BTF achieves the impossible

August 22, 2002 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Once again the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Unicorn Theatre has achieved the impossible, creating on its small stage a soaring old Manhattan townhouse, complete from curb-side fire-plug to attic windows, from lobby mail boxes to flight after flight of steep stairs.

This is the admirable setting of Brownstone, a Sondheim-like small musical, created by Josh Rubins, Peter Larson and Andrew Cadiff, and effectively and engagingly performed under the creative and watchful eye of director James Warwick.

The four small apartments, open to view, house five people, all fiercely clinging to privacy, all coping with the lonely but hectic grind of trying to make a life and a career in a city that just goes on being a city as though they were not there, and all suffering the ills of claustrophobia, isolation, and dashed hopes as well as hopeful dreams.

These people meet at the mail-box but do not know each other’s names. They speak only to complain about early morning noise. They would not consider offering an unwanted toaster to another but will dump it to be scavenged. They seem to have no interest in who sits behind each other’s peep-hole guarded doors.

But they all have their problems. Howard (James Barry) and his wife Mary (Susan Schuld) both in their late thirties, have probably lived there longest, waking as they do at the play’s opening, in the fold-out couch that dominates the room. Once it is folded away and Mary can go off to her teaching job that supports them, Howard can turn to his lap-top and the unsuccessful novel he is unable to write.

Joan (Stephanie Girard) on the second floor also seems to have been there for several years and is seemingly a minorly successful young lawyer—ala Ally McBeal, long legs, long blond hair, and boy-friend trouble. She’s had it with the city and wants a house in the country for which she is desperately saving. She has “arrived” to an extent and it isn’t enough. At the play’s end she will move on.

Claudia (Sheila Vasan) is bouncy, out-going and appealing. She gets up early to run, rides a motor bike to her gallery job and goes up and down to her third floor with constancy and agility. Her cell phone communications are unrewarding and her love life isn’t going anywhere, despite her amiability and zest.

The arrival of a new occupant, Stuart (Kevin Reed) on an October day is no big deal to anyone in the building other than the noise created by his dragging book boxes up and down the stairs at an ungodly hour. He is very young and hopeful and comes, as he would tell them if they cared to listen, which they do not, that he comes from Wisconsin. They will go on bumping into each other at the mailbox, and Stuart will find a small job and little encouragement when he tries to make friends.

The action occurs over the course of one year, beginning and ending in October, with scenes occurring in January, April and July to remind us that even Manhattan has weather changes, necessitating numerous costume changes, but pointing to a sameness of the problems the occupants face.

All five characters are well-cast and sing, dance, and agonize (or cheerfully cope) with their lives. Their dialog is sung back and forth in addition to the duets and full company numbers. The four piece orchestra is wisely tucked on stage behind the actors and never dominates their words.

There are innumerable musical numbers including solos, duets and rousing company numbers, the latter often individually separated by stairs and levels as in the rousing “Somebody’s Moving In” that opens the show with a frantic activity of up and down stairs and each having his/her own lonely take on the occasion.

Howard (bass) has a marvelously funny and active solo in “Babies on the Brain” in which his desk chair becomes innumerable objects (all negative) concerning a baby. Mary (soprano) has poignant moments of almost despair in her solo, “Still Don’t Know”. Joan (soprano) does well in duets with the persistent Stuart, but knows her own mind. Claudia (alto) reminds one of a young Bernadette Peters but is decidedly her own woman as she assures us in “Spring Cleaning” when responding to being dumped romantically, she redecorates her tiny apartment and moves on.

The year brings changes. Minor and realistic ones. No transformations. Boy friends prove fickle, the writer takes on a part-time job, and the tenants are brought (minimally) together by an ominous letter from the new landlord. They even learn each other’s names!

There is even a bit of hope at the very end when for the first time Stuart and Claudia make eye contact, after having passed each other up and down the stairs for twelve months. But it’s just life. Just people living their everyday lives as best they can. As we all do.

Go to this one. You will enjoy it. And arrive on time to take in the amazing set (designed by Carl Sprague) which is a jig saw puzzle of construction, including l5 or l6 windows with attic ones and those of nearby over-shadowing high-rise ones lit up beautifully and movingly in the night scenes (credit to Christopher J Bailey who designed them.) Definitely, if you have ever lived and worked in Manhattan, this is one you will not want to miss.