Barrington Stage Company

What happens when a woman can't stand her best friend's finance but shags him anyway? It's only sex she reasons and I was drunk. That's about as deep as it gets in a millenial comedy Engagements by Lucy Teitler having a world premiere at Barrington Stage Company in Lenox.

For vintage screwball comedy the John Guare rewrite of His Girl Friday, directed for Barrington Stage by Julliane Boyd, is just awesomely hilarious. It stars Christpher Innvar as the veteran editor and master manipulator Walter Burns, and the wonderful Jane Pfitsch as his ex and star reporter Hildy Johnson. This is the side splitting hit of the Berkshire season,.

The renowned playwright John Guare was in Pittsfield recently for the first days of rehearsal of his play His Girl Friday. It is being directed by Julianne Boyd for Barrington Stage Company. He and others in the production met with the media for a lively give and take.

Back in January Julianne Boyd announced to the media how she had always wanted to present a play by an American master, Neil Simon. She chose his Pulitzer and Tony winning Lost in Yonkers a bitter sweet saga of a poor immigrant Jewish family under the thumb of a mean and brutal matriarch. Director Jenn Thompson earned a Drama Desk nomination for a prior production of the play which she has now staged brilliantly in the Berkshires.

The title Shining City is a Bliblical reference that "A town built on a hill cannot be hidden." But there is much that is obscure and repressed in this drama by the Irish playwright Conor McPherson.

When Jeff McCarthy brings down the house with an iconic barnburner The Impossible Dream it is richly evident that the fifty-year-old musical Man of La Mancha still packs a whallop that can blow the socks off of an audience. This Barrington Stage production that launches the Mainstage of Barrington Stage in Pittsfield is the benchmark hit of the still new 2015 Berkshire theatre season. It is doubtful that any actor will match or surpass his performance as the male lead in a musical.

With a striking resemblance to the Civil War General Benjamin Butler the hilarious performance by David Schramm in "Butler" launches the Berkshire season at Barrington Stage Company. Based on actual characters and events the playwright, Richard Strand, stretches the facts to create an evening of outrageous comedy.

Now in his final weeks as director of the Clark Art Institute Michael Conforti hosted a media event promoting a blockbuster season for Northern Berkshire County. There were presentations by Joe Thompson for Mass MoCA, Tina Olsen for the Williams College Museum of Art, and Mandy Greenfield for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Notably absent from the media event were North Adams based arts presenters Downstreet, The Eclipse Mill Gallery, The Rudd Museum of Art and the fall annual Williamstown Film Festival.

Three productions developed in the Berkshires are among the nominees for the 2015 Tony Awards. Williamstown Theatre Festival is represented by two production Elephant Man and The Visit which were presented on the watch of former artistic director Jenny Gersten. Barrington Stage Company is recognized for its musical On the Town,

Because of the Official Secrets Act it would be decades before the efforts of 10,000 at top secret Bletchley Park would be revealed. Primarily through the genius of the brilliant, tormented Alan Turning they succeeded in cracking the seemingly impossible 159 million daily variations of the Enigma code machine. Convicted of Gross Indecency Turing was alleged to take his life after a year of court imposed chemical castration.

Barrington Stage Company, has announced casting for the 10-minute plays for the 4th Annual 10X10 New Play Festival, with performances February 12 through March 1, as part of the 2015 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival.

On a miserable January day the media gathered for lunch on stage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Artistic director Julianne Boyd announced programming for the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage. There are still slots to fill on the Mark St. Germain second stage. Once that is complete Boyd will move on to schedule the cabaret largely based on who is available for the 99 seat basement venue. The company will again collaborate with the Berkshire Museum to present a youth oriented production.

The 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival returns to downtown Pittsfield for the fourth year from February 12-22, 2014, and features music, theatre, dance, film, visual art, spoken word, comedy and more, including BSC’s 10X10 New Play Festival. Directors for the 10X10 New Play Festival are BSC Artistic Director Julianne Boyd and Artistic Associate and Director of New Play Development Stephanie Yankwitt.

Cleaning up toxic waste from the Housatonic River is a hot button issue for the Berkshires. Environmental pollution and efforts to repress that threat to the local economy is the focus of a powerful production of the Ibsen/ Miller play An Enemy of the People at Barrington Stage Company through October 19.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC),announced today two of its 2015 Boyd-Quinson Mainstage productions – Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers and Man of La Mancha.

In 2011 James Brochu appeared at Barrington Stage in the one man show Zero Hour. He has returned with another show that he has written and stars in Character Man. The great Mostel is but one of a plethora of great actors featured in a rich and colorful evening of songs and anecdotes from a life in theatre.

From the first of May through the end of August we posted 86 theatre articles by a diverse staff of contributors. This overview is limited to the four major Berkshire companies: Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Theatre Group, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Group. Our summary is based on reviewing most but not all of the 2014 Berkshire Summer Season.

Dancing Lessons is the ninth play and eighth world permiere by Mark St. Germain at Barrington Stage Company. As a signifier of their long standing relationship the new play is directed by Julianne Boyd the founder of the company. In recent years his plays have gone on to successful tours of regional companies. Starring the astonishing John Cariani with a stunning dancing partner in Paige Davis this play has the potential to be on the road for years.

Honoring his many contributions The Mark St. Germain Stage was named for him by Pittsfield's Barrington Stage Company. A number of his best known works- Freud's Last Sessions, Best of Enemies, Dr. Ruth- have premiered for the company of artistic director, Julianne Boyd. This week the latest Dancing Lessons will open. In what has become an annual ritual we met at Dottie's in Pittsfield for breakfast to discuss this new work as well as the challenges of a life in theatre.

Set in Cuba during the last gasp of the Batista regime a new musical for Barrington Stage company is a complicated balancing act between Jewish history and mythology and Cuba's Santaria tradition during the Revolution. The Golem of Havana mixes musical mataphors between Eurpoean Klezmer and Cuban Salsa

As a member of the top secret team of 10,000 at Bletchley Park Alan Turning was key to the effort to Breaking the Code of the German enigma apparatus. With endless daily permutations it was used to send orders to the maurading U Boat fleets decimating allied shipping. In the role of a lifetime Mark H. Dold has totally inhabited the persona of the complex and tormented individual whom Churchill credited with shortening and ending the war. Time Magazine named Turing among the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. At Barrington Stage until August 2.

If you closed your eyes for the drive up to the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, California, and then opened them when you arrived at Weill Hall, you might think you were at Tanglewood. This hall is modeled after Ozawa Hall in Lenox. Judy Collins, regal and still going strong at 75, packed the Sonoma Music Center.

Una Giornata Particolare was a 1977 Italian movie which earned two Academy Award nominations. It has been adapted for the stage as Working on a Special Day in a performance acted and directed by the Mexican couple of Ana Graham and Antonio Vega. The charming and absorbing one act play inventively explores the boundaries between illusion and theatrical reality.

Kiss Me Kate was Cole Porter's biggest hit and the only one of his shows to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award presented for Best Musical. It is being given a stunning revival at Barrington Stage Company in a lavish production celebrating its 20th anniversary. With all of that iconic music and stunning choreography this is a fabulous way to launch the season in the Berkshires.

At mid career Emmy winner Marg Helgenberger is making the transition from TV to stage in the Berkshires. She is galvanic in Sharr White's complex and riveting The Other Place at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. She would like to take this hit production back home to LA.