The Santa Fe Orchestra under Harry Bicket charges in the introduction to Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet with a dark gusto. On stage, the Capulets in blue sword fight with the Montagus in red. We quickly cut to the choral summation of the famous tale of ill-fated lover who pave the way to peace among naturally-born enemies.

Since its London premiere in 2010 Tribes, an award winning drama by Nina Raine, opened Off Broadway and has since been produced by major regional companies. It is being directed at Barrington Stage Company by Jenn Thompson

More than a dance company the appearance by Flexn, with its related panels and talk back, proved to be an aesthetic and political movment illustrating through inventive dance why Black Lives Matter.

Annie Golden broke out with Hair in 1979. As she sings in a sure to be standard the actress is a "Woman of a Certain Age." She plays herself in a world premiere of Broadway Bounty Hunters by Joe Iconis at Barrington Stage Company. This is a fun musical that you will want to see at least twice. They just don't make them like this anymore.

Critical reception has been generally mixed. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the flick 3 and one-half stars out of a possible four. I think he was very generous.

“Café Society” written and directed by Allen, once again, takes us on a nostalgic journey backward in time to the 1930s. Gorgeously photographed by Academy Award- winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro who makes the New York romantic sequences a picture-perfect post card truly ‘made for a boy and a girl’, as the lyrics say in Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers’ iconic song tribute to the Big Apple in “I’ll Take Manhattan”.

With the third book of poetry by Charles Giuliano, Ultra Cosmic Gonzology, again the essayist is Robert Henriquez. The former CBS News producer has probed deeply into aspects of the avant-garde and places the development of gonzo poetry into a larger historical and literary context. The new book will be launched with a reading at Gloucester Writers Center on August 31.

Mid summer, since 1985, we anticipate the annual issue of Provincetown Arts. The current magazine features whimsical works by the figurative fantasy painter Tabitha Vevers.

“Love! Valour! Compassion!” is a character-driven, relatable, touching and terribly timely work with just a smidgen of sentimentality. The play, which will cause you to laugh one moment and cry the next, a la Neil Simon, vividly captures the fears, hopes, heartbreaks, tension and pride of a group of eight gay men in the summer of 1995.

Barry Humphries' Weimar Cabaret focuses on the degenerate (according to the Nazis) music of Berlin's Weimar Republic of the 1920s-30s. Humphries presents and performs this music with the talented international cabaret performer, Meow Meow, and with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, led by its artistic director and violinist, Richard Tognetti. Together, these talents delivered a wonderfully done, touching and mesmerizing performance at Tanglewood's Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, MA last night.

John Williams returned to the stage at Tanglewood for 'Film Night', an evening where his scores, especially, 'Star Wars' gets flight from this renowned 84 year old iconic composer/conductor.

As news rooms and journals have shrunk or disappeared there are ever fewer resurces for established arts writers. In Boston William Marx has established the respected and ever expanding site The Arts Fuse. One of the sixty contributors, film critic Gerald Peary, wrote a memo to his colleagues. We have published an excerpt. We urge our readers to link to and discover this diverse and informative arts site.

Inon Barnatan is a premier pianist who is game to offer music in different venues. From Washington Irving High School to Poisson Rouge and every pocket of the Lincoln Center campus, he has engaged audiences in his art with a brilliant humility that stuns. His creation of a Baroque Suite with short dance pieces from Bach to Barber was a magical moment in the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse.

What are the options when patients opt to end treatment for devastating, excruciatingly painful terminal illnesses? With astonishing performances by the renowned actors Alfred Molina and Jane Kaczmarek the issues are explored in And No More Shall We Part by Tom Holloway at Williamstown Theatre Festval.

Located in the hamlet of Housatonic, is Pleasant & Main, a restaurant with charm, character and wonderful food at reasonable prices.

Based on last year's collaboration with Toshi Reagon's band Big Lovely yesterday's performance of Dorrance Dance was, for us, the most anticipated of the Jacob's Pillow season. Michelle Dorrance is celebrated for pushing the limits of the indigenous, vernacular art form of tap dancing. Collaborating with the musician and inventor Nicholas Van Young there seemed too much emphasis on sound at the sacrifice of dance.

A love story set against the backdrop of quantum physics. Brilliantly written and superbly acted, Kate Baldwin and Graham Rowat succeed in hitting the high and low notes of their characters' lives, moving seamlessly from one universe to another, and bringing the audience along with them.

For the anti-gentrification critics, urban deterioration should be left the way it is rather than reverse it through the introduction of art galleries, performance spaces, work/live lofts, and museums. This is an issue wrapped in controversy that underscores progress while perhaps marginalizing impoverished residents and pioneering artists. It is hard to determine if everyone is right or everyone is wrong.

Despite its title, Vern Thiessen’s play is the story of Fritz Haber (Chris Saunders), a German Jewish chemist who made important discoveries, one of which won him the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. That discovery—which synthesized ammonia for use in fertilizers and explosives — also became the chlorine gas that killed thousands of soldiers on both sides in World War I. In particular, it was the poison gas used in the 1915 Battle of Ypres, with 100,000 casualties.

Alice Austen is well-known to residents of Staten Island, where her family home, Clear Comfort was perched on a hill over looking the New York harbor. Like Vivien Maier her story attracts the attention now that it did not in her own lifetime.

In a traditional production of “Midsummer,” the setting of law and order is the palace of Duke Theseus. In this production, that setting becomes Hermia’s house and the nearby school.

Eighteen years ago Cellist Yo Yo Ma and a core of global musicians formed Silk Road Ensemble. Yet again their appearance was a musical treat and highlight of the Tanglewood season.

Tony and Pulitzer winning Wendy Wasserstein, who died ten years ago at 55, was among the most successful and admired playwrights of her generation. One of her lesser Broadway plays, An American Daughter, is being revived at Williamstown Theatre Festival. It features a strong woman and candidate for high office who, because of a gaffe on camera, is being crucified by the media. Does this sound familiar?

At Lincoln Center Paavo Järvi conducted the Mostly Mozart Orchestra softly yet he carried a big baton, from La Sidone which Arvo Part composed for the opening of the Olympics in Turin Italy. We are reminded that this year’s Olympics opened on the very day of this concert.

The play, “Stalking the Bogeyman,” by David Holthouse illustrates to what extent silence can aggravate, anger and agonize. The piece is a gripping, thought-provoking, bold theatrical work running through Aug. 28 in a riveting Southeastern premiere production by GableStage in Coral Gables, Florida.