Berkshire on Stage

You know this is going to be an unusual production when, instead of entering the auditorium of the St. Germain Stage to find your seats, you are ushered backstage to wander among the myriad pieces of furniture, dishes, knick-knacks, overflowing bins and items of clothing that are for sale.  You might have expected to find something like this onstage, knowing the play is called Estate Sale, but as you look at the tagged items backstage you’re not sure whether or not you can actually buy them.  In addition, instead of backtracking to your seat, you are encouraged to walk directly onstage to find more interesting sale items.  As a result, when the actor playing “Executor” (of the estate) enters the stage with his clipboard and pencil, adding price tags to more items, some audience members can still be seen wandering on stage.  You’re not sure whether they are part of the play.

Thus does Barrington Stage Company’s Estate Sale, by Keelay Gipson begin.

There is a standing onstage microphone stage left, a clever device that allows us to distinguish when the Executor is talking directly to the audience and expecting us to answer (breaking the imaginary fourth wall between the stage and the playgoers) and when we become quiet observers of the action onstage.   When this actor (a thoroughly engaging Jayson Lee) begins to speak to us, he uses his cell phone to turn off the onstage rock music, at the same time reminding us to turn ours off.  We hear no other announcements.

Instead of a long exposition, there is a prologue, during which Lee presents us a with a series of jokes:  riddles and answers about orphans, which eventually lead us to understand that he is an orphan, an only child having lost his parents, inherited the childhood home that he doesn’t want, and is selling its entire contents.

Gipson calls his play a “Choreopoem,” a term coined by Ntozake Shange in her 1975 masterpiece:  for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.  She was influenced by the Black Arts Movement as well as feminist art in presenting a work about the empowerment of black women through dance, music, song and poetry.   This new art form did not focus on a linear plot or specific characters, but instead, each woman was identified by the color of the dress she wore, and their stories (memories), revealed through the collaboration of the various arts, were meant to elicit an emotional response from the audience.

Gipson adopts some of these tools and adds his own.  He apparently attended rehearsals of Estate Sale and from the differences between the written script and the performance, it’s clear that the play, skillfully directed by Steph Paul, benefited from its development during this process.  One major difference is that the allegorical names given to the characters (apart from the Executor, a legal term), seemingly a nod to Shange:  Beauty, Truth, and Youth, can only be known by reading the script or the cast list in the program.  To the audience, they appear as the Executor’s deceased father (Truth), mother (Beauty), and living friend and neighbor (Youth), the Executor has not seen in fifteen years.  

Although there is music in the play, the emphasis is not on song and dance (though the director is a choreographer who emphasizes physical movement –not necessarily dance—to express truth).  Using Shange’s non-linear approach, Gibson’s play focuses on coping with grief through memories.  The play is Gipson’s autobiographical attempt to deal with the death of his parents by selling everything in his past—wanting to erase it entirely, which he finally understands is not the way to go: “Grief can be both the devastation of loss and the celebration of life.”  

Because the Executor’s parents have passed, their relationship to each other and to their son is revealed in flashbacks.  Gillian Glasco (Beauty) is the Executor’s mother, whose death during Covid was unexpected, untimely.  Her story is one of disappointment—a would-be model who left her small town for the big city but ended up returning as a caregiver to the elderly who suffer with developmental challenges.  We can see Glasco’s joy every time her son drops the idea of selling something of hers, and we root for her when she attempts to help this young man she loves more than anything, despite her controlling husband.  We understand why the Executor’s greatest tragedy was losing her.

Blake Morris (recently seen in King James at BSC), plays her husband (Truth), a hard, bitter, judgemental man, called a “realist” by the playwright, who cannot accept his queer son. Working a series of demeaning jobs to keep a roof over his family’s head, he seems incapable of showing affection to his son, who rarely interacts with him.  But in a touching scene with his deceased parents, both the father and son must confront their own demons.

Christopher B. Portley’s portrayal of Youth, a jazz musician who never made it, is the driving force compelling the Executor to face a past he’s too frightened to face.  Refusing to leave the house when asked to go, he is on a mission:  gently, caringly, through humor, questions, and the ability to bring up memories, even of events he did not witness, he leads the Executor to overcome his fears, find a way to forgive himself and his parents, and forge a new life.  We watch as Portley, through sheer determination and love, masterminds this journey.

Finally, Jayson Lee’s Executor, who is alone, having lost his family and latest lover, is the audience’s conduit to the events onstage.  More than up to the task, when he looks at us with his disarming smile, confiding in us, encouraging us to respond to him, funny and heartbreaking at once, we can’t avoid being caught up in his struggle. 

Set designer You-Shin Chen and his associate Chen-Wei Liao deserve special mention for the amazing amount of furniture and props on and backstage, as does Bailey Trierweiler for his excellent sound design.

For Gipson, Estate Sale is “a personal reckoning with my specific joy and pain, and an opportunity to find something universal in it.”  There have been several plays dealing with grief on Berkshire stages recently:  this spring, Allison Larkin brought her solo play, Grief. . .a Comedy to the Mahaiwe, as it was being filmed for television; this summer Chester’s One Hundred Words for Snow, a solo play starring Hero Marguerite, produced last year, about a young woman traveling to the North Pole to honor the memory of her deceased father, was performed in Williamstown, and Fragments, yet another solo play, a memoir produced by the Great Barrington Public Theater at St. James this summer, written by and starring Jim Petosa, chronicled the loss of his partner from AIDS in 1990.  

Universal indeed, Estate Sale is not a play you’ll forget after leaving the theatre.

ESTATE SALE runs from June 30—July 25 at Barrington Stage Company’s St. Germain Stage, 36 Linden Street, Pittsfield. For tickets call 413-242-6411 or online at barringtonstageco.org.

Barrington Stage Company presents ESTATE SALE, a World Premiere by Keelay Gipson.  Director:  Steph Paul.

Cast:  Gillian Glasco (Beauty), Jayson Lee (Executor), Blake Morris (Truth), Christopher B. Portley (Youth).  Scenic Design: You-Shin Chen; Associate Scenic Design:  Chen-Wei Liao; Costume Design: Izumi Inaba; Lighting Design: Reza Behjat; Sound Design: Bailey Trierweiler. 

Production Stage Manager:  Amanda Blanco.

The performance runs one hour and ten minutes, no intermission.