Review of Autumn Garden at Williamstown Theatre Festival

August 16, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall
Lillian Hellman’s “Autumn Garden” at Williamstown’s Festival Theatre is a perfectly marvelous play, probably atypical in being an ensemble play and very unlike Hellman’s better known highly plotted plays, but in her opinion and that of this reviewer, her best. (John Benjamin Hickey & Allison Janney [...]

Review of Uncle Vanya at Barrington Stage Company, Pittsfield

August 12, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.
How to produce Chekhov’s plays has been controversial ever since, a hundred years ago Stanislavsky at the Moscow Arts Theatre declared them to be tragedies and Chekhov objected to taking them too seriously and insisted they were comedies.
The basic problem, of course, is that they are both, [...]

Review of Morning at Seven at Berkshire Theatre Festival

Aug. 4, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.
Paul Osborn’s “Morning at Seven,” now playing at the Berkshire Theatre Festival under Vivian Matalon’s inspired direction, is probably the funniest play of the season with the audience repeatedly a-roar. And the joy is that it is not just a couple of comic characters bringing [...]

Review of Antony and Cleopatria at Shakespeare and Company

Aug.3, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.
Antony and Cleopatria playing for the rest of the summer at Shakespeare and Company has much going for it. Although one of the great tragedies and one that tends to be rarely produced, it is one of the most poetic with only some 70 prose lines among [...]

Review of The Corn is Green at Williamstown Theatre Festival

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 [...]