Elegies for Accidental Tourists

Having traveled out of New York City once this summer for a taste of summer stock, we pressed our luck by heading back to the Berkshires, lured by the prospect of seeing William Finn’s Elegies: A Song Cycle in a production by the Barrington Stage Company. These are the folks who gave us a solid staging of Follies earlier this summer and launched The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee the summer before. Into a rented car we jumped, leaving in plenty of time for a leisurely drive, dinner with friends in Great Barrington, and then the theater.

It turned into a night to remember. First of all, the heat index was well over 100 degrees last Friday. We were driving north in heavy weekend traffic when an SUV slammed into the back of our car. Our heads were literally whip-lashed. Barbara, who had been leaning forward when we were hit, really banged the back of her head quite hard against her seat; there was little damage to either car, but her pain was palpable. Yet we didn’t want an ambulance to take her to a local hospital; after all, we had a play to catch that night!

We did insist upon making a police report so that there would be a record of the accident. So we waited endlessly for a State Trooper, broiling in the late afternoon heat. Of course, by the time we continued driving, we were caught in rush-hour traffic; crawling along the highway, we lost more and more time. And then came the thunderstorms. The sky went dark and water came at us so fast and hard, it was almost as if a heavenly dam had burst. The highway was occasionally illuminated when streaks of lightning broke across the mountains ahead of us. That’s was roughly when we realized that we had missed a turn sometime earlier and we were heading in the wrong direction!

We made some calls on our cell phones and got ourselves redirected, but now it was touch and go as to whether or not we would make it to Elegies in time. We arrived exhausted and starving — and one of us had a splitting headache. But we made it and, for the next 90 minutes, we watched and listened with the shared feeling of having been blessed by the God of Theater.

Elegies is an evocative, rich, poignant, and joyful piece. The Barrington cast features Bradford William Anderson, Romain Frugé, André Ward, Sandy Binion, and Sally Wilfert, all of whom are standouts as both actors and singers. Rob Ruggiero’s direction is just playful enough without getting cutesy, and it is simple enough to not get in the way of the songs. Less is indeed more when you’ve got songs like “Mark’s All-Male Thanksgiving,” “Passover,” “Infinite Joy,” “Dear Reader,” “14 Dwight Ave., Natick, Massachusetts,” and so many others. We were often moved to tears and laughter, and there were large intakes of air when Finn would make a brilliant leap from one concept to another bridged only by an artfully chosen word. In short, Elegies is a masterpiece.

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Our Buddy Rick

Also at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, we saw a workshop production of a one-person show titled My Buddy Bill. The Bill in question happens to be former President Bill Clinton, and the talented writer-performer of the piece — who claims buddyship with Bill — is Rick Cleveland, who won an Emmy Award for The West Wing and is the executive producer of HBO’s Six Feet Under.

The play chronicles a series of increasingly friendly meetings between Bill and Rick that began at the White House when Rick took it upon himself to train Clinton’s dog Buddy not to pee on the rug just as the President entered the room. A dog run together with Bill on a beach in California followed, and then came a double date between Bill & Hillary and Rick and his wife, Mary. As described, the meetings become a little more outlandish after that; it’s up to the audience to decide where fact ends and fiction begins in this fascinating piece.

What we do know is that Rick’s mentor was Spalding Gray, his professor at the University of Iowa. We also know that Rick is a fountain of fascinating information. For instance, in one scene in My Buddy Bill, he plays Trivial Pursuit with Clinton, his half-brother Roger, and the actor Billy Bob Thornton. Rick corrects a card that proclaims Zachary Taylor the 12th President of the United States. Why? “Taylor would not take the oath of office on the Sabbath so, for one day, the President was the President Pro Tem of the Senate,” he says. “So Taylor was actually the 13th President of the United States.” And every number thereafter, according to Rick, is wrong by one. You learn something new every day!

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[To contact the Siegels directly, e-mail them at siegels@theatermania.com.]