Word: pitkin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Berkshire Theater Festival, Stockbridge, Mass. (July 16-26). A complex work in three episodes that traces a man's lifelong search for joy and truth, it is also a spectacular that includes music by Richard Peaslee (Marat/Sade), elements of choreography by Julie Arenal (Hair), monumental sets by William Pitkin and a cast of 35, including James Patterson, Ruth Ford, William Prince and Virginia Kiser. Ionesco is in residence to give Director Arthur Storch the benefit of his own interpretation...
Survivors at the Banquet. Over the past three decades, the concept of the middle years has vastly changed. In 1932, Walter B. Pitkin wrote Life Begins at Forty and it became an overnight inspirational bestseller, precisely because people thought life ended at 40 and there was nothing left to do but wait around for retirement and death. Perhaps no single figure stamped the modern view of middle age upon the era more forcefully than John F. Kennedy. He represented the generation, seasoned by World War II and tempered by 20th century adversity and affluence, that is now in command...
...Musser's lighting makes obtrusive use of a follow-spot more appropriate for musical comedy. Or did she unconsciously hope the production would somehow turn into Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate? (Come to think of it, Duffy's incidental music does quote a couple of Porter snatches.) William Pitkin merits praise for his ingenious traveling wagon, which sprouts into all sorts of structures including eventually a second-floor balcony...
What the text has above all else is color. Seale and his collaborators have captured it and supplemented it beautifully. Visually the show is a treat from start to finish. William Pitkin's set is simple: a semicircular runway articulated by six poles topped with crowns. This provides wide flexibility. A throne or priedieu can be wisked in or out, coats-of-arms and tapestries can be lowered, and flags, rope-ladders, or drapes can be run up the poles, not to mention pennons carried by supernumeraries...
...Pitkin's costumes, especially the blues for the French court scenes, are utterly sumptuous. And again and again, Seale has grouped his players to form attractive pictures. I have only two complaints here. Herman Chessid's music is too squealy, his fanfares too insipid. And, at the very end of the play--a blaze of glory--it is ridiculous for light-designer Tharon Musser to give us a long slow fadeout instead of a quick blackout...