by Emily Edelman
Barrington Stage Company’s 10X10 New Play Festival is a welcome break in the doldrums of winter in the Berkshires, and this year’s 13th annual edition continued the tradition of ten 10-minute plays by diverse writers in a fast-paced evening of bite-sized vignettes.
The opening number, a lively parody of the musical “Grease,” featured all six of the show’s cast members and told the story of the past year in the life of Barrington Stage while reminding the audience that the summer season is on its way, but “first, all those winter nights.”
The ambiguous ending of “I Don’t” by Jordan Ealey, about a runaway bride who drops in on her ex-boyfriend on her wedding day, is both frustrating and thought-provoking.
The theme of “what’s right in front of you is easy to miss” paired with witty dialogue in John Mabey’s “The Mount Greylock Fish Hawk Squawk” endeared the plights of three couples celebrating different types of anniversaries on a mountain hike.
Veteran cast members Peggy Pharr Wilson and Robert Zukerman have an easy, believable chemistry together in each of the three plays in which they portray a husband and wife, especially Diana Metzger’s “High Time,” about an older couple’s first visit to a recreational cannabis dispensary.
The evening also included more serious and sensitive moments, such as Mark Evan Chimsky’s “Meeting Fingerman,” about a young writer’s encounter with his mentor who is harboring a decades’ old secret; “The Welcome” by Jennifer Maisel, concerning a young woman who travels across state lines to have an a medical procedure; and “Snow Falling Faintly” by James McLindon, a conversation between a mother and son who reconnect emotionally while shoveling 2 feet of snow.
Peggy Walsh’s costumes were appropriate and realistic, and Lucas Pawelski’s lighting was most effective in “Snow Falling Faintly” and “The Mount Greylock Fish Hawk Squawk.” Co-director Alan Paul’s staging was at its best in “Snow Falling Faintly.”
The 13th Annual 10X10 New Play Festival at Barrington Stage Company runs February 15 – March 10 on the St. Germain Stage at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center, 36 Linden Street in Pittsfield MA. Tickets are available at https://secure.barringtonstageco.org/2024-10×10.
Directors: BSC Artistic Director Alan Paul and Matthew Penn.
Plays & Playwrights: A Doubt My Play by Glenn Alterman; The Consultant by Brent Askari; Meeting Fingerman by Mark Evan Chimsky; I Don’t by Jordan Ealey; The Mount Greylock Fish Hawk Squawk by John Mabey; The Welcome by Jennifer Maisel; Snow Falling Faintly by James McLindon; High Time by Diana Metzger; can i tell you a story? by Christopher Oscar Pena; The Open Door by Jessica Provenz.
Cast: Gisela Chipe, Ross Griffin, Matt Neely, Naire Poole, Peggy Pharr Wilson, and Robert Zukerman.
Creative Team: Costumes designed by Peggy Walsh, set design by Marcus Kearns, lighting design by Lucas Palweski, sound design by Nathan Leigh, props by Leo Guller, Production Stage Manager Renee Lutz, Assistant Stage Manager Kaleigh Cerqua.