Berkshire Theatre Group

Once again, Pittsfield-based Barrington Stage Company (BSC) was the big winner of the evening with their productions of Next to Normal, La Cage Aux Folles, Primary Trust, and Boeing, Boeing taking home many top prizes. The Mac-Haydn Theatre, in Chatham, NY, tied with BSC artists in the categories of Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Direction of a Musical, and with artists from the Berkshire Theatre Festival for Outstanding Sound Design.

Regarded as the most popular of McPherson's, plays a generation on The Weir is being given an intimate, lively production, directed by Eric Hill. Its trope, locals gathered in a small pub in a remote village verges on a cliché of Irish culture. The one act play conflates copious amounts of “small” shots of whiskey accompanied by pints of Harp or Guinness. As we snidely learn the real men drink stout.

Pipe Dream is an obscure, rarely produced musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based on novels by John Steinbeck. Berkshire Theatre Group is making a strong and risky case for why we should take another look at a musical with a flawed book but richly compelling music.

Gerry McIntyre has directed and choreographed a flawless production of Mel Brooks’ hilarious musical Young Frankenstein. On opening night, it rocked a full house at the Colonial Theatre, where it will be fun, fun, fun until July 21.

In producing a play that is two years older than I am director, David Auburn, has been faithful to the text but made changes, the de rigeur legerdemain that contemporizes the production. There has been gender and race switching with mixed results. Those role changes range from muddled and gratuitous to truly brilliant and inspired. It’s a long evening in three acts that lags as well as has its brilliant and inspired moments.

In the middle of the night Leo arrived at his grandmother's Greenwich Village apartment. His bike trip started in Seattle. Initially his request to crash with Vera for a couple of days turns into a month. This award winning play by Amy Herzog is on stage at Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.

With a book by Harvey Fierstein (Broadway: Kinky Boots, Torch Song Trilogy) and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman (Broadway: Hello, Dolly!, Mame), La Cage aux Folles is based on the play by Jean Poirot that also inspired the 1978 French film of the same name and its American remake, The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.

Several categories saw ties this year, including the top honors for Outstanding Musical Production and . Barrington Stage Company’s production of Cabaret and the Sharon Playhouse production of Something Rotten shared the musical award. Shakespeare & Company’s production of August Wilson’s Fences shared the top play production honors with Bridge Street Theatre’s East of Berlin.

During the 1920s, when Niels Bohr earned a Nobel Prize in physics, he collaborated as father and son with Werner Heisenberg. In 1926, with an appointment as chair to the University of Leipzig, he became Germany's youngest full professor. In 1941, with great effort, he returned to visit Bohr in Copenhagen. What transpired between them is unknown but is the content of the remarkable play Copenhagen now on stage at Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge.

On Cedar Street is an intimate, compact musical compressed into one long act on a busy, cluttered set. On Cedar Street which entails the late life romance of widow and widower in rural Colorado is having its world premiere at the Unicorn Theatre of Berkshire Theatre Group.

Straw hat is old hat. Summer once meant shows performed in actual barns by talented and young kids. Or tours led by well-known movie and TV stars whose popularity had diminished. Not anymore.

During raucous encores Million Dollar Quartet blasted the audience up out of their seats at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. By popular demand Berkshire Theater Group revises its prior production at the smaller Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.

The taut, austere, information crammed, one act play “Photo 51” rights a wrong. It dramatizes the true life story of the unaccredited role played by Rosalind Franklin (Rebecca Brooksher) in the discovery of the double helix pattern in DNA.

Treat Williams, the actor known for his roles in the movies “Hair” and “Deep Rising” and the TV show “Everwood,” has died. He was 71. A  S.U.V. crashed into his motorcycle in Dorset, Vt. He was 71. We spoke with him in 2013 following a performance as King Henry in “Lion in Winter.”

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) announces full casting for the world premiere of Mark St. Germain’s new play The Happiest Man on Earth (May 24-June 17) and a new production of the legendary Kander & Ebb musical Cabaret (June 14-July 8).

The hit Broadway jukebox musical “Million Dollar Quartet” Book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux. Original concept and direction by Floyd Mutrux; inspired by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins launches the official Berkshire Theatre Group season on June 29. It's the main event of the season at the Colonial Theatre. While the Main Stage continues renovation the rest of the season is programmed for the Unicorn in Stockbridge.

Top honors at the Berkies were Outstanding Musical Production to Barrington Stage Company for their production of A Little Night Music. Barrington Stage shared the Outstanding Play Production award with Bridge Street Theatre, for productions of Waiting for Godot and A Long Day’s Journey Into Night respectively.

The purpose of the BTCA and the Berkshire Theatre Awards is to promote and celebrate the quality and diversity of theatre in the region. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on the evening of November 14 at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield.

Leapin Lizards! Berkshire Theatre Group has mounted Seascape Edward Albee's absurdist answer to Beckett's masterpiece, Waiting for Godot. Albee, one of America's leading playwrights won a Pulitizer for it (one of three) but it was a flop with critics and audiences. The Broadway run ended after just 65 performances. Hit or miss you can draw your own conclusions based on the production directed by Eric Hill.

We happened to be in Dublin for Halloween. In the library of Trinity College there was a special exhibition in honor of Bram Stoker the author of Dracula. The story of the vampire is so familiar that there are no surprises in the hilarious and outrageous production by Berkshire Theatre Group at its Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. It was a great evening of summer fun.

The playwright, Tara L. Wilson Noth, has taken on a lot as the program notes state: Racism, incarceration, justice, and relationships. There can be turmoil trying to follow and resolve this mélange of subplots.

Participating cultural organizations include Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Berkshire International Film Festival, Berkshire Theatre Group, Community Access to the Arts, The Clark, Hancock Shaker Village, Jacob’s Pillow, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, MASS MoCA, The Mount, Norman Rockwell Museum, Shakespeare & Company, The Trustees and Williamstown Theatre Festival. 

The true story of six-time world champion prizefighter Emile Griffith is told in Boston Lyric Opera’s (BLO) new production of Champion: An Opera in Jazz by Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard (Fire Shut Up in My Bones), with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer.

On March 6, the Black Legacy Project will make its world premiere at  the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. The evening includes a preview screening of the documentary short about the Project produced by OUTPOST, a concert, and a community conversation. Wanda Houston, Billy Keane, Gina Coleman, Matt Cusson, Rufus Jones, Annie Guthrie, Diego Mongue, and Eric Reinhardt are just some of the performers.

The big winners of the Berkies were A Crossing: A Dance Musical, presented by Barrington Stage Company, which won the Sally and Robert Sugarman Award for a World Premier of a New Work as well as many acting and design awards, and Nina Simone: Four Women, presented by the Berkshire Theatre Group.