The professional, non-profit, regional Slow Burn Theatre Company is staging a rousing production of A Christmas Story: The Musical. The Ft. Lauderdale company's production runs through Dec, 29. A top-notch cast delivers as triple threats.

Kate Hamill, playwright of Long Wharf’s current production Pride and Prejudice has created somewhat of a cottage industry adapting famous 19th century novels by Austen and Thackeray though now she has moved onto 19th century American novels. Her approach will either delight or infuriate you.

Everything is Super Great is a touching and relatable comic-drama. Stephen Brown's new play is receiving a co-world premiere production at Florida Atlantic University's professional company, Theatre Lab. The production runs through Sunday and features strong acting. The play might remind some of Terrence McNally, with its focus on themes such as the power of art and the importance of human connection.

Lucy Shelton, the legendary soprano, did not let us forget. If we don't live in the action and passions of our musical times, we risk not having lived at all. Igor Stravinsky vocalise, with no words and only sung notes, introduced the evening.

Separately at Jewish Settlement houses Jack Levine and Hyman Bloom studied drawing with Harold Zimmerman. In 1929, when Levine was 14, they were instructed at the Fogg Art Museum by Harvard professor, Denman Ross. By the late 1930s, with Karl Zerbe, they gained national attention as Boston Expressionists. After a lapse of decades, through February, Bloom is featured in "Hyman Bloom Matters of Life and Death." The MFA has never given Levine the time of day. In 1986, while making a film with David and Nancy Sutherland, I interviewed Levine.

Der Freischutz is everything an 1821 opera should be in a present day performance. The brilliant conception by Louisa Proske, credited with the adaptation and direction, surrounds us from the moment with enter the theater. The circle in the square encompasses the audience. Next to the home of Agathe at one point in the circle is a looming rock which is part of the Wolf Canyon. The orchestra is inside the circle under one section of audience. In the largest seating area, a platform extends. The singing actors use all these spaces. They come very close to us at time, ignoring our presence, but allowing us to see into their souls. Immersion hardly describes what the production offers.

An active patron of New York music associations, Joe Rosen is a first-rate amateur clarinetist who opens his home to salons. Here young musicians accompany him in chamber music pieces. Recently he changed his method of operation. Instead of transposing one string instrument's part for clarinet, he is performing quintets specifically written for the instrument. The clarinet's mellow, earthy timbre is revealed.

Dep Kirkland asks us to inhabit the legal world and fathom truth from within the walls of a well appointed law office. The leather sofa, floor-to-ceiling bookcase, long wooden table and oak desk with curtained view of the city, act as silent signifiers.

The Crypt Session as imagined and realized by Death of Classical point the way to music’s lifefulness going forward. New, young audiences wait for months to get a ticket to one of these events. Tickets sell out moments after events like this Salon Séance are announced. Andrew Ousley, whose creation Crypt Sessions and The Catacombs assures us that more events in new locations are coming. A cave is promised in the future.

The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton is mesmerizing folks with its production of The Music Man. This mounting features vivacious dancing, credible, energetic performances and solid design. The show runs through Dec. 28 and features the largest cast in The Wick's history. Broadway actor John Tartaglia stars as "Professor" Harold Hill.

The anchor leg of a stunning season for Real Eyes Gallery in Adams, Massachusetts features “Galen Cheney: Mining Memory” through December 29.

Opera San José’s production is specifically designed to be family friendly. The opera is sung in English and the supertitles are given in pretty basic vocabulary. Yet, only 15% of the audience is children, so adults, do feel welcomed. It is a quality production, beautifully staged and sung, that will satisfy audiences of all ages and levels of opera understanding.

Lucy Dhegrae, a superb mezzo soprano, lost her singing voice after an assault. In finding her singing voice again, she follows the sounds of a human from the first grunts and breaths to the glorious free sounds of song. Dhegrae is National Sawdust's Artist-in-Residence.

Tootsie features a Tony-winning performance by actor Santino Fontana. The musical adaptation of the popular 1982 film continues through Jan. 5. The stage show is a big, splashy and funny musical comedy.

Inducing current audiences to listen to Wagner operas is difficult. Ninety minutes seems to perfect time slot for young people. Wagner's operas can last for six hours. Can they be cut? Probably not without violating their essence. Producing an Act in concert form makes sense. The White Light Festival presented a spectacular concert based on Act II of Tristan and Isolde.

What surprises about Bull in a China Shop is the tone that the playwright Bryna Turner adopts, despite the fact that it is a biographical sketch focused on serious events

Boston Lyric Opera has once again successfully adapted and tackled politically and socially topical subjects in “Fellow Travelers”, an opera by Gregory Spears with Libretto by Greg Pierce. It is based on the best-selling novel by Thomas Mallon.

Ain’t Too Proud could not exist without high energy performances of the Temptations songs, and they are so authentic, you’d think you’re seeing the actual group. The mix of voices backed by an 18-piece orchestra along with Sergio Trujillo’s exciting choreography hit the mark.

Larry Neumann Jr. is known as one of Chicago’s finest character actors. I have seen him in a wide variety of roles in the 30-plus years I’ve been a Chicago theatergoer and critic. We met at a coffee shop on Irving Park Road near his rehearsal location. It was fun to get reacquainted with Larry and talk about this new role and his career.

Manon Lescaut holds some curious distinctions within the Puccini canon. Chronologically, the third of his nine full-length operas, the first two were failures. This was his only opera lauded at its conception by critics and audiences alike.

The Lincoln Center White Lights Festival is presenting DruidShakespeare: Richard III, directed by the inimitable Garry Hynes. This play is odd for Shakespeare, who later would carefully etch the development of each character. Here we immediately meet Richard. Hynes has Aaron Monaghan rise from the grave into which all, or rather most of the people he murders or sets up for death, get dumped over the course of the evening.

Many artists and friends attended the opening of my exhbition "Then and Now: Analog to Digital" at Real Eyes Gallery in Adams, Mass. For the occasion I wore my Senegal robes. That reflected the exotic nature of the work. Music was performed on electric sitar and percussion by Nana Simopoulos and Caryn Heilman. There were lively dialogues about the work anticipating an artist's talk on Saturday, November 23 at 4 PM.

The artist Martin Mugar has posted a number of provocactive think pieces to this site. His self published book Drawing and Painting provides lesson plans for progressive faculty and students. It distills what he learned earning an MFA degree at Yale followed by decades of teaching. Like all of his writing the book is challengings and insightful.

Inside common experiences, one financial and the other political, are revealed in a broad slapstick comedy, Quiet Enjoyment and Duck, darkly humorous explorations of Snowden's dilemma and ours.

In The Crypt, composer and performing artists collaborate. Selections of a talented impresario invite artists and audience to enter special moments together. Sounds reverberate from stone as candles cast warm light. Moments nourish the soul to spread and re-capture the precious environment for which composer John Luther Adams has always fought. Adams now focuses on the power of music to transform. In the bows and string of the Jack Quartet, it does.