise in the absolutely faultless production of Emlyn Williams’ The Corn is Green at the Williamstown Theatre Festival that it is challenging to know where to start or what words can convey just where the magic lies.

The play itself is a beautiful one, tender, combative, lyrical, hilarious and dedicated; the setting with its 16 feet soaring bookcases holding tomes begging to be pushed into the hands of young boys, still children, heights stunted by low mine ceilings; the costumes, so rightly evoking the late 19th century setting; and the casting so absolutely on the mark that the reality of the time takes over, seemingly effortlessly.

All these aspects ring true. And yet there is something more, infinitely more. And that something in the end is Wales. One has seen this play before. Barrymore and Hepburn have starred in it. Great actors both of them. But it is more than that.

This production with its star-studded cast, headed by the talented Kate Burton and including her talented son Morgan Richie breathes not only a different time into the play, but a place—Wales surrounds every moment of the playing from the burst of Welsh voices singing that open the play, until the curtain call when its large cast of 25 line the stage for a well-deserved ovation.

The ensemble playing seems effortless, Chekhovian. The realism of each character charged with that emotional significance Stanislavski’s “System” and Strasberg’s “Method” urged—actors becoming rather than acting a character. Kate Burton slipping into the ensemble, not just the star but the vital, forceful and resourceful link weaving it all together. This realistic play demands such dedication, the kind of realism that seem to flow from within.

Certain productions of certain plays have a successful magic that looking back down the years we cannot forget. This, oh so Welsh and oh so right production of The Corn is Green is one of them.

And that it brings to the Williamstown stage a theatre family. We have had such in the past with the Kembles and Ellen Terry/Gordon Craig in England. With the three talented Barrymores, and , differently, with Eugene O’Neill and his prodigious Monte Christo father. Genes count.

This long preamble is aimed at convincing any avid theatre-goer that this production is one of the rare ones, that down the years you will remember and be glad you were a part of, a bit of theatre history that will take its importance in the records.

And finally to specifics and performances.

Kate Burton glides gracefully over her starred entrance glowing with determination, energy, capability, full of hope and plans and dreams, But her character, Miss Moffat, is shot with mercury as well. When she grabs her assistant’s shawl and sets about taming the insufferable Brit Squire (Dylan Baker) full of himself and his pride in his “other college” (Cambridge) and his acres and mines, she charms as “womanly” as the conceited male expects her to do, and with his departure resumes her determined effort to save for the boys, themselves, and for humanity itself, knowledge.

The plot centers around the career and almost destruction of one young boy Morgan Evans (Morgan Ritchie). Sensing his untapped aptitude in a few misspelled lines he has written in a copybook,. She determines to go ahead with her ideal of opening a school for miner’s children that will bring them up out of the mines and into the light. And for Morgan himself she dreams great dreams

And Morgan, handsome, appealing, gruff but sensitive is, as played by Ritchie, pure gold if she can only keep it from turning to mercury in her hands, especially when in a discouraging moment in the teacher-pupil relationship, he weakens in an angry resolve to give up books, and is lead into the sexually seductive world of Bessie Watty, beautiful but brainless, an embrace that almost dooms his future

Ginnifer Goodwin winningly plays a character we love to hate—Betty Watty. She enters the plot grudgingly whining of the boredom of Wales and leaves it in the last act, her schoolgirl garb, replaced by vulgar city finery, quite satisfied with the empty bargain she has made. At least she is willing to free Morgan when it is to her own advantage in life as she sees it.

Her mother, Mrs. Watty, the housekeeper whom Miss Moffit has brought to Wales to handle physical chores in the school-household, is cut from another cloth, a practical one, and as played a very believable and entertaining one. One moment in her performance I shall never forget. She has been explaining to Miss Moffit her lack of any feeling of love for her wayward daughter and reaches back to the moment of that child’s birth and her first glimpse of it. And with a pause, suddenly “becomes” herself at that moment, not with words but with a look on her face that brought down the house. In such tiny moments do the glories of this play shine.

From his first entrance The Squire, striding egotistically into Miss Moffat’s domain is compelling, and energetic and hilarious in his pomposity. That Miss Moffat eventually tames him so that by the last act he is as avid for good news from Oxford as she is, only develops a character we love even as we laugh at him.

Kathy McCafferty as Miss Ronberry, a winning character, develops from her girlish charm and garb of the play’s opening into an able abetting teacher in the school and in Miss Moffit’s plans. Although her role is secondary, her character is admirable throughout.

As is that of the oh-so-Welsh Rod McLarlan as John Goronwy Jones whose singing (and speaking ) voice adds much to the play

Welsh voices and especially the singing that opens each act of the play, filling the scene changes and once bringing a great cast of school students on stage to sing in unison is lovely.

So, abetted by these talented cast members, crew members, director, theatre management, anyone who had any hand in bringing this production to Williamstown and mounting it on this beautiful stage, a stage family has made bright our summer.

Ritchie’s role in the play, relatively slight in opening scenes, grows to star importance in magnitude and competence in the final act. When finally committed to the future his mentor envisions for him, he takes center stage, standing tall and delivering his acceptance with a fiery zeal and competence.

His grandfather would be proud of him. His mother obviously was when she shared center stage at the curtain call.

As I rode from Lenox up Route 7 the sun was still shining on the roadsides and we passed fields and fields of man-high corn—not just green but glowing with golden tassels on the top, fitting omen for the play to come - one in which the teacher, learning from the pupil can identify with the words “and when I walk in the dark…I can touch with my hands…where the corn is green.”

Touch it at Williamstown.

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