We just can’t help grinning when we’re around Ron Berry. There’s something about this actor/director/camp counselor that radiates jubilation, as if some shiny, happy party is going on inside him all the time. It animates his work onstage, making his comic turns (say, his clownish Odysseus in Water or his goofy ballet for Björk in Celebrity Crush) inspired in their exuberance and giving his dramatic characters – as in his Critics Table Award-winning performance in Proof – an uncommon aliveness, a light from within. Out of the spotlight, that joy fuels whatever mad artistic adventure he’s on, be it a multiple-playwright theatrical epic like Orange or transforming an old warehouse into the Blue Theater. Funny name, that, for this guy’s creative home; if there’s one thing Berry is not, it’s blue. And that tickles us pink.
