An Enjoyable Start To The Holiday Season

By Julie Stern

RIDGEFIELD — There were myriad small pleasures to be found in Ridgefield Theater Barn’s production of Matthew Barber’s Enchanted April, not least among them, veteran designer Myles Gansfried’s stunning set, wherein a bare, curtain shrouded stage holding only a pair of tables and wooden chairs was transformed, during intermission, into a gloriously enchanted Italian castle, replete with stone walls and embankments, a view of the sea, and wisteria trailing everywhere.

Another was the bravura performance by Laurel Jameson as the ebulliently hopeful Lotty Wilton, a middle-class Englishwoman with an innate capacity to see possibilities of a happier future. Barber’s portrait of four English ladies who band together to rent a castle on the Italian coast takes place in 1922, a time when all of Europe has been shattered by a war that cost 21 million casualties.

When Lotty reads a newspaper squib inviting “lovers of sunshine and wisteria” to rent the castle for the month of April, she impulsively invites the shy, uptight Rose Arnott — a woman she has only seen in church — to join her on holiday to escape the perpetual gloom and rain of the English winter. To come up with the necessary funds, they advertise for “gentlewomen” to join them, and so their party is completed by the glamorous creature of the tabloids, Lady Caroline Bramble, and the fussy termagant, Mrs Graves.

The production wrapped last weekend, and if you missed this one, under Brian Detoma’s direction, it was an overall enjoyable start to the holiday season. The play was a little more episodic in structure than I remember seeing it in other productions, but it was nevertheless a celebration of the importance of life and love.

Katie Castel gave a languid, droll performance as Lady Caroline, who tolerates the company of the older, more innocent, women, even as she nurses a secret sorrow along with her hip flask. A heavily made up Trish Maskell was Mrs Graves, the travel companion from hell.

Paulette Layton, who played Rose, is best at playing the role with broad, eye-rolling, deep breath-taking, appalled shock, as a foil to Lotty’s overtures. However, good actress that she is, you realize that Rose is actually a shrewd observer of details, and her personality grows, even as her expression lightens to a smile, under the spell of the castle’s enchantment.

For comic relief there is Costanza the servant, a muttering, gesticulating, tyrant who understands English only when it is spoken by someone she approves of, a role beautifully handled by Janice Rudolph.

For depth and darker overtones — as well as the possibility of romance — there is Antony Wilding (played by Brad Geyer), the young painter and emotionally wounded war veteran who, having inherited the castle and Costanza, from his late parents, is the ladies’ landlord.

The plot calls for the two husbands to arrive, inspiring their barren marriages to be revitalized. Unfortunately, it seemed that Carl Gingola as Lotty’s husband Mellersh and Joe Niola as Frederick (Rose’s husband, who has become a hack writer of lurid romances under the pen name Florian) were somewhat miscast. It isn’t that they are not good actors in themselves, but the transformation from oafish fools to worthwhile partners for their women was not clearly delineated.

One of the other highpoints of the play, however, was the mellifluous use of Italian, when spoken by Antony, Costanza and Lady Caroline, in contrast to the bumbling efforts of the other English to try and say something in a foreign language.