Healing old rifts, in Wharton's drawing room

A new theater group called the Wharton Salon is bringing an adaptation of Wharton’s story “Xingu’’ to the writer’s landmark home in Lenox. The one-act comedy will be performed Aug. 20-23 in Wharton’s drawing room, “which is appropriate, since it actually takes place in a drawing room,’’ says Susan Wissler, executive director of the Mount.

The play centers around a society women’s lunch club hosting a popular author for a discussion of her latest novel. When conversation teeters toward social disaster, the club’s most unpredictable member introduces a compelling new topic, Xingu, although no one quite knows what that is.

Behind the scenes, the production offers a happy return for director/producer Catherine Taylor-Williams and most of the actors, who are current or former members of Shakespeare & Company. The Mount was home to Shakespeare & Company for more than 20 years, before an acrimonious split that became final in 2001.

“The community has been wanting this, the audiences have been wanting to return, the actresses wanted [to do] these plays . . . it was just a matter of getting everyone together,’’ Taylor-Williams says by phone. “The relationship between Shakespeare & Company and the Mount had become very complicated and fraught, and I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Time has passed . . . and I think the time has come again to let all of those old feelings go.’’

Wissler concurs. “Yes, this will be [in fact the process already has been] a healing moment,’’ she writes via e-mail.

It would take Wharton, her pal Henry James, and a team of lawyers to fully limn the intertwined histories of Shakespeare & Company and the Mount. From 1979 to 2001, Shakespeare & Company performed on four stages around the Mount, including in the drawing room. But a final split over the company’s lease as a major restoration was underway ended with the theater troupe moving to a new home a short distance away.

“Xingu’’ is an adaptation of a Wharton story by actor Dennis Krausnick, Shakespeare & Company’s director of training and husband of founder Tina Packer. It’s one of several Wharton adaptations by Krausnick and other writers that were once Shakespeare & Company staples.

Taylor-Williams worked in the troupe from 2001 to 2007 as an actor and behind the scenes. Most of the “Xingu’’ actors (Corinna May, Diane Prusha, Tod Randolph, Lydia Barnett-Mulligan, Jennie Burkhard Jadow, Rory Hammond, and Karen Lee) have been part of Shakespeare & Company in one capacity or another, some for much longer than Taylor-Williams. The lone male in the cast, Daniel Osman, is a former Shakespeare & Company member who directed the last production of “Xingu’’ at the Mount, in the 1990s.

For a photo shoot, Taylor-Williams took the cast to the Mount and opened some champagne.

“We had a wonderful afternoon, the weather cooperated. And this was the first time these women had been back at this space in nine years,’’ says Taylor-Williams. “Some of these people had lived there in the Mount full time. Diane - her daughter Rory, who’s also in the play, was probably conceived there,’’ she adds with a laugh.

The restoration has been finished since they left, and old disputes have faded away.

“I think they were a little tentative because they remembered that when they left things were difficult,’’ Taylor-Williams says. “But people came up to them and said, ‘We’re so glad to see you,’ and the house was beautiful. . . . It was a very positive experience for everyone.’’

Taylor-Williams had left Shakespeare & Company in 2007 to take a graduate fellowship in arts management at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. When that was over, she landed a job in development at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York.

She and her husband, actor Robert Serrell, had kept their apartment in Lenox. And she began looking for something to produce. “I still continue to come to the Berkshires every weekend because I love it,’’ she says. “Because I couldn’t leave I thought, well, what am I going to do there? That was when this idea came forward.’’

Taylor-Williams had been a house manager at the Mount. “I saw how much the audiences loved those plays, and I remembered that,’’ she says. “Shakespeare & Company had originated those plays at the Mount, and [Krausnick] has a wonderful, deft way of representing Wharton. I just thought we should bring these plays back.’’

Local photographer and designer Kevin Sprague, a mutual friend, put Taylor-Williams together with Wissler.

“We sat over coffee in a little coffee shop in Lenox and talked about it a year ago,’’ says Wissler, “and she approached us early in the fall last year and proposed to mount this performance in the drawing room. And we’re happy to have her - very excited about it.’’

When Shakespeare and Company left the Mount, performances of Wharton plays stopped, although the venue has hosted readings and other activities.

“This is the first time the Mount has collaborated since then . . . with a performance troupe,’’ Wissler says.

Wissler has been at the Mount since September 2001 and executive director since longtime director Stephanie Copeland left amid a financial crisis in 2008. The Mount has since restructured its debt. “We’re not out of the woods, but we’re out of the emergency room and into intensive care,’’ Wissler says.

It’s hoped that tickets will cover half the $14,000 “Xingu’’ production cost, with local donors making up the rest. The Mount is helping Taylor-Williams with in-kind support, and Shakespeare & Company is doing its part. Krausnick and Packer donated the rights to the play for this production. Krausnick even took another pass through the text, Taylor-Williams says. The company is renting audience risers to the Wharton Salon, as well as some costumes.

Shakespeare & Company wants no confusion about its role in “Xingu,’’ though. It’s not coming back to the Mount, being firmly ensconced in its own nearby campus, where it is finishing up a $10 million capital campaign.

The company provided this statement from founding member and artistic director Tony Simotes: “We’re excited to have a relationship in some respects at the Mount again. We’re happy to assist with Catherine’s project. She’s a past company member who worked with us for many years. It’s part of the ethos here in the Berkshires that the cultural organizations help each other out when possible. . . . We’d love to see Catherine’s venture succeed, and the door is open to future collaborations. But right now we’re focused on an 18-show season, which is the biggest we’ve mounted in a decade.’’

All the history aside, Taylor-Williams and Wissler both say they hope “Xingu’’ is just the beginning for the Wharton Salon at the Mount. And at least one thing about the house is better than in the old days.

“It’s air-conditioned now,’’ Taylor-Williams says.

Tickets: $35, which includes a day pass to the Mount. 413-551-5113, www.edithwharton.org, www.whartonsalon.org