A running trope in Ben Diskant’s The Weekend: A Stockbridge Story concerns whether the famous pies at Taft Farms are made on the premises or delivered by a distributor. Each opinion elicited knowing laughs from spectators at a recent matinee, as did a reference to a local eatery at an intersection noted for fender-benders. Still, the life of this world premiere work after it winds down at Pittsfield’s Barrington Stage Co. won’t depend on attracting Berkshires-savvy audiences, or even one’s appetite for pie. It will hinge on an appetite for the kind of Hallmark Channel rom-com, more rom than com, in which every conversation is devoted to one’s relationships and most scenes end in a pointed comment and defiant exit, punctuated by the mournful strains of cello and solo piano.
Diskant plops four characters down in lakeside settings to have them talk things out. Blustery Tom (Bill Army) and nurturing Beth (Molly Jobe) are married Manhattan lawyers going through a rough patch, while his repressed brother Allan (Ben Rosenfield) has been drifting ever since losing free-spirited college gf Jordan (Sasha Diamond), who’s considering selling the family cabin.
Rural gentrification, Tom’s increasing indifference, Beth’s ambivalence about motherhood, Jordan’s effort to find herself (her words, not mine) and Allan’s writer’s block all come up, along with the brothers’ codependency, a forsaken rendezvous, and Jordan’s discovery of old letters from her late father. Indebtedness to The Notebook (admitted in print by Diskant) is pretty obvious, and there are developments highly reminiscent of All About Eve, An Affair to Remember and Sliding Doors. Someone opening a shop called Plenty O’ Plot could make a real go of it here.
The gimmick, which seems a fair enough term, is that these are stories in the making. A writer at a laptop – is it Allan, actor Rosenfield, or a generic “Writer” figure? – enlists the others’ aid to sort out what did happen, or could have or might have happened a decade ago, or five years ago or yesterday. As a result, all of them regularly break out of the tale to address each other, and sometimes us directly, with their observations in first- or third-person. The device serves to envelop us in yet more talk, novelistic talk at that, while lowering the stakes and dramatic pressure. With all that emotional distance, we feel, they can’t be that bad off.
The women fare best. Diamond is alive and clearheaded enough to make her appeal undeniable, and Jobe confidently juggles Beth’s mania to please and her inner resentment. Army tips off Tom as a dick from his first appearance, such that 11th-hour efforts to make him sympathetic prove too little and too late. Rosenfield has mopey anomie down to a science, so I wish director Alan Paul had steered him toward lighter and livelier moments so that we could understand what Jordan sees/saw in him.
As usual at Barrington Stage, everything is smartly appointed. Ricky Reynoso’s costumes are redolent of the late 1990s (several story points would be impossible in the age of cellphones), and set designer Wilson Chin and lighting designer Amina Alexander collaborate to make manifest the beauties of a Western Massachusetts interior or an autumn sunset. Yet I’ll be damned if the characters don’t stop to talk about those as well.
The Weekend: A Stockbridge Story opened October 4, 2025, at the St. Germain Stage (Pittsfield, MA) and runs through October 12. Tickets and information: barringtonstageco.org
