Lenox — Nobody ever accused Shakespeare & Company in Lenox of playing it safe. So when I heard they were planning to open their version of Steven Dietz’s “Private Eyes — a play that out-Pirandellos Pirandello this weekend (September 27) at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, I determined to find out how they were going to do it.
My first step was a meeting with the director Jon Croy, a master of lucid understatement, who has played 70 roles in 60 plays in the last 29 seasons, and directed a range of shows from “Richard III” to “The Real Inspector Hound.” We talked at a table in the empty lobby of the Bernstein Theatre during that most stressful of all weeks in the development of a play — the dreaded 10 to12 hour per day Tech Week. Jon was calm and articulate, quietly discussing a contemporary romantic comedy about the rehearsal of a romantic comedy, and the memories — false and true — of the lovers in that same romantic comedy as told to a shrink, who repeatedly breaks the fourth wall by directly telling the audience what she thinks love and fidelity are really about.
Two of his cast members, Caroline Calkins (Lisa), and Marcus Kearns (Adrian) were the star-crossed lovers in “Romeo and Juliet” for the Northeast Tour and at The Mount this year. In this show, their characters, a young actor (Lisa) and her director (Adrian) make their own trouble, and save their own lives. Or do they? A third actor, Luke Reed, who played Mercutio with them in R & J, is Matthew, the (wronged or neurotically imaginative) husband.
There’s no doubt Jon Croy loves working with them and they with him, as well as with fast-talking Elizabeth (Lily) Cardaropoli who sports raffish hats and wigs and carries all sorts of surprises in that big bag of hers, and Lori Evans Pugh, a Shakespeare & Company newcomer, who slips easily in and out of various realities like the experienced psychiatrist she inhabits. “I lucked out with this cast,” he says simply.
Dietz, a two-time finalist for the Steinberg New Play Award and the winner of an Edgar for his “Sherlock Holmes, The Final Adventure” has dominated regional theater for the last thirty years. “You have to let go of the literal to enjoy ‘Private Eyes,’” Croy tells me, leaning easily away from the round table. “Dietz is concerned about the core, so he can end up giving us a fuller sense of each character and what’s going on…. There’s an impulse to move with each change of thought.” And I observe when we go inside and yet another round of rehearsing begins that the characters almost never stop moving — although one or the other of them must often hold a position while the Lighting Designer, Robyn Warfield or the Sound Designer, Ian Fisher, set and change light and music cues. Megan Radish, the intrepid Stage Manager keeps track of the time, making everything run as smoothly as possible. And everybody writes, crosses out, and rewrites pages of notes.
Everyone except Jon, who leaves his all-seeing position back by the light and sound boards only occasionally to suggest one thing, praise another, and move around the set. He’s a perfect example of his own ideal of “collaborative” directing. Govane Lohbauer, the Costume Designer, who has been running the by now enormous Shakespeare & Company costume shop for 34 seasons, unobtrusively sees to it that her actors and their roles are perfectly matched. She changes the shrink’s sweater during a break for the sake of color and movement, and assures Marcus that his character, Adrian, would have thrown his sexy leather jacket on the floor before a love scene — but carefully.
“I have all the costumes set by the time we put a play before the first audience,” Govane confides. “The actors deserve that.”
Props and clothes become integral parts of their characters and of the story. The cast has been rehearsing for weeks. But they repeat their lines many times at Jon’s or Robyn’s requests, jumping out of order from scene to scene, trying new locations on the stage, standing still for the setting and re-setting of lights, using different entrances and exits, moving furniture, and then moving it again.
In what seems like a blink, hours later, I’m back in the lobby — while the cast and crew huddle to discuss more technical solutions, this time including Patrick Brennan, the Set Designer, who knows this black box as well as most of us know our own rooms. I already know these solutions will heighten the laughter, the questions, the emotional realities they’re preparing for lucky audiences who will come to the Bernstein for previews this week and performances on weekends through Sunday, November 9. Lisa and Matthew’s marriage will fall apart, or it won’t. Predatory Adrian will change his ways, save his own life and marriage, or not. And we, the audience will have a wildly zany experience while facing up to perennial realities of love and lust.
Jonathan Croy sees “Private Eyes” as a perfect reflection of romance in the 1990’s, and “it still works beautifully today.” Because it’s a slice of romance in the here and now — any here and now. As Frank, (yes, that’s the shrink’s name!) says, we have all “stood at the precipice of deceit… grateful for the privacy of our fantasies…. We revel in our ability to carry out sin within the confines of our own mind.” Our common sense returns. Or maybe not? How will it all come out after these talented, dedicated people’s labors? I can’t wait to find out.
“Private Eyes,” weekends from September 27 through November 9, at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on Kemble Street. For information, show times and tickets: Shakespeare.org or call (413) 637-3353. Tickets and show times are also available on the Berkshire Edge calendar.
