The Summer in Gossensass is a play set in 1891 London about an actress obsessed with bringing the play "Hedda Gabler" to life. She becomes infatuated with the main character of the play, Hedda, and her desire is to portray her as nothing less than a representation of a new way for women in the world. The entirety of the play takes place in the home of Elizabeth Robins as she strives to create this play by whatever means.
Two casting choices by the director, Barbara Salvadori-Heritage, stood out. The first was for the main character Elizabeth Robins, played by Hannah Atencio. It's clear that Salvadori-Heritage picked an actress who could effectively display her emotions. Atencio certainly was able to do that. The problem was that she couldn't show her emotions in a realistic way. She needed to overact. Perhaps overacting in the play was kind of the point, but her overacting tended to give notice that she WAS acting, not playing a character. She wasn't the only one overacting, lending me to believe that was the direction. Kelsey Clark, who played Marion Lea, also overacted, but she tended to tone down her performance and I bought that she was that character. She wasn't necessarily overacting, she was the snobby character who emphasized moreso than the average person. Clark was a good piece of casting, because she was able to do what the director required while I think Robins didn't.
The staging of the play seemed poor from my perspective. By the table, there were two chairs placed in the worst possible way. Whenever the two characters sitting at the chairs talked to each other, I ended up not seeing either character's face. The character closest to me had her back to me while she faced the other character when they had a conversation. The other character was completely blocked by the person closest to me. Thus, it was the equivalent for me of watching a play where both characters talked with their backs faced to me. This also happened more than just once in the play. In the part of the play where the characters speak about how the English rights to the play "Hedda Gabler" have been sold, there was another scene where a person was speaking and I was blocked by the placement of the character. Overall, the director was not able to take into account that the audience was viewing the play from three sides and adjusting accordingly in my opinion.
I could see what Salvadori-Heritage was trying to do in her direction of the actors. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. An instance where it didn't work was mentioned above in Hannah Atencio's acting of Elizabeth Robins. I believe that Atencio accomplished what Salvadori-Heritage wanted her to do, but I don't think she quite pulled it off. In the first scene, when she is seen pacing the room before she ultimately kills herself, she overacts. She emphasizes her every movement, she places unnecessary emphasis on her words, she tries to hard to show that she's in grief. She basically has a flair for the dramatic as if an audience is watching her. I think Kelsey Clark better achieved this by being slightly more subtle and realizing when to emphasize her words and when not. One actor who's direction I appreciated was Dylan Bainter, who seemed to be cast and used to his talents. He successfully portrayed a too smart for his own good, clumsy know-it-all. His head seemed perpetually slightly raised as if to portray an air of dignity that he had no business having. His physical comedy was surprisingly convincing as well. He didn't telegraph that he was about to fall or trip.
Review
Director Barbara Salvadori-Heritage had a very clear, distinct vision for this play. Unfortunately, she did not pay as close of attention to the staging of the actors who frequently ended up having conversations that invariably blocked out a whole side of the audience. Her decision to have the characters overact in order to emphasize emotion or snobbery was not a bad decision, but her casting of Hannah Atencio did not help as her requirements seemed to be out of her range as an actress. Overall, despite a clear vision, the direction of the play could have been better.
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