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Fast Eddy Rubin at 84
Astounding NY Theatre and Arts Critic
By: - Jun 16th, 2025Colleague and friend Edward Fast Eddy Rubin was astounding and incorrigible. He was a regular contributor to Berkshire Fine Arts. Though he enjoyed getting comped he was slow to submit reviews often just when shows were about to or already had closed. He was the leader of our pack with unflinching panache and humor. The moniker came early on when he worked for a PR firm. He was dispatched with orders "Eddy, quick go here or there and do this or that." His promptness in executing these commands identified him as Fast Eddy. This obit is written by New Orleans based critic and ATCA member Alan Smason.
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Tartuffe
Pocket Opera's Zany Production Based on the Classic Moliere Farce
By: - Jun 17th, 2025Orgon is taken in by the false piety of rapscallion Tartuffe. He wants his daughter to marry Tartuffe but arranges to make the fraudster his sole heir before the wedding occurs. Needless to say, this causes consternation and crisis to his blood family.
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Idomeneo
San Francisco Opera Brings Out the Best of Mozart's Earliest Major Opera
By: - Jun 16th, 2025Drawn from classic Greek tragedy, the King of Crete begs an indulgence from Neptune to save him from raging waters. The price is that Idomeneo is to sacrifice the first person he sees on shore. That turns out to be his son. Idomeneo deals with internal conflict throughout.
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Pioneering Photographer Bernice Abbott
Clark Art Institute Presents Her Portraits of People and Places
By: - Jun 16th, 2025he Clark Art Institute marks the 100-year anniversary of Berenice Abbott’s first photographs with an exhibition examining the relationship between her portraits of people and her “portraits” of places. Berenice Abbott (American, 1898–1991) was one of the most important American photographers of the twentieth century, known for her pioneering documentary style, unpretentious compositions, and technical innovations.
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Paris The Dishwasher Dialogues
Sleeping with Rothko
By: - Jun 15th, 2025I recall you always taking photos of yourself in these photo booths, often with staff and friends from the restaurant. Or with whoever happened to be with you at the time. Whenever we were on the metro together, changing metro lines or exiting, you would see a booth and suddenly track straight toward it. A compulsion. In hindsight, it was a bit strange, given we had access to your darkroom.
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The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie
Directed by Evan Goodchild
By: - Jun 15th, 2025With his first feature length film "The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie" Evan Goodchild has created a complex portrait of a brilliant but troubled artist who ended his life at age 64. In a New York Times obituary Roberta Smith wrote that "Mr. Gillespie had his first solo show in 1966 at the Forum Gallery and was included in several Whitney Biennials in the 1960's and 70's, but he remained an art world outsider, respected by many but enthusiastically embraced by few."
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Co-Founders
ACT's Riveting World Premiere of a Bay Area Based Hip-Hop Musical
By: - Jun 14th, 2025Esata is an ace computer coder, and Conway has a high-tech innovation that lacks code. They join forces and aspire to develop the product at an incubator in San Francisco. The narrative follows this and several other subplots in an uplifting homage to the Bay Area, and especially, a love letter to Oakland.
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The Baroness
Playhouse on Park
By: - Jun 15th, 2025This world premiere provides for a delightfully funny evening in the theater. You can always count on Jacques Lamarre to push the envelope with his humor. He is at his best with this show..
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Your Name Means Dream by José Rivera
TheaterWorks-Hartford
By: - Jun 15th, 2025Is this the future? Elderly people “cared for” by artificial intelligence humanoids?
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N/A A New Play at Barrington Stage
Timely Political Drama.
By: - Jun 12th, 2025Given the President’s assault on the arts and higher education the one act, two hander “N/A a New Play” by Mario Correa may be taken as a bold act of defiance by Barrington Stage Company. It is likely to move the Berkshires based company up a few notches on the White House enemies list.
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James Silin Musician and Farmer
Performed as Jimmie Midnight
By: - Jun 11th, 2025We met as undergraduates at Brandeis and remained connected all these years. He was my go to analyst for science and politics. Part of that was attending weekly demonstrations. He and Ann lived frugally on food that they grew. There was ongoing war with "the critters." That melancholy was heard in his singular blues.
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Something Beautiful: The Songs of Ahrens and Flaherty
Coming to Barrington Stage
By: - Jun 13th, 2025Widely regarded as one of Broadway’s most celebrated songwriting duos, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning creators of Ragtime, as well as the Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated team behind the animated feature Anastasia.
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Mud by Maria Irene Fornes
Latine Theater Lab Debuts Riveting Drama
By: - Jun 11th, 2025For its debut production, Latine Theater Lab in Ft. Lauderdale is leaning into the horror of Maria Irene Fornes's captivating drama, "Mud." In Mud, the groundbreaking Fornes deals with grim themes that seem especially urgent today.
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The Dying Gaul
Island City Stage Near Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Jun 11th, 2025Don't let the pristine set fool you in Island City Stage's piercing production of "The Dying Gaul" by Craig Lucas. People may be most familiar with Lucas from his Romantic fantasy "Prelude to a Kiss."
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David Margulies’ Play, Lunar Eclipse
Directed by Kate Whoriskey
By: - Jun 11th, 2025The brief (80-minute) play opens with George, the wonderful Reed Birney, sitting in a darkened field, sobbing. As the lights come up, we hear sounds, and soon his wife, Em, appears carrying a lawn chair and a basket of provisions – blankets, hot chocolate and more.. She has come to join him, something she hasn’t done in a long time. George loves astronomy.
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The Sage in the Green Mountains
Lessons from a Barefoot Doctor and a Seeker’s Journey
By: - Jun 06th, 2025I first encountered “Fourth Uncle on the Mountain” during a deeply formative period of my life – while living as a Daoist monk at a small temple nestled on a mountaintop in Hubei Province, China. My temple sister, Cheng Feng, and I loved this book and spent much time discussing it. She is Vietnamese and French, and felt a strong connection to Dr. Van Nguyen’s story.
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La Boheme
San Francisco Opera's Record 46th Production
By: - Jun 09th, 2025In opera's most beloved work, Rodolfo and Mimi encounter love and tragedy, while Rodolfo and his three comrades share the Bohemian life of starving artists. Replete with memorable music, gentle comedy, and the inevitable death of the lead soprano, La Boheme, continues to deservedly fill opera houses almost in a class of its own.
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More Dishwasher Dialogues
Rauschenberg, Pollock, de Kooning and ‘Lit Dé’
By: - Jun 08th, 2025During a gallery visit in the 1970s Greg scratches a cardboard piece by Rauschenberg. That evokes a discussion of the Dada, nihilist heritage of contemporary art.
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Murder on the Orient Express
Orinda Company Makes Good with Agatha Christie Gem
By: - Jun 08th, 2025The first-class carriage in the westbound train from Istanbul is filled with diverse travelers. One of them is drugged and stabbed to death. Hercule Poirot is on the scene and systematically solves the mystery.
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Guntram Performed by American Symphony Orchestra
First opera of Richard Strauss
By: - Jun 08th, 2025Leon Botstein, the ever-adventuresome conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, brought Richard Strauss's first opera, Guntram, to Carnegie Hall. This early work by Strauss showcases a prolifically productive composer whose treasured operas and symphonic works would eventually become cornerstones of concert halls worldwide.
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Fly by Night Dance Soars in New York
Charming and Funny Extension of Dance Movement
By: - Jun 08th, 2025Fly By Night Dance presented its annual New York Aerial Dance Festival at the Manhattan Movement and Arts Center. Founded by Julie Lutwick, the group is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of modern dance. This program demonstrated how storytelling can be enhanced through trapeze work, live music, and the recitation of poignant historic poems.
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Harvey Milk Reimagined
Opera Parallele Co-Commission of Revision Hits the Mark
By: - Jun 02nd, 2025Harvey Milk became the first elected openly gay city official in the United States. Along with the notoriety, he became an icon and a victim of assassination. His story is told in a gripping revision of Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie's 1995 opera.
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From The Dishwasher Dialogues
Leroy Haynes, Charles Bukowski and Simone De Beauvoir
By: - Jun 01st, 2025Leroy’s silent advice was always there, don’t get too comfy, son, life’s tough and it’s not going to get easier. Unlike Manhattan where I had previously lived, Paris, was not menacing. Never did I sense that there were places or quartiers where I shouldn’t venture.
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Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground
Launches Summer Season at Barrington Stage
By: - Jun 04th, 2025A panel of historians, in the New York Time Magazine, have positioned Dwight D. Eisenhower at 22. That’s one behind Andrew Johnson and staring up at Chester A. Arthur. It's 1962 and he's writing his memoir. A projection at the end of the compelling one man play by Richard Hellensen, starring Tony winner, John Rubenstein, has him rising in periodic polls to #5 in 2023.
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Ragtime at Goodspeed
Not To Be Missed
By: - Jun 01st, 2025A strength of this production is the outstanding performances of the leading characters, Michael Wordly as Coalhouse Walker, Mami Parris as Mother, and David R Gordon as Tateh; each truly embodies the role and has the vocal chops to handle the music.
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