Some actors you love from the start. You will them to shine. You want them to dump their terror and stand in the light and be somebody intriguing, like Uncle Vanya, or their adolescent self, or their mother, or Peter O’Toole.
Really.
Which is just what actor/writer Elizabeth Richardson does in performing her imaginative and witty play, “Going On,” about performers, theater, fright, ambition and Buddhism through a bunch of characters created by people like Noel Coward and Anton Chekhov. And herself.
She is performing this bit of theater in the perfect spot, the altar of St. John in the Wilderness, an Episcopal church off Route 22 in Copake Falls, NY.
She walks onto the stage — slim, severe, determined — pantomimes making up before an imagined mirror, then turns to the audience and smiles. She’s ready to tell her story, crowding the stage with characters like fellow retreaters at a Buddhist camp on Cape Breton Island, her theatrical agent in New York, her mother, various characters she has played such as Joanna in “Present Laughter,” a wardrobe man and, most revealingly, Peter O’Toole, with whom she toured understudying three women in two plays.
She is a powerful performer with a wonderful story to tell.
“Going On,” produced by Carl Ritchie for Taconic Stage Company, runs Aug. 24 and 25 at 8 p.m., and Aug. 26 at 3 p.m. For tickets and information, go to
www.taconicstage.com
or call 518-325-1234.