A Question of Balance

Bristol Riverside Theatre opens its 18th season.

By: Matt Smith

Bristol Riverside Theatre produced A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (above) during the 1999-2000 campaign, and is returning to ancient Greece this season for Olympus on My Mind.

   Bristol Riverside Theatre is now old enough to vote, celebrating its 18th season in the little jewel of a theater tucked on Radcliffe Street in Bristol Borough. TimeOFF caught up with artistic director Edward Keith Baker for a quick chat about its broad slate of plays and musicals for the 2004-2005 campaign.
   "Our opening show is a murder-mystery (‘Cliffhanger’)," Mr. Baker says, "the second show of the season an American classic comedy (‘Holiday’), the following two shows are ‘Talley’s Folly,’ which is a Pulitizer Prize-winning play by one of the leading authors in America (Lanford Wilson), and ‘Fences,’ a Tony Award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a story of an African-American family. And then our final show is a musical (‘Olympus on My Mind’), not a very well-known musical, but an absolutely charming and delightful piece … So, I think we’ve covered a lot of bases this season."
   Mr. Baker will direct Cliffhanger and Talley’s Folly, and will pull double duty as director and musical director for Olympus on My Mind, which he describes as "very close in style to ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.’"
   In eight years as BRT’s artistic director, Mr. Baker (along with producing director Susan Atkinson) has taken risks with the audience, in a spot where a steady diet of familiar work would guarantee bigger box office.
   "I have really asked this audience to go a lot of places with me," he says. "In the years since I’ve been here we’ve done plays by Ionesco, by Jean Anouilh. We have done original plays that have been harsh and difficult like ‘The Balkan Women’ a few years ago, things like that where I have been very proud of this audience. They come back, they take those things, which are generally pieces that would even have a difficult time in the big city, and they see them. Sometimes they don’t like them, sometimes they do, but they keep coming back. I think we’ve been very fortunate in that."
   BRT lightens the mood with its popular Summer Musicale series and holiday Winter Musicale, as well as producing one mainstage musical each season, all acting as counterweights to the more challenging work.
   "I try to ride this balance between giving them what they truly enjoy and giving them things that are more unusual, things that reflect the broader spectrum of theater than just the casual entertainment," Mr. Baker says. "That balance is the hardest one to strike."
Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, will stage Cliffhanger (Oct. 12-31), Holiday (Nov. 30-Dec. 19), Talley’s Folly (Jan. 25-Feb. 13), Fences (March 15-April 3) and Olympus on My Mind (May 3-22) as part of its 2004-2005 mainstage season. Individual tickets cost $29-$41. For information, call (215) 785-0100. On the Web: www.brtstage.org