Ed Dixon in his Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose at Barrington Stage. Photo by Micah Logsdon.
by Mark G. Auerbach
There’s a real art to solo performance, where an actor takes center stage without other actors to share the theatricality one-on-one with an audience. When it’s good, it’s incredible. James Lecesne and Hershey Felder, at Hartford Stage respectively in The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey and Our Great Tchaikovsky, are two of the best. Add Ed Dixon to the list. Lecesne created his characters from fiction; Felder found his in history. Dixon knew his character first-hand.
George Rose, the English-born Amerian stage and screen actor, had befriended Dixon early in his career and they became good riends over the years that Rose starred on Broadway in The Pirates of Penzance with Kevin Kline, Coco with Katherine Hepburn, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and My Fair Lady, winning a Tony Award for the latter. Rose lived an eccentric and flamboyant life onstage and off. He was brutally murdered by a young man he had befriended in the Dominican Republic.
Ed Dixon
Ed Dixon developed Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose in Connecticut, played a run at Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA, and moved the show Off-Broadway. Now, it’s on-tour, and he won a Drama Desk Award for solo performance earlier this year. Area audiences may remember seeing him at Goodspeed in A Wonderful Life and at Barrington Stage in Man of La Mancha. He’s written several plays and his autobiography, Secrets of a Life On Stage and Off, recaps his experiences with folks like Ruby Keeler, Kathie Lee Gifford, Stephen Sondheim, and others.
If you’re familiar with George Rose’s work or the actors and productions during his lifetime, you’ll find Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose a delicious series of backstage innuendo, name-dropping, and caricatures of the then-famous. Dixon is a brilliant raconteur and story-teller. Some of his impersonations and jokes are laugh out loud funny. If you know nothing of Rose and his contemporaries, his tragic demise and its effect on Dixon is touching.
Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose only runs through Sunday.
Ed Dixon in his Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose at Barrington Stage. Photo by Micah Logsdon.
It’s been a terrific season at Barrington Stage. Company has been held over until September 10, and Jeff McCarthy brings back his powerful performance in Kunstler September 13-24, before Barrington Stage presents Gaslight, also known as Angel Street, October 4-22.
Barrington Stage Company presents Georgie: My Adventures With George Rose Written and performed by Ed Dixon. Direction and production design by Eric Schaeffer. Through September 3. Barrington Stage Company’s St. Germain Theatre, Pittsfield, MA. 413-236-8888 or www.barringtonstageco..org
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Mark G. Auerbach studied theatre at American University and the Yale School of Drama. He’s worked for arts organizations and reported on theatre for newspapers and radio. Mark produces and hosts ArtsBeat Radio on 89.5fm/WSKB Radio.
