Berkshire Theatre Group, Stockbridge, MA
through July 26, 2014
by Shera Cohen
Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn stage is the ideal venue
for “Benefactors” -- a small play, with small cast, set in one room (a kitchen),
about a small story (yet, one should never judge the importance of any story to
its participants). Yet, there is universality in the play’s theme of
helplessness and helpfulness, encroachment and passivity.
Eric Hill directs four actors, representing two married
couples living in 1970’s London. The characters are middle-class, each with
his/her own career. the women choose to stay home with the kids. Sheila, a
former nurse in a ‘helping’ role in the community, becomes a pathetically needy
weakling. Jane, an anthropologist by trade, is a strong-willed albeit reluctant
helper to all of the characters who enter her kitchen. Sheila’s husband Colin
is a brute who believes that he is helping the world as a political rebel.
Jane’s counterpart David is saving a part of his own world by addressing the
needs of the poorer class population. Everyone is helping, trying to help,
and/or pretending to help themselves and everyone else. None are successful.
Each character, stepping to the side of the stage under dim
light, offers frequent monologues serving as soothsayers to themselves and to
the audience.
Actress Corinna May propels the movement of the play as her
Jane is somewhat in charge of situations; she even stands erect and commanding.
A long-time star at Shakespeare & Company, May handles contemporary English
and this script’s nuances equally as well as the Bard’s clever words. No small
task. David Adkins’ David successfully creates an idealist scratching for a
purpose. Barbara Sims, as Sheila, wears dowdy and ill-fitting clothing to
accentuate her unassertive demeanor. The director could have molded Sheila as a
caricature, but Sims and Hill carefully resist. Walton Wilson keeps Colin on
one level with no redeeming qualities. It takes an actor’s skill to motivate an
audience to dislike him and, at the same time, care enough to want to know his
outcome.
Playwright Michael Frayn, whose famous works are “Noises
Off” and “Copenhagen,” is a fine writer whose “Benefactors” is atypical of both
of these works.
