"A Moon for the Misbegotten" & "Unknown Soldier" at WTF

[mike_ant]

Posted: 8/10/15 at 5:57pm

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to spend a day at Williamstown Theatre Festival, watching "A Moon for the Misbegotten" for matinee and "Unknown Soldier" in the evening. Since I didn't see many discussions about the recent festival, I thought to share with you some of my impressions of both shows. With a prologue. 

Traveling to WTF

Since this was my first trip to Williamstown, I didn't really know what to expect. Well, I got quite a trip from hell, unfortunately. I booked Amtrak from Penn Station, leaving 10.20am and scheduled to reach Albany-Rensellaer 12.45pm, which I thought should be enough time to pick up my rental car from Albany airport and leisurely drove to WTF for a 3.30pm matinee. Unfortunately the train stopped for a long time in the woods, and the whole train was 1 hour late. Furthermore, the cab from the train station was a shared cab, although luckily I got dropped to airport first. So you could imagine how fast I drove to WTF. I got there, collected the ticket, and got seated in right before the door closed. 

"A Moon for the Misbegotten"




I've never seen this play. Audra's name basically sold me this show. But before I went there, the first thing that caught my attention when I sat was the beautiful stage. A perfect recreation of the country house, with a working well in front and a tree next to it and beautiful sky as backdrop. Glorious! The play began with Audra as Josie, bare-footed, in a rag clothes, bantering with her brother. From that moment on, this is definitely Audra's show. She was so captivating as Josie, brazen, bold, confident, sassy, and yes, Carmen-like slutty. There is no doubt that she isn't innocent (spoiler alert: to those that read the play, is she really supposed to be virgin?). I love the guy who played her father (I didn't have the cast list right now), perfectly cast as a crook that loved his daughter a lot. I think the interaction between him and Josie was dynamite, and the actors had great chemistry. The scene where father & daughter mocked the neighbor was absolutely funny and awesome! The other 2 actors were great in their parts. I left the one thing that I thought was a drawback in this performance: Will Swenson as Jim. I feel like it really needed a great character actor to bring out the role; he had to be a charming "asshole". Will acted well, but he was too much of a gentleman. In a play where everybody played a game of deceive and be deceived, you can't be too earnest. When he said that he wouldn't sell the ranch, you'd believe him right away. He's much improved in the 2nd act, where the chemistry with Audra made the romantic scenes very touching. All in all, still a great production that I was glad to catch it.

"Unknown Soldier"

I saw this pretty much blindly, just because I quite like Michael Friedman's work in "Fortress of Solitude" and Trip Cullman's direction of "Choir Boy". I didn't even look at the cast for it. I thought this is a story about lost soldier. Boy, how I was wrong. This was a super dense story about relationships, spanned over various decades. In fact, the soldier story IMO wasn't even the most interesting parts of the story. In 90 mins without intermission, this super intense musical felt kinda like a torrent of flood drowning your emotions. In that aspect, the awesome cast did an absolutely wonderful job navigating through the gigantic story. Yes, it did feel like too much at times. Michael Friedman's score was melancholy, with a number of memorable tunes, although my biggest problem with him was that IMO he tended to cut all his songs short, they almost felt unfinished songs and he already moved on to the next one. Personally, I found that was pretty annoying for my brain. It's like just right before my brain completely processed the songs (or when it starts to tell "hmmm this is a nice tune"), it abruptly moved to the next. I love Lauren Worsham's in Gentleman Guide, and I was pleasantly surprised to find her as Lucy here, down to the similar costumes. Although, she got more showier songs here, and she excelled. This is an ensemble cast, and pretty much everybody did great. The stage was pretty simple, a tad busy, but pretty effective. Derek Klena did well as the soldier, although he was kinda wasted here, didn't even have a full song (worse, he didn't even have a full sentence verses!). When all is said and done, I still think it's an achievement to mount this gigantic little musical, and I was glad to see it. I hope it'll find a life somewhere else after WTF, and I think Public Theater would be perfect for this!

[Wee Thomas2]

Posted: 8/11/15 at 8:58am

Thanks for posting this.  We're seeing Moon on Saturday night. Were supposed to see the double bill as a matinee, but one of the shows got canceled, so still working out what we'll be doing.