Under the deft direction of Brian Kulick, this ‘Macbeth’ production has been updated to a visual setting more or less around the time of World War I. However, the language, spirit, and the murderous intrigues that Shakespeare loved so dearly are still present. It’s a clever way to update the core story that is familiar to all without sacrificing any dramatic elements or story points as conceived by the Bard.

On the occasion of the national gathering of the American Theatre Critics Associaton our correspondent visited the City of Brotherly Love. In addition to theatre she allowed time to explore other attractions.

A great production of Merchant of Venice requires inspired casting. The Tina Packer production has a truly magnficent Shylock in company member Jonathan Epstein taking on the complex and demanding role for the fifth time. It is his second with Packer. This version also has a first rate Portia in Tamara Hickey and suitably apathetic and melancholy Antonio played with nuance by John Hadden. It was Packer's intent to take the gloves off in attacking issues of race, religion, gender, homosexuality and racism.

Whatever mood you are in, Zonin research has designed a Prosecco that fits your 'state of mind'

A lot of theatre this season is feeding us heavy duty, pc, brain food. But for pure fun release and esape the best show in the Berkshires, Little Shop of Horrors, is presenting a hilarious musical comedy about a man eating plant which is chewing the scenery and devouring audiences at the Colonial Theatre.

After three weeks of pop concerts drawing an audience of some 100,000 opening night of official Tanglewood 2016 seemed more like mid season.

Nine years ago the Montreal born choreographer Eric Gauthier started a company with six dancers. The Stuttagart based group is performing with week with 16 international dancers. It is thriving with the generous support of Mercedes and Porsche which manufacture luxury cars in that industrial city.

Scale is an important factor in how we respond to objects, art and theatre. Using the small frame of a puppet theatre, Torry Bend tells the story of a man who distributes paper hats on the Chicago Transit system. We could be anywhere in this intriguing take on urban life.

Fifty years ago, Olana was saved from the brink of destruction. The Olana Partnership is celebrating the past fifty years of art and style with a lawn party

Puck, the 19th century literary-political-humor magazine, was revolutionary in ridiculing everything about Gilded Age society through cartoons created by gifted artists of the period. With a Wink and a Nod: Cartoonists of the Gilded Age is the new exhibit from Puck magazine on view at the Driehaus Museum, a magnificent 19th century mansion just off Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Since 1974, James Taylor, known as 'JT' performed some 25 times at Tanglewood. He is obviously the most revered popular artist performer to grace the grounds of this historic music center.

The Gift Theatre’s eloquent new production of The Grapes of Wrath is a story of Dust Bowl migrants during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it bears witness to many of the personal tragedies of today’s ongoing Great Recession.

In the quid pro quo of museum trades, through October 10, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown is hosting “Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes From the Prado.” This includes 28 paintings by primarily Italian, Flemish, and Spanish masters of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Bob Dylan brought his current act, the 'Never Ending Tour' to Tanglewood. His opening act was Mavis Staples, formally one of the Staples Singers.

Indigenous to Argentina is the traditional folk form of Malambo which is described as the machismo dance of the gauchos. With striking resemble to Flamenco, Irish step dancing, and African drumming this artform first evolved in the 17th century. The irony is that this ancient dance is new to American audiences.

The family based Long Day's Journey Into Night is regarded as the masterpiece of Eugene O'Neill. In a Broadway revval now closed Jessica Lange won a Tony Award for the paradigmatic role of the morphine addicted mother Mary Tyrone.

The powerful drama Cost of Living, by Martyna Majok, having its world premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival entails two individuals with disabilities and those who provide care for them. The production will transfer to Manhattan Theatre Club during the coming season. It is an evening of theatre that audiences will never recover from.

Based on the casting of Academy Award winner, Marisa Tomei, the production of The Rose Tattoo at Williamstown Theatre Festival is the most anticipated theatre event of the summer season in the Berkshires. For the most part audiences will be thrilled with her perfomance in a sprawling and chaotic production of the Tennessee Williams classic play.

A brilliant new take on the Orpheus myth by Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was the basis of the first opera written in 1600. It has intrigued artists ever since, from Monteverdi to Christoph Willibald Gluck to Jacques Offenbach. Dramatists too have found the tale impossible to resist, Thomas Pynchon, Salmon Rushie and Tennessee William among them. This may be the first time the audience sits in purgatory.

The enormously sucessful first Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival in Adams, Mass. was a midwinter brain storm of a group of local artists and activists. With this event they aspired to put Adams on the map as a community for artists and unbridled imagination. Now their ambition has been given a serendipitous boost. The Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has announced that her latest venture “Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” takes place on Mt. Greylock. The Adams festival was staged in the shadow of the tallest peak in Massachusetts where wizards and faeries abound.

After 17 seasons at Tanglewood, Garrison Keillor retires from 'Prairie Home Companion.'

Lindsey Ferrentino has written a play weaving the end of the NASA shuttle program with the return of a severely wounded war veteran. As directed by Daniela Varon, the ensemble group of actors, turns in a bravura performance, with Christianna Nelson at its center, as Jess returning from a third tour of Afghanistan.

While looking into the concept of Faerie or Fairy Festivals, one might discover that there are quite a number of such events happening each year all over America. 'The Faerie Festival Bug' hit six months ago in the town of Adams, MA, among a group of believers, at the Adams Arts Advisory Board. They enlisted many participants, word spread quickly among like-minded fantasy lovers, and here is the result in photos and report of the First Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival.

In playwright Ayad Akhtar’s blistering comedy, “Disgraced” he explores the dark underbelly of the politically correct subject matter of anti-semitism and Islamophobia that is simmering just beneath the surface at first only to boil over later on, dragging its five characters into open verbal warfare.

The beautifully curated exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago shows the full range of Siskind’s abstract expressionist photography in scenes shot in Chicago, New York, Gloucester, Martha’s Vineyard, Rome and other locations all over the world.