Previews: THE BAKE OFF OF FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE at Vermont Stage

The Bake-Off of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune at Vermont Stage

You don’t want to miss this three-in-one theatrical execution of Terrance McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair du Lune!

It’s this weekend (June 13 – 16) at Main Street Landing. If you know Frankie and Johnny, you know they’re hot, they’re freefalling into romance and passion and there's pressure!

For twelve years, each spring Vermont Stage has taken one play and sliced it like a pie into three pieces! And then three different directors and three different casts each take on one-third of the play, and present in an annual fundraiser.

The first cast is Harley Winzenried and Izzy Gilbert as Johnny and Frankie, respectively, and their performances, along with fabulous staging, costumes and lighting, and their  all combine to create the vibrant atmosphere of late night in a NYC apartment with two people arguing about falling in love. Director Jon van Luling’s bold choices, from casting to updating cultural references, makes for an engaging first “slice of the pie”.

Director Jillian Holland is at helm, or the kitchen counter, for the second section, featuring Leila Teitelman and Jesse Cooper as the second cast of the evening. Their performances exemplify the “push and pull” between the two lovers, and the electricity between them intensifies in the early morning hours as they reach the quintessential moment of the play where they are at the window in the moonlight, and the local D.J. is playing DeBussy’s Clair du Lune on the radio just for them. Holland, Teitelman, Cooper and lighting and sound designers did justice to that moving poetic tableau.

Then, for the final serving of pie, seasoned director Laura Roald steps up to direct Fred Patchen as Johnny and Stephanie Seng as Frankie in a satisfying finale segment of this ternary journey. By the third segment, the audience may be rooting for or against the lovers to go forward into trying out a longer relationship. Seng and Patchen’s captivating performances make us question right up to the end, which way is this thing going to go? And do they really have a chance?

The lighting and sets were sparse, effective, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes evocative of the NYC Hell’s Kitchen apartment in the very early hours of the morning into dawn in an earlier era where the play is set, or perchance, also 2024, as McNally’s play is set in “the present."

“The heart of the characters, Frankie and Johnny, holds through all three parts of the play," says director Jill Holland, noting the continuity between the three sections. This is a “zany experiment,” writes Cristina Alicea in the program notes. “Rehearsals happen blind, so the casts have no idea what the other sections are doing until the day before we open. In short, the final show ends up being as big a surprise to us as it will be for you!”

Music plays a big role in Frankie and Johnny, and Martha Goode’s sound design creates a soundscape that draws in the audience as well as the characters in the play. Lighting design, by Craig Zemsky, captures the poetry of lovers' late night collusion of opinions, and staging was expertly sustained by technical director Chuck Padula.

The Vermont Stage production of The Bake Off of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune runs until Sunday, June 13th. Tickets are available at www.vermontstage.org/the-bake-off-2024 

The Bake Off is a fundraiser to benefit Vermont Stage.

Pictured: Jesse Cooper and Leila Teitelman. Photo credit: Jamien Forrest

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