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Experience Summer Fun in January with Ten Chimneys

January 06, 2012 by Michael Bloom in From Artistic Director Michael Bloom

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When you direct a show there are usually a few highlights you can point to. I’m having trouble with Ten Chimneys—the production has so many amazing features.
Let me tell you about the theatre itself—the brand new Second Stage in the Allen Theatre Complex. ‘Wow’ is what everyone who walks into it says. We’ve loaded in the set, which represents parts of the summer estate of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and it feels like you’re right there in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin. The audience surrounds the ‘stone’ floor, and rustic set pieces surround the audience. As if to celebrate the first act’s outdoor setting, a small bird flew around the room.
 
What a space! Not only are we able to configure the space to the play, there are only seven rows of seats. Even after sitting in our beautiful proscenium mainstage, the experience of watching a play in the Second Stage will be startlingly different. You can hear the actors breathe and watch them sweat. I’m hard pressed to think of another regional theatre—in Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Seattle—with two better venues. And there are so many more ways the space can be used with a fully trapped floor and a fly system. It’s a theatre artist’s dream.
 
Jeffrey Hatcher’s play is a delicious confection of Coward and Chekhov—funny, illuminating, and deeply human. It’s so rare to work on a new play that has such grace and wit. It’s like discovering a lost work by Mr. Coward himself.
 
Then there’s the stellar cast from all around the country led by Don Carrier (Alfred Lunt), Jordan Baker (Lynn Fontanne), and Mariette Hartley (countless movies and television shows and a sterling theatre career). Two wonderful local actors, Jeremy Kendall (Alfred’s brother Carl) and our third year MFA student Kelli Ruttle (Uta Hagen). Michael McCarty in a brilliant impersonation of Sydney Greenstreet and Chicago’s Gail Rastorfer as Alfred’s sad half-sister.
 
Ten Chimneys is the best way to experience summer fun in Cleveland in January. 
 

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