V Season is Back

By Bradley Towle. Photos courtesy Atossa Kia.

HUNTER — V Season is back! The third annual Valentine’s Day weekend collection of plays brought to you by the ever-busy Maude Adams Theater Hub (MATH) and Catskill Mountain Foundation (CMF) happens February 14th-18th at the Doctorow Center For The Arts. This year’s trio of plays are Bell, Book, and Candle (1950), Neil Simon’s classic Barefoot in The Park (1963), and Kate Hammil’s Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B (2021). All three plays are comedies, a slight departure from last year and a deliberate decision, according to MATH Creative Director Amy Scheibe. Last year’s V Season included a performance of Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, which Scheibe remembered as being “a lot” and thought it best to lighten the mood for 2025. Aside from all three plays being comedies, another theme uniting the selections is a shared setting— an apartment.

At a recent Thursday rehearsal, just a week away from opening night, Bell, Book and Candle director Patricia Charbonneau worked through the play with her actors despite some who could not attend. Charbonneau filled in the gaps by reading lines from the front row as actors Allegra Coons and Bill Solley fine-tuned their performances. “I’ve always loved the play,” said Charbonneau, explaining why she wanted to bring it to the Doctorow Center stage this year, calling it a “café society comedy.” She had thought of Allegra Coons for the role of Gillian Holroyd (played by Kim Novak in the 1958 film adaptation, an actress Charbonneau once had the pleasure to meet) and is excited to have made that a reality.

As Charbonneau’s rehearsal concluded, the cast of Barefoot in The Park, Charbonneau, and Scheibe, got to work rearranging the stage for the next rehearsal. It’s all hands on deck with a MATH play. “Every year we ask “Are we going to do this?” jokes Scheibe, acknowledging that she and her cohorts are a bit ambitious with their plans (from an outsider’s perspective, they always deliver). Still, it’s not without the hard work of everyone involved. “It’s a good way to get through the darkness and cold of January,” says Scheibe of their now annual V Season performances. Scheibe, who also directs Barefoot in The Park, has had fun with the rather specific setting for Simon’s play of February 1963. Aside from selecting era-appropriate paint for the play’s apartment from old photographs, she’s compiled a playlist of songs, including Peggy Lee’s “I’m a Woman” and The Rooftop Singer’s version of “Walk Right In,” which was Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1963.

Once the stage had been shuffled and converted from an early 1950s apartment to an early 1960s apartment, the second rehearsal of the night began. Down only one member, the cast launched into a snappy run-through of Barefoot in The Park. Ashley Hill and Jake Shipley star as the newlywed couple trying to start their life in a less-than-convenient new domicile, a rotating cast of characters entering the apartment played by Katrina Lanz, Roger Daparin, and Gary Falk. There were big laughs and subtle adjustments to the performances throughout, with Scheibe making suggestions that refined the play’s madcap comedy.

Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B director Caitlin McColl’s appreciation of playwright Kate Hammill led her to select the play for this year’s V Season. “I had seen her production of Sense and Sensibility years ago (with her in it!) at Bedlam Theatre Company and was really affected by how joyous and inventive it was,” writes McColl. The requirement that whatever play she chose had to take place in an apartment also influenced the decision. “I stumbled across a description of the set for Ms Holmes and Ms Watson, 2B, and realized it would be an opportunity to work on something of Kate Hamill’s!” McColl echoed Amy Scheibe’s thoughts on the mid-winter work of V Season. “Working on a show for V Season is the best way to get through January and February every year.”

For tickets and more information, visit www.maudeadamstheaterhub.org.