Seated in my little white folding chair, separated from others by as much as 14 feet in all directions in the tent adjoining Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre, I didn’t find “Day By Day,” or indeed anything by Stephen Schwartz, running through my head while awaiting the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Godspell. Rather, it was a line of Joni Mitchell’s that haunted me: “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”
Ms. Mitchell’s insight from the song “Big Yellow Taxi” came to me in view of the adjustments needed to make a production pandemic-safe (and win Actors’ Equity approval for its mounting, the U.S.’s first since lockdowns began). It wasn’t so much the arrival regimen. We’re all used by now to the temperature check, the demand of a phone number for later contact tracing, and the discs and arrows on the floor mandating paths and proper distances. It wasn’t even the vast space between the stage and first row, reminiscent of sitting up top in the Jones Beach Marine Theatre back in the day.
It was losing the quotidian aspects of going to a show that felt so weird. Who knew one would miss sitting cheek-by-jowl with strangers and jostling for armrests, eavesdropping on conversations, being up close and personal with staff? Queueing up for the restrooms is one thing, but having an usher inform us that we have to queue up because “there are already five people inside” the building where the loo is, is just peculiar. Even the old annoyances (rustling candy wrappers! Texting! Whispered commentary!) were conspicuous, and oddly regrettable, by their absence.
All melancholy reflection on theater events past, however, was swept away by elation when an understudy took the stage to gleefully invite us to “greet the cast of Godspell!” You don’t usually cheer actors simply for being there. But director Alan Filderman’s 10-person troupe, gingerly making their way onstage to carefully spaced-out positions on chairs and platforms (an attractive 70s retro design by Randall Parsons), earned the immediate gratitude of the crowd of 100 for offering us a live performance. Any kind of live performance.
As it happens, Godspell is a particularly apt choice for our present situation. As Schwartz has noted, his breakthrough show is neither a revue nor a religious tract, but a play with a strong arc of change in which dislocated, fretful people discover community through time-honored principles of love, caring, and mutual respect.
In response to the pandemic, there’s a new prologue—presumably OK’d by the licensers; don’t try this at home—in which the cast members offer personal testimony on the health crisis’s impact on their lives and careers: callbacks cancelled and jobs lost; anti-Asian prejudice; terror as to what the future holds. It’s the cacophony of their helplessness so like our own, and not the usual musical medley of historical philosophies, that’s cut short by the shofar announcing the way of the Lord (Nicholas Edwards, a more soothing, less conflicted Jesus than usual).
That which follows, Tebelak’s cavalcade of parables acted out in a semi-impromptu fashion, is tweaked to today’s normal. Movable plexiglas flats protect those downstage from any fluids produced upstage (there’s not much depth to the stage floor, and most of the movement is lateral). No opportunity is missed to kid present-day mores, and I don’t just mean the usual current events interpolations. (“Occupy Pittsfield!” is a crowd cry at one point, and the rich man is greeted in Hell with “Welcome to Walmart.”) The soft-shoe passage of “All for the Best” is played out with Purell and Sani-Wipes, and yardsticks substitute for canes for the protection of a straw-hatted Edwards and Tim Jones. Choreographer Gerry McIntyre seems to have no end of interesting ideas for using the human body while standing still, including Kimberly Immanuel’s mean tap solo in place for “Learn Your Lessons Well.” And when seated, actors beat out percussive rhythms on their boxes and tubs sooner than Angel in Rent.
Vocal elements are also strong under Andrew Baumer’s music direction. The pleading element in “(When Wilt Thou) Save the People?,” the show’s I-want number, for once takes precedence over its anthemic qualities. Wryly comical Dan Rosales makes the most of “We Beseech Thee,” and Alex Getlin’s tremolo on “By Your Side,” the most moving rendition in my memory, channels Joan Baez at her most impassioned.
Hints of socially engaged folk music tie into the show’s inevitable pivot away from COVID to an even more virulent societal disease, one which will need more than a pharmacopoeia or vaccine to overcome. It starts with the exuberantly multiracial ensemble’s pointed replacement of “boss” or “leader” whenever Jesus speaks of “a servant and his master,” and Isabel Jordan’s lovely Spanish-language verse of “Day By Day.” Then there are all the lessons about loving your enemies, and turning the other cheek, and appreciating the value of every human life, tax collectors and prostitutes included. When Edwards sings hopefully (and beautifully) that “We will build / A beautiful city” you know he doesn’t mean one without face masks, but one without prejudice or injustice, one in which Black lives absolutely do matter and people can disagree without reviling each other. In 50 years I’ve yet to encounter a single Godspell, pro or am, that didn’t seek to address its historical moment. This one succeeds more than most.
As with the preshow rituals, though, I was eventually worn down (and worn out) by how much is lost on stage behind plexiglas. The inability not just to touch, but sheerly to alter one’s proximity to others, robs actors of one of their most expressive tools. And when characters need to make contact, makeshift alternatives tend to distract rather than suffice. (Waving and blowing air kisses when the disciples first greet Jesus is evocative. Repeating those afar gestures when they’re faced with the imminent tragedy of his death, not so much.) Godspell is usually played way too huggy, but going awkwardly and totally un-huggy won’t “sell” the piece either.
Still, awkwardness is the current normal, is it not? And being safe requires everyone to put up with the precautions of the day. Undeterred by the need to respect those strict requirements, BTG’s Godspell offers lots of pleasure, deserving of our thanks. If, to quote one last rock star, you can’t always get what you want, it’s awfully nice to want what you can get.
Godspell opened August 8, 2020, at the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield MA and runs through Sept. 4. Tickets and information: berkshiretheatregroup.org
