Director Takes Leap at Williamstown Theatre Festival

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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Director Kathleen Marshall, left, with the stars of 'Living on Love,' which made its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival on Wednesday.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Kathleen Marshall is a three-time Tony Award winner, a three-time Drama Desk Award winner, an 11-time Broadway choreographer and five-time Broadway director.
 
And she is doing something completely different this summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
 
Marshall directs "Living on Love," which opened on the Main Stage on Wednesday evening with a cast that includes Anna Chlumsky, Renee Fleming, Justin Long and Douglas Sills.
 
"This is my first play," she said earlier this summer
 
By that she means her first non-musical; as a term of art in the industry, "play" is not used to refer to musicals.
 
Although "Living on Love" certainly has lyrical overtones — it revolves around two opera stars and stars one internationally known soprano, Fleming — it is a "straight play."
 
At a preseason WTF press event, Marshall said "Living on Love," based on the Garson Kanin's "Peccadillo," was a natural choice for her first effort.
 
"I've been looking to do a play for a while, and I've been talking about various things," she said. "The fact that this sort of came to fruition first is wonderful. First of all, it's a comedy, which I love. It involves music, which I love. And it involves a specific world. I love exploring a specific world.
 
"It's the world of classical music and opera music, which obviously has sort of oversized personalities in it, which gives you great comic fodder in some ways, but it's not too far from the truth. I love these wonderful comedies and finding the truth in them."
 
Marshall won Tony Awards for the choreography of three musicals: "Anything Goes," "The Pajama Game" and "Wonderful Town." She has been nominated for Tonys as a director on all three as well as 2012's "Nice Work if You Can Get It."
 
She said she was enjoying the process of putting together a straight play and how that process differs from production of a musical.
 
"Obviously, it's a very different thing to be going so deep into the text of a play," she said. "Here we are Day 4, and we're still going to be sitting around the table. On Day 4 of a musical, we'd already be in music rehearsals, we'd be in choreography.
 
"In a wonderful way, there's this luxury to get to sit around with the actors and say, 'Well, what do you think? How is that going?' We're sitting back with Joe DiPietro and getting direct feedback instead of saying, 'OK, we read that scene. Let's get on to the stage and do that.' In that way, it feels like a luxury."
 
Marshall won a Tony for her choreography of Broadway's 'Anything Goes' revival in 2011. Image by Joan Marcus.
Marshall's relationship with DiPietro, who adapted 1985's "Peccadillo," gave her an extra comfort level as a director. DiPietro wrote the book for 2012's "Nice Work," which ran for 478 performances.
 
"Joe is so smart and so funny," she said. "He's just a very, very witty, clever writer. But he's also a fearless editor of his own work. He's not possessive about his own work. He's the first one to say, 'I can do that better' or 'We don't need that. Let me trim that,' which is sort of amazing.
 
"He wants to hear it from the actors. He wants it to feel right coming out of their mouths. That's what I love about him."
 
In addition to her artistic history with DiPietro, Marshall shares connections with artists featured in two other shows at Williamstown this summer.
 
In 1993, she was an assistant choreographer on "Kiss of the Spider Woman," which starred Chita Rivera, who will appear at WTF starting July 31 in "The Visit." Marshall's "Anything Goes" cast included Jessica Stone, who directed Main Stage opener "June Moon."
 
Unlike Stone, a WTF veteran, Marshall is making her first trip to Williamstown ... at least her first trip as an artist.
 
"It's my first time working up here, but the first time I came was when I was in high school with my parents," she said. "We were doing a tour of the Berkshires and saw Richard Chamberlain in 'The Shadow Box.'
 
"I always had a romantic vision of working in Williamstown."
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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
 
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
 
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
 
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
 
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
 
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
 
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
 
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