As The Festival Packs Up, so are the Summer Seasons of our Lives.

Come in. Come in! We promise we’ve turned down the AC. Yes, take off your coats, we promise that the theatre is warming up! But, the shift in temperature also means the end of another season at the the Dorset Theatre Festival. It’s okay to miss us, but before we say our goodbyes, let’s remember the good times we had. Now, don’t cry. Take the Festival’s kerchief. It’ll be alright! There’s always next summer. (We’ll announce our 2010 season in the spring!) We don’t want to dwell on how much we’ll miss Dorset! Right? Dry your eyes and let the Festival tell you a story. We promise it will make you feel better. Alright then. Just take a moment, indulge our dear Festival, gather round the Festival’s favorite recliner, and listen to some old stories about the fun we’ve had in 2009.

At the start of the season, the DTF brought vampires to Vermont! Yes, Connor McPherson’s ST. NICHOLAS was our first show of the season, and the DTF world was turned upside down when the audience actually sat on the stage! Bob Rose put it best, that “this fast-moving production continues artistic director Carl Forsman’s pledge to include entertaining one-person shows in DTF’s lineup each season.” We laughed as, Jack Gilpin who played the narrator, slapped his “fat bastard” belly, we got goosebumps as the we saw the lights in the garden, and we were all left stunned as we wondered “Where are you?”

For the second show in the season, George S. Kaufman’s MERTON OF THE MOVIES, we packed our bags for HOLLYWOODLAND! The world of the silent screen came alive and was played out before the audience with great comical voice. And as we met the zany as well as the harsh critics of Merton, we cheered him on until curtain. And when the curtain came down? We only cheered louder for Merton, played by Mark Emerson, as he bowed.

The third show of the season proved to be the triumphant return of Agatha Christie to Dorset, Vermont. THE HOLLOW ran to sold out performances during its limited run and received high praise from our audiences. And that’s what the Festival wants most of all, your happiness, though we were also pleases that our critics didn’t hate the show either! Peter Bergman wrote, “Director Carl Forsman has just the right touch for this material. He keeps things well paced and understandable and as tensions mount and suspicions are tossed from one set of hands to another he lets us see without pointing a finger how it is both easy and possible to misunderstand motives, to make decisions without facts, to come to conclusions that do not end at the stopping point. He has done a beautiful job with Christie’s play, and in doing so, has created a few new bright stars among his current resident company.” When the Festival scrunches up our eyes and thinks back on THE HOLLOW, we see those vivid greens (and reds!) and can’t help but be proud.

The fourth and final show of the DTF lineup, MARRY ME A LITTLE, brought stars and Sondheim to Vermont. Broadway starlet, Leah Horowitz, and CBS Guiding Light favorite, Paul Anthony Stewart, commanded the musical review as John Bell played the complicated score. The songs, originally discarded from Sondheim’s other musicals, COMPANY, THE FOLLIES, and others, were rescued and transformed into a story about two lonely hearts on a Saturday night. Though there were elements of reality, the musical review was also set in fantasy and allowed the audience to believe some impossibilities. (Like two people dancing together in different apartments!)

Other projects at the theatre this summer were the DTF Family Programming production, ALICE, and our collaboration with the Lark Play Development Summer. ALICE directed and adapted by Tracy Bersley was not only a hit with our targeted twelve and under crowd, but their parents as well. The company comprised of our four non-equity and three intern actors played over 30 different characters!

Our non-equity actors also helped bring life to the characters of seven in-progress and freshly completed plays written by the Theresa Rebeck Writer’s Retreat. The audience heard everything from frat-boy banter to a grieving father acting as Ralph Waldo Emerson to Shakespeare in Las Vegas.

Gosh. The Festival needs its kerchief back. All this talk of the glory days has got us teary-eyed. But! If we start getting excited now, the next season will be even better! Right? Right! We can’t wait.

As our 2009 season is winding down..

DTF's two final shows, Marry Me a Little and Alice in Wonderland are getting rave reviews! Chances to see these two critically acclaimed shows are running out.

Marry Me a Little runs through August 29 and tickets are going fast! Only six more chances to see Paul Anthony Stewart and Leah Horowitz onstage in all their glory.

Alice in Wonderland has been a hit with children and adults alike, and only has two more performances!

Call the box office to reserve tickets now.

Because everyone loves Stephen Sondheim!

Come one, come all to the Dorset Theatre Festival's one and only musical of the season!

Marry Me a Little tells the tale of two lonelyhearts, each alone on a Saturday night with their romantic dreams told through Stephen Sondheim songs. If you loved Into the Woods, Company or Follies, you'll love this show!

If you're not sold yet, Guiding Light's heartthrob, Paul Anthony Stewart stars in this production!

Marry Me a Little runs August 12-29. Seating is limited, so book your tickets now!

Read All About It!

Agatha Christie's The Hollow is making a very sexy splash in Vermont!

Here's what our critics had to say:

The Hollow by Agatha Christie.
Directed by Carl Forsman

Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman
(www.berkshirebrightfocus.com)

"It’s a question of the right values."

Painting pictures, portraits in words, was Agatha Christie’s finest accomplishment. Her mysteries are good ones, sound and sturdy, interestingly odd and loaded with twists, mis-direction, and often the excitement engendered by more than one death. But it is her people we remember, long after the book is laid aside, or the play has closed. We cannot forget Jane Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, Hercule Poirot or, indeed, any of her detectives. Some of her villains and victims are equally memorable and her plays have given us constant delights.

"The Hollow," which was originally published as "Murder After Hours," an Hercule Poirot mystery novel in 1946, was recreated by the author as a play in 1951 without her most famous detective. In his place she offered Inspector Colquhoon and his able, maid-enticing associate Detective Sergeant Penny. It is that play which is now on the stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vermont.

In this work Christie presents us with cousins among the uppercrust, the Angkatell family: Sir Henry, his wife and cousin, Lady Lucy, their cousin Henrietta - a sculptor, another cousin who has inherited the family Manse, Edward and a half-cousin Midge Harvey who works in a dress shop. Though not made entirely clear it would seem a distant relative John Cristow is also among the guests for the weekend at the "Hollow" the home of Henry and Lucy. With him is his wife Gerda and, in short order, his former lover Veronica Craye, now a successful Hollywood actress. As is inevitable in these situations there are the servants, Doris and the butler Gudgeon. Enough characters, with enough relationships, to keep the audience guessing right up to the last scene as to just who is the murderer being sought by Scotland Yard for the death of one of the above.

I am not one to give away too much information in reviewing a mystery play, so don’t expect spoilers in the copy to follow. I will say, however, that in this production the mystery crackles, the relationships tickle and the evening, three acts with two intermissions, comes in at about two and a half hours of bright and brittle conversation.

Director Carl Forsman has just the right touch for this material. He keeps things well paced and understandable and as tensions mount and suspicions are tossed from one set of hands to another he lets us see without pointing a finger how it is both easy and possible to misunderstand motives, to make decisions without facts, to come to conclusions that do not end at the stopping point. He has done a beautiful job with Christie’s play, and in doing so, has created a few new bright stars among his current resident company.

The actors, for the most part, are people who appeared earlier this season in "Merton of the Movies." With the true of a repertory company people who were featured in lead roles in the earlier play move into the support arena and those who had smaller roles in the first now take over the stage in this piece.

Chief among them was a scene-stealing actress from the "Merton.." Ann McDonough who plays the quick-witted, though daft, Lady Lucy Angkatell. McDonough takes the delicious monologues and movements of her character to subtle extremes, as she did in her landlady role last time. She can enter carrying a basket of eggs, leave them hither and yon, forget them, find them, see them without comprehension, ask about them and finally relinquish them with the softness of the confused mind while still remaining focused on the issues under discussion... All in all, if there was no one else in this play it would be recommended for her work alone.

Gardner Reed is a wonderful Henrietta, dynamic, filled with secrets, romantic and yet resolutely honest. Her classic features are just right for Henrietta; her voice is sharp enough to cut a thick-crusted baguette. In the third act she manages to pull of the nearly impossible - she becomes transparent. Her equal in the subtleties of interpretation is Mark Alhadeff as the Inspector. Clearly an individual from the upper set himself, his poise and his profile are almost classic British while his presentation of his character is quietly aggressive and controlling.

Kirk Jackson is a wonderful, almost stuffy, Sir Henry. It’s wonderful to watch him, pole-up-spine, reserved and proper, melt when his young half-cousin comes into the room. She is played beautifully by Kim Hausler. Her rage at being considered too young is thrilling in one so young.

The Cristow’s are excellently portrayed by Clark Carmichael and Crystal Finn. Her mixed heritage is perfectly played out in Finn’s use of a different accent from the others. His superiority is a visible one; attitude is everything with him. Ted Caine is just fine as Gudgeon and Larissa Goldberg is a marvelous Doris. Curran Connor is almost too lascivious as Penny, but it works for him, especially when Doris makes a confession.

... Mark Emerson’s Edward Angkatell [is exquisite]. There was not one moment over-played, under-played or out-of-keeping in his interpretation of this complex, yet simple, man. If Ann McDonough should be out of the show when you see it, the play will still have this opposite pole to support the fragile tenting of mystery that makes this play work so well. Emerson was "Merton" in the last piece and in combination with that character, it would seem that this actor has a major career in his future.

The gorgeous set by Bill Clarke is effectively lit by Josh Bradford and the costumes designed by Theresa Squire are one hundred percent correct for the characters. Physically and from the directorial point of view the production is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

You may not be a fan of mysteries, but if you are a fan of live theater that keeps you awake and on your toes, this is the play to see.

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'Hollow' offers Christie mystery

By BOB ROSE
Special to The Post-Star

Published: Friday, July 24, 2009
DORSET, Vt. - Agatha Christie returns to the Dorset Playhouse, and her "The Hollow" assures an entertaining time of murder, mystery and mayhem, including enough romantic intrigue to keep you in awe and amusement for more than two hours.

Cleverly directed by Dorset Theatre Festival’s Carl Forsman, "The Hollow" features a sterling cast, several of whom already have delighted us in "Merton of the Movies."

With a beautifully designed set by Bill Clarke, the cast takes us through a manor house murder mystery that challenges us to figure out who has killed Clark Carmichael’s John Cristow, an obnoxious, self-impressed doctor and a fellow who seems attracted to nearly every woman he meets, with the possible exception of his shy but adoring wife, Gerda, played by Crystal Finn.

Just about every character on the stage has a motive to do this fellow in. And, yes, that includes Ted Caine’s stiff and proper butler, Gudgeon, and even the new household maid, Doris, played by Larissa Goldberg.

An actress, Helen Farmer’s Veronica Craye, appears unexpectedly during a weekend family retreat at the Angkatell mansion, and we soon learn that John was once engaged to her. Right now, though, he is making advances toward Garner Reed’s Henrietta Angkatell when his wife’s back is turned. But he still has eyes for Veronica, of course.

John’s wife, Gerda Cristow, is played by Crystal Finn. Gerda is a patient, long-suffering soul who still loves John despite his romantic encounters.

The unique combination of characters also includes another weekend guest, Kim Hausler’s working girl Midge Harvey, Mark Emerson’s Edward Angkatell, who played the title role in "Merton of the Movies," Kirk Jackson’s Sir Henry Angkatell, and his wife, Ann McDonough’s odd ball Lady Angkatell.

This lady is worth the price of admission all by herself. Absentminded to a hilarious degree, she keeps the audience laughing throughout the show.

Finally, of course, we have Mark Alhadeff’s Inspector Colquhoun trying to solve the mystery with the aid of his assistant, Detective Sergeant Penny played by Curran Connor.

As events transpire, you will find yourself centering on one suspect after another, and in typical Christie style, the solution comes only at the last moment in this beautifully acted production that features excitement, mental challenge and well-delivered amusement.