Barrington Stage Company has assembled a dream team for the world premiere of The Royal Family of Broadway. It is a musical makeover of the 1927 play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. When word gets out about the first smash hit of the Berkshire season tickets may be hard to come by between now and July 7. This production was home grown by Barrington's Musical Theatre Lab.

Secret Life of Humans at 59E59 Theaters is a thoroughly engaging, funny and thoughtful evening of theater. David Byrne and Kate Stanley have asked in a fresh style: Can we humans survive?

It was a picture perfect Sunday afternoon when we took a long and winding drive to the 3,491 foot summit of Mt. Greylock. It's rustic Bascom Lodge was constructed as a WPA project in the 1930s. It fell into neglect but was renovated and the road repaired in 2009. There are dorm and private rooms for hikers. In season three meals a day are served and dinner on weekends is generally sold out. There are free events on the porch and we attended a mashup organized by Berkshire Playwrights Lab. At 7 PM we joined the family style dinner. For spectacuar views and a sense of adventure it's a summe treat that's hard to beat.

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge has just launched “Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell and the Narrative Tradition.” During a recent press preview we enjoyed an unencumbered view of the scholarly and superbly installed exhibition. Founding director, Laurie Norton Moffatt, discussed what the Rockwell legacy means in light of the controversy of the sale of two of his works by the Berkshire Museum. One of those works "Shuffleton's Barber Shop" was acquired by George Lucas who is loaning it to the Norman Rockwell Museum for the next 18 months.

Florian Zeller’s latest play, a tragic/comedy with a translation from multi-award winning Tony and Oscar playwright/translator Christopher Hampton, practically guarantee’s one an evening of stimulating quality theatre. Hampton does all the translations for French/Iranian playwright Yasmina Reza of “Art” and “God of Carnage” fame, as well as Zeller’s plays.

In their current repertory season, Repertorio Espagnol is presenting the two hander, El Credito by Jordi Galeran. We meet a loan officer who can’t say yes and a clever borrower with no assets. No one has heard Polonius’ advice: neither a borrower or a lender be. The setup is classic.

City Theatre's Summer Shorts is in its 23rd year of entertaining southeast Florida audiences This year's line-up is diverse. A pleasantly surprisingly, unseasonal "Short" opens this year's festival

Summering in Annisquam Martin Mugar, like the Ipswich based author, John Updike, became aware of distinct difference of class and culture. Thre were the easy, self confident debutantes who shopped at the A&P in their bathing suits. And the townies, like Sam, who unnoticed lusted for them. Recently, Mugar was reminded and inspired by watching the author crossing a street ages ago. Here he spins the yarn of old.

Until recently the Museum of Fine Arts has neglected artists of Jewish heritage known as The Boston Expressionists. There were a handful of works that were burried in storage. Major works by Hyman Bloom and Karl Zerbe were included in a gift from Saundra B. Lane and William H. Lane. The museum is planning a major exhibition and catalogue for Bloom. It is likely that there will be other projects and publications. There are no current plans for showing or collecting works by Zerbe and Jack Levine.

In Mies Julie at Victory Gardens Theater, playwright Yaël Farber translates the relationship between a privileged young woman and a servant from Midsummers Eve in Sweden to the Karoo, South Africa, on Freedom Day in 2012, the day commemorating the end of apartheid.

Huang Ruo in music and David Henry Hwang in words ask: What will you do to become American? What will you endure? In a seamless wrought tale of a first generation Chinese American from Chinatown, we watch the world rect to a young man's wish. It is a horrifying story whose conseuqences we have only begun to grapple with. Huang Ruo and Hwang make great opera out of the story.

The Kansas City Symphony is a superb group pf superb artists, who make their home in one the of the performance treasures of America Like Dallas and other smaller cities across the country, Kansas City community leaders decided to spiff up its arts’ presence, A decade ago they dtermined to build a new home for its Symphony Orchestra and somewhat larger hall for events on tour.

There is an upcoming concert by Christopher Janney, who will present with fellow dancer and musicians works that will again push boundaries. The event will occur on June 8 at the Boston University Dance Theater.

Until a few years ago the vast Simmons Furniture Store anchored the Park Street business area of downtown Adams. The town has improved curbside cosmetics. Now that business has been revitalized as Real Eyes Gallery with two large spaces. One featuers an arts and crafts store while the other displays works by former Met Opera scene painter, Bill Riley. He and his wife Francine Anne Riley are now gallerists as well as continuing as arts activists and community catalysts.

Trap Door Theatre’s production of Mark Brownell’s Monsieur d’Eon Is a Woman, directed by Nicole Wiesner, is a striking example of the company’s highly stylized, choreographed, madcap productions. Eleven performers are in constant motion.

Seniors are now living longer, healthier and better lives. Add to that little blue pills and it's not just kids who are hooking up. Morning After Grace by Carey Crim explores what happens when the old lady you wake up is just that.

Based on Mary Rogers’ 1972 novel of the same name, Freaky Friday’s popularity is validated by the three film versions that have appeared, with each variant tweeking the storyline. This is the first stage musical effort, and award winning playwright Bridget Carpenter’s adaptation is well suited to the theater with integrated subplots and laugh lines throughout. Tom Kitt’s music is tuneful and bouncy in keeping with the musical theater pop idiom, while Brian Yorkey’s lyrics consistently drive the plot and are full of insight and humor.

“Disobedience” is a mesmerizing, interior, fascinating, and affecting screenplay that carefully structures the movie to squeeze maximum emotional impact from its two stars, which it does in spades. It’s a bold and daring film even by today’s standards.

Brokeback Mountain finally arrives at New York City Opera. The company originally commissioned the piece over a decade ago. It is a powerul and moving work.

Fully clothed in an elegant summer suit, MASS MoCA director, Joe Thompson, during the opening of “A Cold Hole" by the artist Taryn Simon, jumped into her icy installation. That was truly shocking but what happened next is even more of a hoot.

Former MIT/CAVS Fellow, Ellen Kozak, and composer Scott D. Miller are presenting a 4-Channel Video Installation at the Hudson River Museum until September 9. The summer exhibition also includes monumental abstract drawings by Christine Hiebert as well as museum owned etchings that are titled: Donald Judd: Variations on a Theme.

Arts leaders and the media met at Shakespeare & Company to hear good news about state and federal funding. With manufacturing long gone from the region cultural tourism is the major industry. The arts season attracts more than 400,000 visitors and generates 4,000 plus jobs. Congressman Richard Neal announced $348,000 in NEA funding for the Berkshires. The federal funding cycle provides $900,700 to the Massachusetts Cultural Council and $1,092,400 to the New England Foundation for the Arts to benefit cultural groups across the state. He reported that the NEA this year got an increase of $3 million for a total of $152,849,000.

Love Never Dies, the sequel written by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music), Glenn Slater (lyrics) and Ben Elton (book) is based on the novel The Phantom in Manhattan. Of these, only Webber was involved in the original Phantom. It runs at the Bushnell, in Hartford, Conn. through Sunday, June 3

Exquisita Agonía at Repertorio Espanol is a tour de force take on modern science mixed with the age old questions about who we are and what we leave behind when we die. Director Jose Zayas has provided a perfect rhythm to the two-act piece by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

The Album focuses on little-known collection of photographs of Nazis partying near Aushwitz.A play by Moisés Kaufman, of Tectonic Theater Project fame, is in development. South Florida audiences are seeing snippets of this new play, running for four performances.