The Playgoer: Shakeup at Williamstown?

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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Shakeup at Williamstown?

Variety reports that Roger Rees is out, three years after taking over from LA-bound Michael Ritchie. Longtime Williamstown habitué Nicholas Martin is probably in.

Anyone out there familiar enough with the Williamstown scene to give the Rees assessment/postmortem?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was at WTF for the last half decade or so of Ritchie's reign. His last year was my last, and was the last year of most of the staff, and the last year for all the spaces they had. Rees wasn't in a place to do the same things as Ritchie, given all the brand new spaces and a production staff who was new to the festival and the spaces. But he did have a clean slate, and he could've done a lot with that.

Everyone thought either Jenny Gersten (Ritchie's associate producer) or Martin was going to get it when Ritchie left, assuming he could run the Huntington (Williamstown East) at the same time. I was very disappointed when Jenny didn't get it - she certainly earned it, and had as much to do with WTF's success at the time as Ritchie - even the local critic in Williamstown wrote an article in her support. This was the same critic who wrote "A Midsummer Nightmare" in response to Martin's Midsummer at WTF, a must read (saved by the wayback machine! http://web.archive.org/web/20040805230406/http://www.iberkshires.com/advocate/story14991.html ). A lot more people would've stayed around, and she could've used the momentum that Ritchie started.

Martin is a patron favorite, and I think he'll do great things.