PUTNEY-Wild Goose Players (WGP) brings Stephen Sondheim’s darkly comic and somewhat risqué musical Assassins to Next Stage in Putney starting Friday, Nov. 6.
“The music is beautiful. We have these incredible singers,” says WGP Artistic Director David Stern, noting that this musical follows on the heels of other Sondheim musicals that Wild Goose has mounted at Next Stage: A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, and Company.
The concept of the work is a gathering of the “men and women who attempted — or succeeded — in assassinating U.S. presidents,” a WGP press release explains, describing the 90-minute play, performed without intermission, as “unsettling, and often disturbingly funny. [It] challenges audiences to confront the myths of success, entitlement, and patriotism at the heart of American culture.”
“So, we’re on a Sondheim kick, which we love,” Stern says.
WGP key collaborator Morganna Ekkens directs for the first time, while Stern will do scenery and lighting, “which allows me to really flex those muscles a little bit more and let [Ekkens] take on some greater opportunities,” he says.
The cast includes Isaiah Lapierre-Palmer, Dennis Scott, Gavy Kessler, Shayna Bredbeck, Katharine Doescher, Noah Carmel, Mike Batusic, Sam Mathewes Clark, Liam Johnson, Tricia Suriani, PJ Mead, Max Bady-Kaye, Mark Tullgren, Huxley Dove, Lea Kablik, and Marilyn Tullgren.
Carol Krantz is music director for Assassins. She is, Stern says, “an incredible organizer, communicator, teacher.”
Staging ‘Les Misérables’ in the spring
WGP’s April 2027 production of Les Misérables will be co-directed by Stern and Kirstin O’Brien, professor of theater and dance at Keene State College.
The 1980 musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Jean-Marc Natel is based on the 1862 epic historical novel by Victor Hugo about rebellious Jean Valjean in 19th-century France.
“There was a New York Times article recently about how many companies are doing Les Misérables and how many of them are hoping it’ll keep them out of financial troubles,” says Stern of the enduring box office success of the play.
“I would say that is part of the reason that we’re doing it,“ he says. “I think it’s going to be very economically successful, but I’ve wanted to do it for 10 years and it hasn’t been available.”
When rights recently opened up, he says, WGP jumped: “Our company is in a great place right now to do it,” Stern says, noting WGP has “somewhere around 200 volunteers in the acting pool.”
“I couldn’t believe the auditions,” Stern recalls. “Just person after person who sang like a dream,” most wanting to be cast as a lead. “We had so many men, and we needed men.”
A new home
WGP has been growing. After Covid, Stern, who’d been artistic director at Saxtons River’s Main Street Arts since 2015, recalls, “I couldn’t get Main Street Arts to restart the way and the when I wanted. […] It was very different when I was there. I think they’ve reverted back more to [..] neighborhood-y, small-scale stuff, and I had my eye on something else.”
And so, in 2021, WGP found itself in a new home to rent at 7 Westminster St. in Bellows Falls, with 600 square feet of space in a big-windowed storefront.
“Honestly, things are moving in a wonderful direction all across the board,” says Stern. “We’re now doing performances there as well as construction and rehearsal.”
And that space, he adds, enables “us to do a bunch of smaller, lower-stakes theater works such as facilitated through the three-year-old [WGP] incubator series, monthly readings of new plays by area playwrights.”
As it continues to present at Next Stage, WGP has also secured the Bellows Falls Opera House again for Les Misérables. Meanwhile, the theater company is considering the potential of facilities at Vermont Academy and Kurn Hattin Home and School for Children as more affordable spaces for their large-scale shows.
“Our relationships with the town are good. Our collaborations with other companies are good,” says Stern, who was toying a few years ago with the idea of retiring, a concept that’s still lingering in the frontal lobe.
“I think what I’m hoping — I’m 65, and this takes a fair bit of energy — is to hand more management pieces to Morganna and PJ Mead,” who has joined the WGP staff as managing director.
Stern will continue to direct when called and would happily do more production design.
WGP casts a wide net while drawing company members, and audiences, from the Connecticut River Valley, which runs from Hanover, New Hampshire, south to Northampton, Massachusetts. It is bounded on the east by Keene, New Hampshire, and on the west by Manchester, Vermont.
As a nonprofit, WGP relies on community support. “I love our donors,” Stern says.
But, he adds, the theater does “really well on earned revenue. Something like almost 70% of our income is earned revenue, which is good news in an arts climate where funding is running dry.”
“We’ve written about seven grants [this year] and have not received a single one. It’s a very tough climate,” Stern says.
But Stern seems undaunted as he stresses the value of the lively arts now.
“To me, the theater [offers] something in this time when everything seems to be jobbed out to a robot,” something that puts the art in an essential position, he says.
“Anytime we can get live people hanging out with live people experiencing something together — I think that’s going to be more and more of a need,” Stern observes.
Wild Goose Players’ production of Assassins at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill, Putney, offers performances at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6 and 7; on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Nov. 12, 13, and 14; and matinees, with discussion to follow, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 8, and Saturday, Nov. 14. The audience is warned that the show “has an R-rating and deals with many sensitive topics, including gun violence, suicide, executions, drug use, cults/brainwashing, and profanity, including a racial slur.” For tickets and for more information, visit wildgooseplayers.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.