BTF’s ‘THE WEIR’ A TRIUMPH of HILL’s DIRECTION & BACKBONE ACTING of BRIDGERS, LANE
BY DANVALENTI
PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY
(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY OCT 2, 2024) — “There’s no dark like a winter night in the country.”
So speaks Jack (Sean Bridgers) in Conor McPherson’s The Weir, running through Oct. 27 at the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Unicorn Theater in Stockbridge. Jack’s right–unless it’s the dark night in the bleak moors of a person’s psychic devastations from wrong things done, for right things not done.
The action takes place in a small Irish pub set in the uncultivated uplands, a place for regulars that only city folk might find quaint. The Unicorn’s own intimacy provides the perfect stand for Randall Parsons’ snug set. It’s where the unloved can find companionship.
Jack enters the bar, but owner Brendan (Philip Themio Stoddard) isn’t there. No problem. He pours himself a Guinness and places his money in the till, showing not telling the pub’s intimacy. Nice touch. Soon the pair are joined by Jim (Joey Collins), Jack’s assistant at the garage Jack owns.
Jack’s a mechanic needing repair, a hurting soul drowning in beer and “short ones”–boilermakers to Americans. His mask of needles, jokes, pronoucements, and self deprecations will erode as the evening continues. He’s a good man needing to be put on the lift for some serious undercarriage work. He gets it in the form of Valerie (Stephanie Jean Lane), a woman leaving her own terrors in Dublin to start afresh in the countryside’s agrestic equability.
———- ooo ———-
Sean Bridgers as Jack (all photos courtesy of the Berkshire Theatre Group).
In these opening scenes, director Eric Hill places Jack, Brendan, and Jim in a horizontal line at the bar, a positioning that plays well in the pub’s snug Feng sui. Throughout the play, Hill’s adroit blocking puts the stage in full use behind a kind of Cinemascope filter. Actors occupy the space in accord with their nocturnal sharing, a howling night of tall tales involving ghosts, haunted houses, and the supernatural.
Jack is a lifelong bachelor who acts as a paternal anchor to young Brendan and Jim. Jack and Jim get in their cups, amiably encouraged by Brendan. You get the usual buffeting banter of men left on their own, a combination of horseplay, buffoonery, and from Jack a cantankerous bravado that amplifies as the drinking progresses. Bridgers plays a superb drunk. Acting drunk severely tempts caricatured, cartoonish overacting. THE PLANET has seen it a million times on stage and film. Bridgers nails it.
From left, Joey Collins, Philip Themio Stoddard, and Sean Bridgers.
Makes one wonder: Is he downing real Guinness and Jameson, not root beer and ice tea?
———- ooo ———-
The men’s tone changes on a quid as Finbar (Harry Smith), a businessman whose success has enabled him to escape to the city, enters with Valerie. The shy femininity tames the blockheaded masculinity as the play upshifts out of first gear.
Valerie has rented an old house that’s the subject of Finbar’s blarney about an old woman’s ghost who haunts the house’s stairwell.
Stephanie Jean Lane
As the blustery night progresses, Jack and Jim join Finbar, each telling a far-fetched tale of faeries and hauntings, long monologues requiring great feats of memorization. Smith, Bridgers, and Stoddard pull it off convincingly in Irish brogues that make up in rhythm what they lack in authenticity.
Valerie then shares her tale of haunting, only hers is real. She has left Dublin after the death of her little girl in a drowning accident, a nightmare that leaves her wracked with guilt and a husband too quick to blame her for negligence.
Her story, which has its own One Step Beyond twist, galvanizes the four men. Watch the faces. Bridgers, Smith, Collins, and Stoddard marvelously re-act, a chorus of deep sympathy commenting wordlessly on the fragility of life. Each character, caught up in complexes of their own exceptionalism, nonetheless find common ground in compassion and friendship.
Valerie’s tragic story hits Jack the hardest.
Stephanie Jean Lane, Harry Smith
He confesses his failure to follow his girlfriend to Dublin, where she has relocated. Jack drops faith’s disguises and cynicism’s skids, intrepidly exploring of his sin of omission.
Why didn’t he listen to his heart those many years ago? With Valerie’s therapeutic empathy, he bravely addresses the haunting query. Bridgers is at his cauterizing best at the play’s biggest moment.
We’re in the hands of true professionals here, folks.
Eric Hill and his troupe have presented a triumph.
THE PLANET pronounces it the best work done on any Berkshire stage this year.
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“An actor is an athlete of the heart” — Antonin Artaud.
“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”
LOVE TO ALL.
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The Veep debate was civil. Tim Walz pointed out that his opponent would support a federal tax cut that would grow the U.S. national debt by around $6 trillion in 4 years, while J.D. Vance pointed out that his opponent would do the same by around $3 trillion in 4 years because they have no way to pay for all of their new spending proposals.
Anyways, I love this time of year when the beauty of the Autumn season takes our thoughts away from politics. There is more to our lives than the lousy career politicians who deficit spend our taxpayer dollars into a black hole that future generations are sucked into. A little over one month from now we vote for….MORE DEFICIT SPENDING!
Another Inteligent piece from Jonathon..
Don’t believe a word that tampon Tim says
Sounds like a great play Dan. I love that type of atmosphere with ghosts and the supernatural.
The Vance/Walz debate was much better than the presidential debate. The questions were more direct and substantial. The moderators did try some tricks like fact checking Vance on the spot and muting his microphone. Walz came off as a snake oil salesman while Vance seemed very trustworthy. Vance strongly stated that working Americans are being crushed by high housing costs and inflation and are unable to achieve the American Dream under Biden/Harris.
October 02, 2024
Hello blogger Dan Valenti and readers, and everyone else out there,
Pat, the underclass population has been increasing in numbers for over the past 50 years now. Almost all of the income gains have gone to the super wealthy few households, financial powerhouses, corporate elites, and the corrupt ruling elites.
Pat, how can you say that J.D. Vance is correct to point out that due to high housing costs and inflation, the common people and families are unable to achieve the American Dream under Joe Biden & Kamala Harris (& Tim Walz, too)? It has been getting worse and worse for over the past 50 years now – it is called economic inequality.
From what I understand, someone around my age who is stuck in a working-class life makes about $5 more per work week than my grandparents did in the 1970’s. Meanwhile, the super wealthy have been enriching them and their financial, corporate and ruling elites to the tune of many billions of dollars per year since the 1970’s.
Since the end of WW2, Wall Street has been making trillions of dollars off of war, but at the cost of many millions of innocent human lives over the past a little less than 80 years. It is called, “Wall Street worships the Almighty….Dollar!
Our nation’s post WW2 through present day, 2024, economy is based on the military industrial complex whereby the U.S. Government’s number one non-farm exports are arms sales, related technologies, and endless wars. Our nation’s industrial economy has been outsourced to foreign countries, but with large regions of the U.S.A. being called “The Rust Belt”. Many farms in the U.S.A. have been bought out by large corporations, foreign interests, and billionaires such as Bill Gates.
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was once a so-called GE town that employed over 10,000 local residents in the post-WW2 era through the 1970’s whereby the middle-class actually grew in the U.S.A. for a little less than 30 years from the mid-1940’s to the early-1970’s. In 2024, Pittsfield has been and still is GE’s toxic waste dump with zero GE jobs left. Pittsfield is a perfect illustration of postindustrial decay in the 21st Century U.S.A.
I was never able to work in a living wage job in my entire life of over 49 years. If I did not have my service-connection VA benefits, then I would be fortunate to live in public housing myself. When I lived in my native hometown of Pittsfield many years ago now, I felt that I had better odds of winning the state lottery jackpot – (voluntary) regressive taxation that targets the “Jon Melle’s” of distressed places like the “PITTS-field’s” – than obtaining and retaining a living wage job in my life. Those are terrible odds, but I faced them many years ago now – along with Luciforo’s a little less than the past 28.5 years of abuses against me (and my dad, Bob, who was a Berkshire County Commissioner from 1997 – mid-2000).
Project 2025 and Donald Trump wants to privatize the VA. The first thing privatization does is for a would-be greedy insurance company to strip away VA benefits in the name of so-called efficiency. I would eventually lose everything that I have today. I never counted in my life when I lived in Pittsfield, and I may not count anymore if the VA is privatized in a would-be future. I do not win at any cost like the aforementioned super wealthy few and the elites that serve their special interests do. Instead, I write, blog, and pound sand about it all.
Jon Melle
There’s plenty of $$$ to be made, supplying our boys with the tools of the trade.
“The liberty to have and hold property is not one that [today’s so-called ‘Liberals’] recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it.” H. L. Mencken.
Jonathan, it’s the corrupt ruling elites who are pushing Kamala Harris. It’s the corrupt ruling elites who are destroying our country and our working middle class.
Call the housing shortage what you will, but the answer isn’t to pour in millions of illegal immigrants to make a housing shortage crisis even worse. The Democrats didn’t care about housing for the people until they poured in the illegal immigrants which has skyrocketed the prices of rent and buying a home. Sorry, but the Democrats are causing a terrible problem to get even worse.
All good points, Pat. Thank you.
I think if Pat had heard the debate without knowing who the participants were she would have said Vance is the snake oil salesman and Walz is very trustworthy.
Lets go back to basics Ox. Apparently, when growing up you missed out on some very important principles you could have learned by reading “ The Boy who Cried Wolf” and the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. And hopefully when/if the truth about your favored leaders( so-called) finally becomes evident to you, we will all be waiting in the wings, to hear a multitude of “mea culpas” coming from your remorseful and humbled facial estuary.
You forget, Festus: you are a minority member of our society.
Gee Ox, all this tome I thought I was a White Caucasian. Thanks for clearing that up. Not to burst your alternate reality bubble but I do belong to the not so silent majority. Still hopeful Ox that the light will eventually illuminate your dark domain, shower you with undeniable truth, and put you on that winning and rewarding road to victory.
Very well Watz lied. Very nice he sounds. Everyone is a human he says. Interesting that is and true. Humans, even murderers and thieves are. This when I am attacked by one I shall remember.
But, much he must learn. When lying, your gaze you must keep calm, eyes must not blink or downwareds look, and he must not fidgit. His hands off his face he needs keep.
J.D. Vance once called Donald Trump: “America’s HITLER”!
The Arts, and intelligent comment upon them, are the mark of a civilized society. Those of us who produce, patronize and provide stewardship of artistic endeavor appreciate the full measure of our debt to society and the value our participation in that system buys for us. There is no higher calling than supporting the societal endeavors and needs of our fellow citizens.
“and intelligent comment upon them” – that’s really good. Thanks for that.
Robertson Davies in What’s Bred in the Bones writes of critics, (loosely recalled), ‘if criticism isn’t art then what is it?’ Certainly nothing of intrinsic value anyway. Neither the artist nor the pubilc need it, and the critic definitely does not need the art. His works adorn newspapers and rags, and his readers likely will never actually see the object of his writing. Intelligent commentary is what we, laymen and artists, seek – not critique.
TRUTH
Well said. THE PLANET agrees, heartily.
This is a skeen of sliced baloney. If Dan cared a wit about injustice in our society he wouldn’t waste his time with mamby-pamby play commentary.
Injustice you need not worry. Justice Justice pursue thou shall.
Great review, Dan. Makes me want to see the work.
You won’t be disappointed, SIR CHAZ.
Do they pay you for this review as advertisement.
Well, they do pay you to put on a play, so why not?
Sarcasm: It is pay to play in Pittsfield politics (& beyond).
Right. Tit forTat. Quid pro quo. Free tickets? But Dan is legit. He is his own resource. Unlike pctv comp stooge.
Our lovely new toters are manufactured in Mexico. Lumpy Marchetti and weird White are supposed to be union supporting democrats. Muchas gracias pendejos.
Mexico, are only making the toters Americans don’t want to make. Si Senor.
Is Tim Walz, friends with any Trump shooters too?
FEMA money 649 million diverted to house and fund illegals. FEMA currently has no money for the next hurricane which is pretty soon.
FJB and FKH!!!
The greatest economy in the world right now is the President Biden/Harris economy of 2024…They walk the union line and support collective bargaining that built the middle class. Musk Vance and the elderly weakened Trump who is not capable of speaking are not middle class union supporters.Those 3 men hate unions.
Need help from the Biden-Harris regime? Sorry but your taxpayer dollars are being used to support lawbreaking illegal aliens! None for you!
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/biden-kamala-regime-burns-1-billion-fema-funds/
Harris, didn’t get where SHE is, by keeping her mouth shut. Ask Willie Brown.
She has oversaw the demise of Americans lives for ~ 4 years now. Border/CRIMINAL ALIEN HORDES, invited AND IMPORTED using US tax dollars.
AMERICAN ELDERLY, receive less SS benefits , THEY PAID FOR, than the MILLIONS OF CRIMINALS BIDEN/HARRIS imported , using US taxpayer money.
FJB and FKH!!!
Vote well Americans.
Where’s Walzo BEEN ?
The Obama plan for the destruction of the U.S. continues as Dem NC Guv fails to send approved troops…..
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/north-carolinas-democrat-governor-roy-cooper-still-hasnt/
Obama plans to destroy the US. Yeah, right.
That’s the problem with you folks: in addition to your reasonable political views you make outlandish statements that are not even close to being true. Like, ‘Obama plans to destroy the US.’
Give me a break.
It’s sickening that the media plays favorites against the American Voters for their own interest. Noone can be this disagreeable unless there is a nepotistic regime that only benefits cash flow to these networks. How the hell can these get away nepotism during the debates. It’s very clear that the majority of the media favors idiots like Walz and Harris. That’s nice to be you can see is clearly clearly something wrong with this governor.
Yes, the majority of the media and the majority of the populace favor Walz and Harris.
Don’t fritz and Mad and Pat know it literally doesn’t matter what are you say about the Democrats on here. In Massachusetts they will never ever ever vote Republican that’s you are in the state you’re in in here in the city.
Marge Green said democrats control the weather and of course denied science as all trumps do.
“ Don’t “
Dan
Giving up on politics?
Tb
Biden-Harris are no friends to Israel…..
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2024/10/03/biden-telegraphs-israels-military-plans-to-the-world-reveals-nothing-going-to-happen-today-in-iran/
Thanks for the review! It’s nice to come here and see something a little different, other than arguing, although some of these goobers have turned even this post into something to argue about. To each his own.
We will be seeing the play soon anyway. Very much looking forward to it.
Hmmmmmmm goobers argue very much they do.
That girl goober pokes. To start an argument she wants.
The Corp press ignores Trumps crimes and his violent coup