Sampling summer

There are some tasty treats

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Show dates and contact information for the performances mentioned above and complete listings for summer theater in New England can be found in the Phoenix Guide to Summer 2001.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE: Ying Huang highlights “Figaro Fest.”

Summer theater in Maine is not known for being edgy; generally not a time for directors to test new works or experimental versions of old standards. If you were to compare the array of summer productions to an appetizer cart, there would be plenty of cheese and crackers, chips and salsa, maybe some celery sticks with peanut butter.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the same old fare. Reliability is underrated. In terms of summer theater, it means choosing productions that fill seats, entertain, and appeal to Mainers and our throngs of summer visitors. However, some summer theaters have made alternative choices for their summer productions, no doubt banking on the people who are starved for something different to come check them out. What follows are my choices for what looks spicy among the reliable and not-so-reliable summer theater offerings.

Steamers and barbecued chicken wings. The Belfast Maskers serve up the familiar in an unfamiliar format with The Boys from Swanville, which opens July 6. Creator and director Tobin Malone describes it as a “rock opera,” complete with a live band, trucks of all sizes, and dancing girls. The show will play outdoors on a sound stage and feature a mixture of blues, country, salsa, and rock with a “wonderful motley assortment” of fishermen and Belfast locals as the chorus. As an artistic director in another state, Malone did all sorts of outdoor theater, including having two different audiences watch two different shows, move, and meet at specific points. While Boys will be tamer than that, she has thrown in plenty of local references (ice fishing at Swan Lake, anyone?) to keep Mainers on their toes and tourists guessing.

The story itself is a simple one. A local carpenter feels disillusioned with married life and work; he philanders at a local bar; a love triangle ensues; he winds up back home with his wife. Still, with 19 different numbers, fireworks throughout the production, and the local police and firemen making an appearance, the Maskers are hoping it’s a good time. To that end, they are inviting the audience to come early to tailgate and do the family barbecue in two rented parking lots.

Mango-infused tea and crumpets. The Theater at Monmouth, a.k.a. “The Shakespearean Theater of Maine,” opens another season of classical summer theater with Shakespeare’s Henry the IV, parts one and two. The two-and-a-half-hour production combines and abridges one of the Bard’s great historical plays (part one) and scenes from one rarely performed (part two). The combination will allow audiences to follow the development of two of Shakespeare’s best-known characters, Sir John Falstaff and Prince Hal, destined to become King Henry V.

According to Producing Director David Greenham, another highlight will be the Monmouth debut of Cymbeline, Shakespeare’s late romance. Greenham says that the play is “as much like Greek Drama or classical theater as any of his plays.” And he adds that, “It is a beautiful, funny play — not funny ha-ha, but funny in a curious way.” Greenham and critics alike have also lauded the poetry of Cymbeline, which, as the poet Marianne Moore said, creates “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”

Essentially, it is a coming-of-age story and a tragicomedy in which a complex series of events leads to the deaths of a few minor characters while Innogen, the heroine, is miraculously saved after being left for dead. Greenham says, “There are many connections to the modern world — like ‘you can’t always believe what you see’ and ‘standing up for something.’ ”

One final new angle to this summer’s performances at Monmouth is that, for the first time, the annual kids show will be a Shakespearean production. The company’s dramaturg, Dr. Mark Ringer, has abridged Midsummer Night’s Dream to an hour-long show that retains the entire story line along with all the fairies, magic, and humor of the original script.

Apart from Shakespeare, The Theater at Monmouth is preparing to do Thorton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, which became the basis for the musical Hello Dolly, and a classic Noel Coward comedy, Private Lives. Greenham hopes that some of Wilder’s relatives, who live in Maine, will attend one of The Matchmaker shows.

A bottle of California red, assorted cheeses, artichoke dip. The Penobscot Theatre Company presents the eighth annual Maine Shakespeare Festival beginning July 17 at the Bangor waterfront. The popularity of the PTC’s festival reached a high point last year when over 7,000 people attended productions over a four-week period. Other than the Shakespeare, what draws people to the festival is the food, fire-torch juggler, puppeteers, Renaissance singers and dancers, and swordplay that takes place before each show. Mark Torres, PTC’s producing artistic director, notes, “There is something exciting about performing on the waterfront under the stars.”

This year’s slate includes three standard offerings: King Lear, Twelfth Night, and Servant of Two Masters. Lear is often counted as one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies and chronicles his most tragic figure, the king who tries to give his kingdom to his daughters while retaining control of it, then slowly sinks into madness as a civil war erupts around him. Twelfth Night is the Bard’s quintessential romantic comedy, and Servant of Two Masters, by Carlo Goldoni, is often compared to The Comedy of Errors because of its complex and humorous plot turns that follow Trufaldino, the servant, as he tries to double his income and instead triples his trouble.

Strawberries and cream served by a waitress in studded leather. There are foods for all tastes among the shows I have not mentioned. The Portland Opera Repertory Theatre is putting on a “Figaro Fest” in July and August, featuring Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Both operas feature the sly barber, Figaro, and both were written by the French playwright Beaumarchais around the time of the American and French Revolutions. Aside from tenors and baritones belting it out, there will be an accompanying series of lectures at the Portland Public Library and screenings of the film Beaumarchais at The Movies on Exchange.

Returning to The Ogunquit Playhouse are stage and screen actress Eva Marie Saint and her husband Jeff Hayden. The two first performed at the OP in 1955 and will star in A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters (performed at ACTS last fall), which traces the lifelong correspondence of a straight-laced lawyer and a lively artist. It is a script that, in its simplicity and deeply felt emotion, requires a pair of actors with sparking chemistry to be any good. It will be interesting to see if Saint and her husband can fit that bill. “You have to have fun with it,” Saint says, “How can you get through a marriage without a sense of humor?”

In August, the Bela Blau Theatre Series at Deertrees Theatre revives Donald Margulies’s 1996 play, Collected Stories (performed at PSC two winters ago), which tracks the relationship between an established writer and a fan who becomes her disciple, colleague, and friend. Margulies’s Ruth instructs the younger Lisa to write from the heart and not worry about who the words will or won’t hurt. She quotes a photographer who said, ’ ”If it isn’t good enough, I didn’t get close enough.’ ” When Lisa goes on to write a prize-winning novel based on a love affair Ruth told her about, the teacher questions her lessons.

In its 101st season, the Lakewood Theater in Skowhegan takes on Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors (last performed this winter at the Public Theater). The play follows a “specialist sexual consultant” named Poopay, who, donned in leather, visits a hotel suite and enters a reverse time machine in a closet that takes her from 2018 to 1998 to 1978 as she attempts to stop a deranged husband who murders his wives. One critic at the time of Doors’ original release noted that the story “goes no deeper than the veneer on the hotel furniture,” and yet is funnier than most productions you will see.

This year’s summer lineup offers many standards and a few new treats to please even the irritable bowel. Ask yourself whether you’re in the mood for comfort food — or spices that will test your insides. The summer theaters hope you’ll eat, drink, and be merry.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc can be reached at riverbetweenus@hotmail.com.