A Song of Summer

At an all-American resort in the wilds of Maine, idyllic days on the lake turn into evenings filled with bravura performances

- Lila Harron Battis

IT WAS THE BIG FINALE to Act I of A Little Night Music, and all eyes were on the Countess Charlotte Malcolm. She took the spotlight at center stage and filled the room with her rich contralto. Anne Egerman stood upstage, flitting through Stephen Sondheim's lyrics in her lilting soprano.

This kind of scene was playing out at summer-stock theaters all over the country, with one key difference: a few hours before curtain, when actors in Williamstown or Stockbridge might have been gargling salt water or doing their vocal warm-ups, these two had been in the dining room of Quisisana Resort, refilling the wine glasses of their soon-to-be audience members and being greeted with shouts of "Break a leg!"

Sondheim himself once wrote that "you gotta get a gimmick," and at Quisisana, which sits on the shore of Kezar Lake in western Maine, the schtick is this: the staffers serving you dinner and making your bed are not merely waiters and housekeepers but also the stars of a rotation of musicals, operas, and performances staged on the property throughout the week. The cast members are largely twentysomethings, many fresh from BFA or MFA programs, while others are Quisi veterans further into their careers. During my visit, in addition to A Little Night Music, they would be performing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Shrek The Musical; and Snapshots, a Stephen Schwartz musical revue, among others.