REVIEW: Get It Right at Park-McCullough, Historic Governor’s Mansion
Park-McCullough, Historic Governor’s Manson @ Bennington, VT
Photos by Will Thomas
“The setting has inspired triumph after triumph.”
Summer offers some wildly unique playing spaces for theater. None more surprising than the abandoned pool that Living Room Theatre uses at the Park-McCullough Historic Governor’s Mansion in North Bennington, VT. This is their short season; just a two-week run of the world premiere play Get it Right written and directed by LRT Artistic Director Randolyn Zinn.
I attended a beautiful production of Uncle Vanya LRT staged under a tree on the grounds as well as in three separate rooms of the Park-McCullough house, moving each time for Chekhov’s four acts in 2013. Since the pandemic, they have been staging their shows in the depths of the unused pool on the grounds and the setting has inspired triumph after triumph. The audience sits in a circle on the deck around the pool with risers at either end.
Faces are clear and vivid, acoustics are great, and the pool, with its aged and faded green surface provides a surprisingly malleable backdrop. It has stood in for a 19th century parlor in Doll’s House Part II, a war torn beach in Her Name Means Memory, and the cosmos in Constellations. The setting of Get It Right is Los Angeles and starts with a poolside meeting between the East Coast playwright Ivy Foster (company favorite Valeri Mudek) and Hollywood producers Phil and Larry, played by the consummate actors Richard Howe and Allen McCullough. The two have script problems but they must also cater to the bratty director, Sam, whose father is financing the action picture. They come off as gentler, paternalistic variations on the Speed-the-Plow prototypes.
Ivy is dismissed preemptively by the director so she takes to the road to make her pitch directly to the star on location. Accompanying her on her road trip are previous characters she has worked on like Antigone and Joan of Arc, smartly played by Elizabeth Kenney and brilliantly costumed by Cynthia Flynt.
The heart of the play is the scene between the strong, brilliant, creative playwright perfectly realized by Mudek and the jaded, self-absorbed movie star Billy Mason, gorgeously captured by George Olesky. Here is an actor you can believe could fill an IMAX screen. The crux of the issue is not whether Ivy will sell out–her off-Broadway play starts rehearsals in two weeks–but whether she can smuggle her character motivation into the shoot ‘em up, blow ‘em up car opera that’s being worked on. Her insight into the man’s vulnerabilities fueling his courage deepens the scene. I loved how Olesky continued flexing throughout the conversation even while reciting Hamlet.
It’s a smart, engaging play and a nice change of pace in a minor key for the venerable company. Their work with classics is rich, but this personal backstage tale of a woman taking her place in Hollywood has many moments of identification and pleasure. Hopefully you can make Living Room Theatre a priority next summer.
