
Like many women of my generation I've seen the Merchant-Ivory A Room with a View approximately a million times (yes I own the DVD), and I was also the type of teen that took the novel along with me as my sole cultural distraction when my pre-college "wilderness orientation" stranded me by myself in the Sierras for 24 hours. So normally I might have been a little nervous about the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley adaptation currently playing at John Hinkel Park, directed by Andrew Calabrese, except I knew local theater hero Stuart Bousel was the writer doing the adapting and I trusted his passion for the material implicitly. Sure enough, this is an entirely charming and faithful Room, with a wonderful ensemble cast sending their English accents to the back of the rustic outdoor amphitheater. Tyler Scott Null and Sophie Ruf (pictured) are perfect as George and Lucy, fumbling toward each other across barriers of class and social convention, and I loved how they made use of the park's environs leading up to their famous first kiss. The production contains many other clever touches too, such as the use of "marble" benches to denote the Italian setting at the beginning of the story or the way Bousel uses multiple characters to deal with moments of exposition. When answering the question "Something you want the audience to walk away with?" in the program, Bousel says, "That life is short and precious, and all of us play a role in one another's lives, often in ways we can't foresee, but what we can do is choose to be kind, generous, honest and above all else: engaged."
Masking? Only a smattering, but it was outdoors so my concern was low even as I continue to mask.