A New Kid on the Block: The Wharton Salon at Edith Wharton's Lenox Estate, The Mount

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A CurtainUp Feature

A New Kid on the Block: The Wharton Salon at Edith Wharton's Beautifully Restored Lenox Estate, The Mount

By Elyse Sommer

L-R: Corinna May, Diane Prusha, Tod Randolph, Jennie Burkhard Jadow, Karen Lee.
(Photo: Kevin Sprague)

No sooner did I upload my post welcoming a new theater group, the Wharton Salon, to the busy Berkshire scene, than every performance of their first four-performance offering — a stage adaptation of Edith Wharton's short story, "Xingu" — was sold out. But while it takes donations as well as ticket sales for a theatrical venture to grow and prosper, it's a good bet that the Salon will be back at the Mount, the mansion where Edith Wharton wrote some of her Berkshire set novels like Summer and Ethan Frome.

While it's wonderful to see that both the interior of the Wharton mansion and its lush ground have been beautifully restored, given Wharton's literary cache and the mansion's history for experiencing theater, producer Catherine Taylor-Williams deserves a hearty round of applause for once again letting Wharton's words live in the intimate setting of the salon. Taylor-Williams, like a number of the "Xingu" actors, was a long-time member of Shakespeare & Company which called the Mount home until moving to its present location on Kemble Street. Though that company, true to its name, mounts lots of the Bard's plays as well as more modern works, they no longer do the adaptations of Wharton's novels and short stories by Shakespeare & Company founding member and director of training,Dennis Krausnik, were all-time favorites —especially the annual Salon one-acts, with tea served at intermission.

The welcoming sign on the Sommer front porch in Lee was Shakespeare & Co's refreshment stand when they were still at the Mount. The name was created with wood chips found on the grounds of the estate.

Shakespeare & Company's first salon production of "Xingu" was directed a by Daniel Osman who's now the only man in the play. Though that production predated Curtainup by several years, I've caught these delightful tea for two events ever since our launch.

When the Shakespeare folks moved to their Kemble Street headquarters, I salvaged the wooden board from their refreshment stand and used wood chips from the Mount's grounds to spell our our name. While this welcome sign is a treasured reminder of theater at the Mount, there's nothing like the real thing. And so for me, like many of the people attending one of the all too limited performances of the newly founded Wharton Salon was not only fun ("Xingu " is a hilarious little satire) but brought a flood of memories. It was great to have veterans of Shakespeare & Company's Mount days — Corinna May, Tod Randolph and Diane Prusha— back at the Salon, along with Prusha's daughter Rory Hammond, all handsomely outfitted by veteran costumer Arthur Oliver.

Adding poignancy and pleasure to what will hopefully be the first of many Wharton plays, is that the animosity surrounding the parting of the ways between Shakespeare & Company and the Wharton Restoration is now history. The two organizations will continue to go their own way but with a spirit of good will and cooperation. To prove it the Xingu audiences included many Shakespeare & Company folks and both Tod Randolph and Corinna May also have summer gigs on Kemble Street, Randolph as the director of The Dreamer Examines his Pillow and Corinna May in the cast of Twelfth Night.

I think if Edith Wharton could come back to The Mount, she'd join me in welcoming The Wharton Salon back to her lovely home and wish its founder and producing director Catherine Taylor-Williams and her co-producer Lauryn Franzoni, luck in making theater part of the Mount experience. For an idea of plays you might expect to see revived if all goes well, look for Wharton One-Act links in Curtainup's Berkshire Review Archives. You can check on what the Wharton Salon is up to by going to their Facebook page.

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