NYT: Williamstown Theater Festival Was in Crisis. Here’s How It’s Changing. — Page 2

I enjoyed the season. The Figure Skating piece (The Gig) seemed to be the highlight. The season offered a different view of who Tennessee Williams was as an artist vs the view we take away from The Big 5. They offered what I thought were 8 intellectually compelling pieces. Not everything was to my taste, but I think that's part of the experience when going for a complete "festival" set up like they are trying.

Spirit of the People started very late. They referenced a technical glitch that happened at the matinee as the reason for starting late. JOH came out and read a "welcome to the festival" letter before the play. In this letter it was revealed the script was finished 3 days before the performance we were seeing. The letter put emphasis on WTF being one of the only places left to develop new work, valuing process vs product, etc. And the performance that followed was very clearly a play in development. It was well performed, and I was never bored. There is something very powerful in there. But at present there is an hour of flab dulling the edges. There's a little too much info about mezcal that doesn't always fully link back up to character development.

There were some blips along the way that I thought were to be expected. Spirit and Nightingales were both announced to use yondr pouches. Spirit used them. Nightingales did not. When an audience member inquired at Nightingales, an usher responded "we tried them. It didn't work. We're not using them moving forward." idk if that's just Nightingales, but it's certainly an element they had never encountered before at WTF. They also needed to watch the clock more. There were a few slightly tight gaps to get to the next show. I'm sure that will tighten up in the future weekends.

As for Wills, the insta story took Gordon to task for not engaging with the play and production. It was perhaps more brusque in tone than the Gordon piece warranted, but Wills was not without point. Gordon is admitting "the play itself is fully baffling" and "I couldn't quite tell...if the play had [a dramatic arc], or if I just missed it." One hell of a statement to make. This was not an unknown playwright or play. You may not have seen it before, but you could certainly read it either before seeing it, or before publishing the review to try to ascertain if it had a dramatic arc. Also, in a season that seemed to make the case for Williams as political figure, and in a play that makes more than a couple open and pointed references to JFK, and in a production that is emphasizing an immigration subplot, it is odd that there is not a hint of the politic in the Gordon piece.

As NYT is in flux, I think it's ok for artists to demand that the remaining critics be more rigorous than ever in engagement and response. Did Wills go about that in the best way? No. Is his response completely dismissible? No. I've read at least one other review that was a lot more negative than the Gordon piece, and Wills did not say word one. I don't think this is the generic "lash out at all critics" we've seen from others.

MezzA101 said: "Jesse Green: The Circus Comes to Williamstown, With Celebrities and Beefcake

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/theater/williamstown-theater-harris-anderson-heard.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y08.dcJk.WI0k9gaWPXPb&smid=nytcore-android-share"

Woof. 

No love lost from me to see him go...but I pretty much agree with all of these assessments.

Green's first two paragraphs are unnecessarily bitchy, but...........critics were asked not to review Jeremy O. Harris's own play???????

Hoping we'll get to see Heartbeat Opera's production of VANESSA in New York sometime soon.

Updated On: 7/24/25 at 10:18 AM

I've lived in the area for years. Am a long-time usher --- as someone who has not always been able to afford seeing every show, it's been an incredible way to get to see everything without paying a dime. I have seen the rise / fall of many "regime changes," so to speak. 

I am sad to say --- especially for the wellbeing of a town I love dearly, which has suffered economically in the recent festival-less summers --- that I mostly agree with Green's sentiments. But there was a lot to celebrate this season, and I am very glad for big swings, even if they mostly did not hit for me. 

I would like to defend "Not About Nightingales," which I found almost unbearably bleak but also sharp, incisive, and captivating. It featured a stunningly brilliant performance from William Jackson Harper, who is a force unto himself that I previously was only aware of from TV. (I had been surprised that he was cast in "Vanya"... his Tony nom makes sense now, seeing the way he can singlehandedly command the stage). The handling of the queer themes that Green mentions was slightly unsatisfactory to me, but not in any major way. 

There's been much talk of late start-times / technical difficulties. The low point was a performance of "Spirit of the People," before the Yondr pouches were nixed, where the Yondr pouches took ticket scanners until 20 minutes past curtain-time, at which point ushers were told the house was not ready to open due to technical difficulties on the production side. After trying to field off audience members who were quite literally chanting "O-pen the house" (I get it, but please!) the show started 50 minutes past curtain-time. It then ran nearly 3 1/2 hours, after having been initially advertised as 2:45. Not an easy ushering experience. (And I am sorry to say that the play itself only made my afternoon worse, as admirable as it is to see something so ambitious).

But by the end of the first weekend, virtually all these problems were fixed and seem fully under control now. Which is a relief. 

It's frustrating when the attitude of the new leaders feels somewhat elitist and condescending towards the old regime and the audience in general, old and new --- but, simultaneously, the attitude of long-time patrons feels elitist and condescending as well. Somebody said to an usher: "Nikos would never have stood for this." Oh, please!

Green wrote: 

"Perhaps the more salient connection was Harris; it seemed that his imagination was the main thing being celebrated and the only glue holding the weekend together ... Nikos Psacharopoulos, a festival founder, ran the place for decades as a cult of personality despite having one of the worst personalities I’ve ever encountered. Harris at least is charming."

I couldn't agree more with that. 

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "AC126748 said: "Media outlets are not required to heed the whims of artists."

Yes and no. There is a level of respect/trust that is adhered to between producers and critics. It's all about longterm relationships between the media and the organization (and the entity that reps it); critics don't want to piss off producers, producers don't want to piss off critics.

Ordinarily, they probably wouldn't have even invited critics, but this was an unusual situation where critics/media were being invited to take in the full weekend of performances."

I'm a journalist of more than a decade. You don't need to explain the relationship between media outlets and public relations to me.

Regardless of what might be going on with personnel, the Times is still the most consequential publication in the country, and certainly in the arts space. They have no obligation to be beholden to the whims of Jeremy O. Harris and Rick Miramontez.

I know for a fact that the press team did not extend invitations this season to many outlets who have regularly covered the festival in the past.

This is not a developmental workshop. It's a fully designed production charging $100+ for tickets. It's fair game.

I'm reminded of a story Frank Rich told in his book Hot Seat. During his first year at the Times, Mike Nichols and Elaine May starred in a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Long Wharf in New Haven. It was "closed" to critics. When Rich told his editor, he made it clear that he expected Rich to a file a review. "They're selling tickets, aren't they? Go buy one."

 

Updated On: 7/24/25 at 11:07 AM

Heartbeat Opera's "Vanessa" was a phenomenally produced triumph. Excellent voices and charismatic singers. The musicians were ferocious and performed the reduced orchestration brilliantly. At 100 breathless minutes it packed an awesome punch. The guy sitting next to me was there on a festival pass and didn't even realize he was about to see an opera. He was overwhelmed by the experience. 

Although I'm glad I also saw Nightingales and Camino Real, they were not entirely successful. Nightingales was looong, but I wouldn't know what to cut. Forcefully acted, but between scenes constantly going back and forth between the cells and the warden's office, man could they have used a turntable--or more stagehands--to help the flow. Camino Real was far more entertainment, but far less clear, perhaps because you couldn't hear and/or understand Pamela Anderson (looking marvelous and earning some laughs with her physicality) or Whitney Peak most of the time. On the other hand, everyone i talked to wants to see Nicholas Alexander Chavez in whatever Tennessee he wants to do next. It was my first time at the WTF, and I'm anxious to see what they do next.

And BTW, the Camelot at Barrington Stage, wiped the floor with that dismal LCT revival. A uniformly excellent cast -- Ken Wulf Clark, Ali Ewoldt, and Emmett O'Hanlon--sang that gorgeous score gorgeously and looked absolutely perfect as the king, the queen, and the knight.

Surprised they didn't use microphones 

Jeremy O. Harris Remakes the Williamstown Theatre Festival in His Own Image

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/story/williamstown-theater-festival-review

AC126748 said: "Before yesterday's matinee ofCamino Real, director Dustin Wills gave a bizarre curtain speech, where he said in part that he hoped to "absolve" the audience from the need to "get" the play. He certainly seems to have absolved himself of that responsibility. Falling chronologically betweenSummer and SmokeandCat on a Hot Tin Roof,Camino Realis a discursive portrait of the doomed and the damned. Here, it plays like a boulevard comedy. A few actors seem to have the measure of the work -- Ato Blankson-Wood is appropriately rueful in his single scene as Lord Byron, and April Matthis is always watchable -- but the pacing, tone and aesthetic largely feels off. Pamela Anderson gamely throws herself into her performance -- she's physically adept onstage, and surprisingly effective in Marguerite's quieter moments. As others have mentioned, there are audibility problems though, and she tends to swallow her words. Forgive the boxing metaphor, but Nicholas Alexander Chavez makes for a bantamweight Kilroy, and while the conception of Casanova as a sad sack gone to seed is intriguing, Bruce McKenzie lacks the faint whiff of charm or charisma needed to convine the audience he was once a great lover.

In contrast, Robert O'Hara'sNot About Nightingalesis the best American production of a Williams play that I've seen in a decade. This early, once-lost work bears the linguistic and thematic hallmarks that would later come to define the author, but it also feels very much like an apprentice work. Williams tries on different styles here: Odets-like agitprop, dime-novel potboiler. O'Hara smartly leans into these tropes, directing the play as a period melodrama, complete with a suggestive score and outsize performances. Chris Messina and William Jackson Harper are perfectly matched as the sadistic warden of a notorious prison and the shrewd inmate that will ultimately facilitate his downfall. To a person, the large cast is superb -- Brian Geraghty and Elizabeth Lail distinguish themselves in the larger supporting roles, and Annie McNamara is quietly heartbreaking in her scenes as a prisoner's distraught mother. Despite its tropes, the play feels prescient and urgent without changing a word of text to acknowledge the current moment in history. I left thinking this is Williamstown at its best: a great cast, an intrepid director, a work that might not have been produced elsewhere due to budgetary demands, synthesized into an unforgettable evening."

I hate curtain speeches from directors explaining their shows. Especially this far into its run. Not giving me much confidence in Dustin (nor does it sound like he has it in his own work?) Strange.

Just came here to say how much I enjoy reading your reviews, however unfortunately infrequent, AC126748! Thank you!

I've been told several local and respected Berkshires' news outlets requested comps for their critics and were told "We're not comping local critics; we're a New York theater that happens to be in Williamstown." Really?

How We Got Young People to Like Theater

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/opinion/williamstown-theater-festival-youth.html?unlocked_article_code=1.f08.aqmp.2usbIZZdZJPT&smid=nytcore-android-share