Returns for one-week only Dec 26 - Jan 2 

Christmas at Ventfort Hall would not be complete without return performances of its summer theater productions presented in cooperation with Shakespeare & Company. The rousing success last year of – Ooh La La! – Paris 1890 – Unlaced! brings the world-premier play back on stage at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum. Returning during Christmas Week only, eight performances will take place December 26, 28, 31, January 1 and 2, at 4:00pm and continuing December 27, 29 and 30 at 7:30pm.  

The production played to such critical superlatives as “A tour-de-force…wholesale triumph,” “Top 10 Picks,” and “…don’t miss it!”  For the holidays, treat yourself to something both naughty AND nice. Join actress Anne Undeland at Ventfort Hall in a quick and saucy romp through Paris in the Belle Époque — a glittering world of infamous courtesans, imperious grandes dames, and clueless but ambitious cancan dancers.  Costume, accent and character changes keep the pace lively as Paris 1890 – Unlaced! delivers laughs, heart and of course, a little risqué business…  

The comical one-hour play brings to light an intriguing mystery featuring five women – all performed by Undeland:  “Juliette,” a contemporary Gilded Age museum director;  “La Crème,” an infamous Parisian courtesan; “Hettie,” the wife of La Crème’s benefactor; “La Chapellier,” a very talkative milliner; “Gertrude,” an Innocent Abroad American; and finally, “The Virgin,” a flash-in-the-pan celebrity of the Montmartre nightclub scene – singer, dancer, aspiring courtesan. In Citizen Kane style, as we hear from each successive character, we come a little closer to solving the mystery around which the entire play is constructed.   Anne Undeland has appeared on stage in and around the East Coast for the last 16 years, most notably in the one-woman shows The Belle of Amherst, Xingu, in which she appeared as five different characters, and Fanny Kemble’s Lenox Address all in previous seasons at Ventfort Hall in collaboration with Shakespeare & Company, where she trained as an actress.  

Ventfort Hall commissioned award-winning playwright and author Juliane Hiam to create the play, and Sarah Taylor, a Shakespeare & Company member who directed the highly acclaimed Morgan O-Yuki, Geisha of the Gilded Age for Ventfort Hall in 2006, originally directed Paris 1890 – Unlaced!.   Juliane Hiam, was playwright and director of Ventfort Hall’s summer’s play “Revels and Revelations”.  Her other  plays include “A Tanglewood Tale” which premiered at Shakespeare and Company and went on to have a run at the Metropolitan Playhouse in NYC last year, and “Mrs. Pringle’s Porch” which she both wrote and directed at Shakespeare and Company.  Her plays have been performed at Mass MoCA, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Unicorn Theater and at Ozawa Hall.  Juliane is also a screenwriter and director, having written several films on commission as well as having written and directed the award winning feature Dead Silence starring Danny Aiello, Sally Kirkland, and Maureen Stapleton. She lives in Pittsfield with her husband and children.