THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG   Role: Voice of Vernon   Production Info: Aug. 18-29, ’04 @ Berkshire Music Hall (MA) Director: James Warwick Choreographer: Jayme McDaniel Musical Director: Jason DeBord

Summer theatre is always so much fun . . . it’s an opportunity to take a break from the fast pace of New York City, stretching creative muscles while seeing new sights and making new friends. The summer of 2004 delivered a special treat: a trip to the famed Berkshires in western Massachusetts to appear alongside theatre vets Chip Zien and Amanda Watkins in the quirky 70s musical They’re Playing Our Song. Our show was performed at the newly-reminted Berkshire Music Hall in Pittsfield, Massachusetts as a fundraiser for the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, a beautiful venue which opened in 1903 as a sister theatre to NYC’s newly restored New Victory on 42nd Street.   Click on this link for more information about the Colonial Theatre. Click on this link for more information about the Berkshire Music Hall.

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They’re Playing Our Song: Sonia Walsk (Amanda Watkins) takes over Le Club...to the dismay of Vernon Gersh (Chip Zien)...when her big hit starts playing.

They’re Playing Our Song: The denizens of the disco (Pamela Bob, Alan Souza, myself, Farah Alvin, Dale Hensley and Juliana Stefanov) join in and “get their groove thing on” when Sonia Walsk (Amanda Watkins) hits the floor.

Amanda Watkins and Chip Zien take a break during tech rehearsal. It’s all smiles when you’re spending summer in the Berkshires!

Juliana Stefanov and Alan Souza grab a bite during tech rehearsals.

Old friends and castmates Alan Souza and Farah Alvin share a hug during tech rehearsals.

Vernon’s Voices (RD, Dale Hensley and Alan Souza) strike the Supremes pose backstage.

The denizens of Le Club had some fun costumes. Alan Souza and RD model their 70s fashions in the downstairs dressing room.

Dale Hensley revisits his teenage years as a dancer in Le Club. Did he get that shirt out of his own closet???

Sonia’s Voices (Juliana Stefanov, Pamela Bob and Farah Alvin) show off their girl-group moves in between scenes.

THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE, 8/22/2004 by Jeffrey Borak   Hit songwriter Vernon Gersch has trouble holding on to relationships. His new partner, hit lyricist Sonia Walsk, has difficulty letting go of one. It’s a difference that will dog these two as they work out their new professional and personal relationship in They’re Playing Our Song, an ingratiating 1979 musical by Neil Simon (book), Marvin Hamlisch (music) and Carole Bayer Sager (lyrics) that is being given a thoroughly polished and ingratiating production by the Colonial Theatre at Raymond Schilke’s comfortably restored Berkshire Music Hall -- formerly the Berkshire Public Theater.   They’re Playing Our Song was inspired by the real-life personal and professional relationship between Hamlisch and Sager, which did not reach as promising a point as does the relationship between Vernon and Sonia. When they meet, Vernon (Chip Zien) is fresh off a long-term relationship whose ending has fed his insecurities and neuroses. Sonia (Amanda Watkins) has stopped writing songs with her partner of five years, Leon, although she can’t let go of their personal relationship. Predictably, the course of true love does not run smooth between Vernon and Sonia. They break up during a recording session -- for a reason Simon pulls out of the blue -- and go their separate ways, until, that is, fate and Simon throw them together again.   Under James Warwick’s astute direction, the ideally cast Zien and Watkins find warm and effecting dimension in Vernon and Sonia, making Simon’s frequent manipulations seem credible. They have an eye for revealing detail -- Vernon turning his Oscar toward Sonia, for example, when she offers a suggestion about his composing; Sonia’s unconscious habit of twirling the ends of her hair. Jayme McDaniel’s choreography is stylish and fun and makes whimsical use of a six-member chorus of “voices” -- Vernon and Sonia’s muses. The easy-to-listen-to Hamlisch-Sager songs are handled expertly by music director Jason DeBord and an eight-member ensemble that is positioned on a platform above and behind the actors on Carl Sprague’s sleek, deceptively simple setting.   Warwick and company go about their business with breezy, unassuming self-assurance. Nothing is overstated. All in all, a lovely grace note in these waning days of the Berkshires’ summer cultural season.

CURTAIN UP, 8/20/2004 by Elyse Sommer   What better way to celebrate the new life of two once entertainment-filled Pittsfield theaters than with an old musical -- to be specific, the twenty-five-year old hit, They’re Playing Our Song, which ran for 1082 performances on Broadway (from 2/11/1979 - 9/6/1981) and starred Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein). The show’s book by Neil Simon, the only musical he wrote from scratch, was seeded by the real life romance of the show’s composer, Marvin Hamlisch, and lyricist, Carole Bayer Sager. They were married at the time of the opening -- though the show’s happily ever after ending didn’t apply to their relationship. Simon fictionalized the Hamlisch/Sager romance so that a composer named Vernon Gersch needs a new lyricist, who turns out to be madcap Sonia Walsk. Their first notes are out of tune. She’s awed by Vernon’s Oscar and Emmy awards. He’s put off by her disorganized ways and unimpressed by the cast-off peasant dress from a production of The Cherry Orchard she dons for their first meeting. It’s clearly not a match made in heaven -- at least not until the final curtain. Some questions that come to mind...   Question: So how does this chamber musical hold up? Answer: Fine and dandy.   Question: Has it become dated? Answer: Though it has a certain old-fashioned charm, it’s not dated.   Question: Are there difficulties that have kept it from being revived more often? Answer: Yes, for two reasons. First, though the costs of a small show like this should work in favor of a revival, the public taste for ever more pyrotechnic razzle-dazzle mitigates against the success of more modest musicals. The Avenue Q story is a heartening exception, though there are more examples of shorter and less spectacular runs for small scale musicals like A New Brain, which featured They’re Playing Our Song star Chip Zien. Second, this isn’t a big tuner in the sense that just reading the song list sends the tunes bouncing into your ears. All ten songs are catchy but only “lI Still Believe In Love” fits the big hit embraced by at least one major recording star category. This production validates that hit status by having the second act reprise sung by Johnny Mathis.   Question: Do director James Warwick and Chip Zien as Vernon Gersch and Amanda Watkins as Sonia Walsk capture the show's reality based romantic spirit, land Simon’s many one-liners with flair and also do justice to the music? Answer: A resounding triple yes.   Those one-liners represent Simon at his funniest with some of the jokes invariably drowned out by the audience’s laughter. “When You’re In My Arms” may be the only song to stick to your ears, but there’s a lot to enjoy in number like the exuberant title song and the delightful “Fill in the Words.”   Warwick’s affinity for this character driven show, more a play with music and some dancing, than a traditional musical, is evident in his not rushing the non-musical scenes, fluidly integrating the musical numbers and giving free reign to the high energy fun provided by the six performers who serve as the equivalent of a hilarious Greek chorus. That chorus is most amusing when its three women function as The Voices of Sonia and its three men as The Voices of Vernon.   With his Woody Allen-like looks and persona, Zien is totally convincing as the the tightly strung, workaholic composer who falls hopelessly in love with the discombobulated Sonia Walsk.Amanda Watkins, like Zien, is ideally cast as the ditzy, big-hearted lyricist. She’s not only lovely to look at but has a voice to match. Whether it’s their acting or the fact that they’re playing reality-based characters, or a combination of both, they come across as real people see-sawing their way towards a real and lasting relationship.   The production gets a strong assist from the talented Carl Sprague, who also created the set that is something of a star in its own right of the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s currently running The Misanthrope. Using a series of movable props, Sprague enables the story to move through an impressive variety of settings in Manhattan, Long Island and Hollywood, at one point even providing a real Triumph convertible.   The musicians are well-positioned at the rear of the stage, visible through a scrim that at first looks like an apartment’s glass windows. Arthur Oliver, another outstanding Berkshires designer, dresses Sonia in a parade of outrageous outfits purportedly from dismantled shows....   No review of this show would be complete without mentioning the venue where it’s playing: the Berkshire Music Hall on Union Street, Ray Schilke’s new name for the long abandoned Public Theater he’s recently refurbished. Another old theater just a few blocks away, the Colonial, that for many years buried its theatrical identity in back of a paint store is still more of a work in progress. And so Playing Our Song is a joint venture of these two theatrical enterprises to preview their future activities -- the Colonial’s to produce old and new plays, and Mr. Schilke&146;s to make his theater available to theatrical organizations without homes of their own.   At this point I can only comment on the physical plant of the Berkshire Music Hall. It’s a a crisp, clean space, with a nicely spruced up and welcoming lobby and enough seating to accommodate a large audience with good sightlines in whichever of the comfortable college style seats you sit in. While there’s still work to be done (like the unfinished ceilings), the theater is clearly ready for business.   The real make or break factor in both of these new-old theaters’ future is the quality of future content. This production of They’re Playing Our Song is a good first step in the right direction.

THE ADVOCATE, 8/26/2004 by Ralph Hammann   They’re Playing Our Song is a modest musical that pays distinct dividends when allowed to be itself and, especially, when cast well. It tells a fairly straightforward story of the odd-couple romance that blossoms between Vernon Gersch, a composer, and Sonia Walsk, a lyricist. Vernon is a neurotic, intellectual New York Jew whose only mistress is a baby grand. Sonia, a free-spirited resident of Greenwich Village, wears cast-off theatrical costumes and is still tied to her needy ex-lover, Leon. The only other members of the cast are Sonia’s voices (a zesty female trio) and Vernon’s voices (a similar male trio).   Simon has trod this territory before in such works as Barefoot in the Park and Chapter Two, but, familiar as the theme may be to Simon aficionados, he has managed here to invest the characters with sufficient depth to make us care anew. Moreover, his trademark one-liners come quite naturally from the characters’ personalities. Hamlisch has composed catchy tunes that work as well with Sager’s lyrics as do Vernon’s with Sonia’s. And the music arrives with a naturalness and inevitability that eludes too many musicals.   In support of the romance between musicians, Warwick and set designer Carl Sprague have placed the accomplished orchestra on a bandstand above the actors. It has become an over-used technique ever since Chicago revived it in with great success and purpose on Broadway, but here it makes perfect sense. Semi-visible behind a scrim the orchestra becomes an image of the force that unifies, drives and divides the two protagonists.   Zien is excellent, making the humor seem entirely spontaneous and possessing a commanding singing voice that seems to fill the theater without artificial aid. Vernon could easily be an irritating Woody Allen cliché, but Zien imbues him with originality and makes us care. It all happens so gradually that by the play’s final scene I was surprised at how much I had been pulled in by Zien’s nearly imperceptibly-growing magnetism.   Watkins is a total charmer. From her first entrance in a costume retired from The Cherry Orchard, she is the epitome of the gypsy muse — one can understand how her Sonia could inspire Vernon not only to compose music but also to fall in love. When Sonia says that she listens to music with her soul, we believe her — such is the veracity and sensitivity of Watkins’ performance. And with her lovely, clear voice, she is also something of a muse to a jaded critic at the end of the theater season.   Together Watkins and Zien create genuine chemistry that beguiles us into forgetting the conventions and mechanisms of romantic musical comedy. We actually worry that Sonia and Vernon’s love won’t play out as successfully as their music. They also manage, between them, to make believable Simon’s wonderfully constructed character, Leon, who never appears on stage.   Warwick, Sprague and the tech crew have facilitated fluid scene changes and...have suggested the New York settings with an effective simplicity and flair missing from Barrington Stage’s disappointing early summer foray into Simon’s Sweet Charity.   They’re Playing Our Song is a thoroughly amiable little musical with a cast you’ll want to take home. Warwick could be well on his way to creating a resident company for the Colonial. As well, Berkshire Music Hall has received a fine baptism.   Walking out of the theater during intermission and seeing the brightly lit marquee of the former Capital Theatre on North Street, I felt that, although the venues may have shifted from the Palace and the Capital to the Colonial and Berkshire Music Hall, downtown Pittsfield is ready for a rebirth in entertainment. In the glow of the amber streetlights and afterglow of They’re Playing Our Song, even the silly sheep seemed to shepherd in a new era.