Amid a flood of bad news, a 90-year-old Vermonter finds reason to sing

WESTON — When a Wellesley College senior named Barbara Solms arrived at this town’s namesake theater to act in summer stock 70 years ago, locals quickly fell smitten.

“Barbara, an attractive blonde,” the Rutland Herald wrote in July 1954, “played with poise, spontaneity and charm.”

“Charming and sincere” the Springfield Reporter seconded.

“Very lovely and tender,” Windsor’s Vermont Journal confirmed.

A month later, the 20-year-old up-and-comer starred alongside Sam Lloyd, a “versatile leading man” portraying an “unusual killer with some humor as well as blood curdling suspense,” according to the Herald.

The surprises weren’t confined to the script. The actress didn’t know she’d go on to marry her scene partner, move into a house across the road and act together in more than 30 years of Weston productions — occasionally alongside her husband’s brother Christopher Lloyd (of the “Back to the Future” movie trilogy) and son Sam Lloyd Jr. (of such television comedies as “Scrubs”).

“We used to take turns at intermission coming home to walk the dog,” she recently recalled. “It was magic, just magic.”

Then it all seemingly disappeared. Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Weston Playhouse in 2011. Sam Lloyd Sr. died of heart failure in 2017. More record rainfall swamped the theater again in 2023, sending the state’s oldest professional troupe to its second stage at the nearby Walker Farm.

Turning 90 this year, Barbara Lloyd has reason to introduce herself with dramatic flourish.

“When you are as old as I, my dear, and I hope that you never are,” she’ll say, “you will woefully wonder why, my dear, through your cataracts and catarrh.”

Then again, those are the opening lyrics of Lloyd’s showstopper in the Weston Theater Company revival of the Broadway musical “Pippin” — a five-minute, first-act star turn that comes on the 70th anniversary of her local debut.

Lloyd first performed the song “No Time at All” in Weston’s original production in 1987, belting out a seize-the-day number in which her elderly character urges those listening to stop fretting about the future and instead to “start living.”

“Time is fleeting, kid,” she summed up the show tune in a recent interview. “Use it right.”

But Lloyd wasn’t sure if anyone would remember — let alone want her to repeat — her past “Pippin” performance when the theater company began casting its latest version.

“Forget it,” she remembered thinking. “Nobody would take a chance on somebody my age.”

Enter Susanna Gellert, Weston’s executive artistic director, who surprised Lloyd by offering her the role of the title character’s grandmother as a birthday present this Feb. 5.

“I knew immediately that I wanted to cast Barbara,” Gellert said this month. “Few can compare when it comes to bringing heartfelt love, sincerity and a true sense of joy and light to the stage.”

‘Here is a secret I never have told’

Ask Lloyd about her life story and she rewinds back to Monticello, New York — “capital of the Borscht Belt,” she said of the Catskill resort region seen in the film “Dirty Dancing.” There, she got her start as a first grader in a classroom production of “A Christmas Carol” and was starring as “Snow White” by the time she graduated elementary school.

Lloyd was in college when a friend suggested she try out for Weston in 1954.

“It was 10 weeks and we did 10 shows,” she recalled of rehearsing one play during the day and performing another at night. “Then I went off and had another life, got married and had children.”

Returning to the playhouse 20 years later, the once “petite blonde newcomer” (per the Bellows Falls Times) reunited with that “versatile leading man,” who by then was also a Vermont House representative, Town Meeting moderator, head of municipal planning and zoning, volunteer firefighter and owner of the since-closed Weston Bowl Mill.

Marrying in 1981, Barbara and Sam Lloyd went on to perform in a host of Weston shows as varied as Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” and A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” — the latter which she considers their “signature piece.”

“Every time we do it,” she said during a 2010 tour of the show, “we bring a little more age and a little more looking back.”

A year after her husband died, Lloyd acted in her last show, a 2018 production of “Our Town.” Capping a Weston career with nearly 50 credits, she retired to volunteer positions as a member of the Farrar Park Association (known locally as the “Ladies of the Green”) as well as municipal vendor ordinance administrator (“if you want to come here with a hotdog truck, I will tell you right now, don’t even try”).

Lloyd’s comeback has required a few accommodations. The show’s lyrics call for her to sing, “I’ve known the fears of 66 years / I’ve had troubles and tears by the score / But the only thing I’d trade them for / Is 67 more.”

Weston musicians thought about substituting Lloyd’s real age, only to realize the truth would clunk up the syllable count. That’s why, in the interest of art, the 90-year-old will proclaim she’s a more melodic 86.

Lloyd’s return to long workdays (she’s scheduled for 31 performances between July 24 and Aug. 17 ) has kept her away from a flood of recent state, national and world headlines.

“With all that’s going on,” she asked a reporter, “why do you want to talk with me?”

Because of all that’s going on, he replied.

With that, the great-grandmother of two returned to rehearsing her song.

… Here is a secret I never have told

Maybe you’ll understand why

I believe if I refuse to grow old

I can stay young till I die …

“I’m in training,” Lloyd concluded of preparations for her coming run. “I’ve even given up dairy and martinis, but it’s up to you whether to put that in.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Amid a flood of bad news, a 90-year-old Vermonter finds reason to sing .