Off the Main Road

What is the Main Road?  Happiness is found in beauty, wealth and achievement (baseball for example).  We lived our life reflecting off the signposts on the Main Road.  The detour that is taken in this world premiere of William Inge’s Off the Main Road, is the path that we were nearly discovering in art and literature in the early 1960s. 

Our cast of characters “have it all.”  Manny, the major league baseball player has had a successful career, Faye has beauty grace and privilege, the daughter has the love and devotion of a Greek god of a boy.  They all find that the promises on the superhighway of 1950’s popular culture were not delivered at the rest stops of 1960’s reality.

This play is a beautiful demonstration of the birth of the infusion of irony into art and culture in the second half of the 20th century.  Although I hate to overly focus on the set as a character, it is hard to avoid in this play.  The setting immediately tells us we are not where we usually live; the living room of the 1950’s. This is the detour that ultimately brings us to “Rosanne” and “Married with Children” seen later in the century. 

The theatre is a beautiful facility.

Wonderful performances are delivered.  Our favorites were by Kyra Sedgwick as Faye Garrit, Estelle Parsons as Mrs. Bennet, Howard Overshown as Jimmy Woodford, and Becky Ann Baker as Mrs. Burns. 

It is a great gift, as we pack our bags and leave the city for the long, hot summer, that we get to bring our theater friends with us.  Williamstown Theatre Festival is a gem that doesn’t disappoint in an extraordinary facility that leaves nothing to be desired for us New York theatergoers.  The setting in Williamstown, MA is bucolic and magnificent.

Review by JMG

The show was sold out but I went to the box office window to try my luck and there were two good seats available for that evening's show.

Side Notes:

We spent the afternoon at The Clark Museum in Williamstown and saw Van Gogh and Nature, featuring nearly fifty paintings and drawings from thirty museums and private collections around the world. 

A world-class museum in the Berkshire Mountains.

We enjoyed a marvelous pre-show meal featuring farm fresh ingredients while sitting at the bar of Mezze Bistro & Bar  It's a five-minute drive to the theater.

We sat at this beautiful bar that has windows facing a magical, grassy hill.