-
Tom Stoppard's Arcadia
Launches New Writers Theatre in Glencoe, Illinois
By: - Mar 29th, 2016Writers Theatre opened its spectacular new theater in Glencoe this week with an appropriately spectacular production of a play by Tom Stoppard one of today’s greatest playwrights, smartly directed by Michael Halberstam. It was almost a four-star evening.
-
Berkshire's Gonzo Poet Charles Giuliano
Berkshire Fine Arts, LLC Launches Total Gonzo Poems
By: - Mar 29th, 2016April is National Poetry Month. Berkshire Fine Arts, LLC announces the publication of two books Shards of a Life and Total Gonzo Poems by Berkshire poet and arts critic Charles Giuliano. In July, 1970 he coined the word gonzo while telling an outrageous story. He was the first to publish gonzo in a rock review that summer for the former daily Boston Herald Traveler. With these two books and a third nearing completion Giuliano has morphed gonzo journalism into a vibrant, hip, compelling form of cutting edge poetry.
-
Wine and Food Festival of New Paltz
April 22nd to 24th at Mohonk Mountain House
By: - Mar 29th, 2016This is the third year of one of the best wine and food festivals on the Northeast. Over 700 wines will be poured, educational seminars will take place and chefs will entertain the audience. All at Mohonk Mountain House.
-
BLO Presents Massenet's Werther
Love-sick Poet Who Took His Life Quintessential Romanticism
By: - Mar 28th, 2016Based on the Goethe novel, which set off a plague of copy-cat suicides in 18th century Europe, the late Romantic opera is arguably Massenet's masterpiece - at least it still speaks to us today. Lyrical throughout, it becomes intensely dramatic in Act III and IV. The BLO cast was not ideal, but they did the best they could and had many affecting moments.
-
Campania, Business and Tourist Hub of Europe
Think Italian Goods, Think Campania.
By: - Mar 28th, 2016Did you know that 40% of all Italian trains pass through Campania? It is the hub for overseas business, thanks to two ports, a large manufacturing community, numerous pasta factories and water buffalo mozzarella farms.
-
Blackbird Not Broadway-Worthy
Disappointing Despite All-Star Cast
By: - Mar 25th, 2016The combination of Michelle Williams (Una) and Jeff Daniels (Ray) should have been Broadway gold. When the curtain went down at the Belasco Theatre my companion’s comment was “well there was a whole lot of garbage on the stage.” Indeed the entire play takes place in a lunchroom strewn with leftover food wrappers and empty paper cups. For a play about the damaging relationship between a 40+ man and the woman he had sex with when she was a girl of 14, there were no surprises and little character development. The play was a disappointment given such a potentially explosive topic and talented cast.
-
Big Year for Bill Russell, One of Broadway's Best!
BCEFA Benefit Premieres an Exciting 2016 for Lyricist Russell
By: - Mar 25th, 2016Writer/Lyricist Bill Russell has brought us some of the best of on and off Broadway – yet many do not recognize his name. Creator of the moving and critically acclaimed Side Show, Russell recently staged a benefit performance of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens (for Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS) at the Birdland Jazz Club in NYC which was spectacular. 2016 will be a big year for Russell, with world premieres and revivals of three of his shows (Side Show, Pageant, and premieres of both Brave New World and Unexpected Joy) in London and across the U.S. from Cape Cod to the Carolina's and the Black Hills of South Dakota!
-
Dolly Parton Added to Tanglewood Schedule
Country Music Artist to Perform on June 17
By: - Mar 25th, 2016Country music icon Dolly Parton makes her Tanglewood debut with a season-opening performance Friday, June 17, at 7 p.m. in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, joining the Tanglewood 2016 Popular Artist line-up. Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Swing Orchestra will also perform in the Shed on Saturday, September 3, at 8 p.m.
-
Disney’s The Little Mermaid at Theatre 29
Theatre Still Delivers on Its Mission Statement
By: - Mar 24th, 2016“Disney’s The Little Mermaid” is one of the most ambitious productions Theatre 29 has tackled. And they have succeeded admirably. The California production continues through April 9.
-
Endangered Species by Tony Padilla
Pearl McManus Theatre in Palm Springs
By: - Mar 24th, 2016“Endangered Species” written and directed by Tony Padilla stars Bonnie Gilgallon as Tina, a suburban Chicago housewife married to David a successful businessman played by Alan Berry. The couple married over twenty years are in New York on a holiday where they plan to relax and recharge their romantic batteries.
-
Sex with Strangers at LA's Geffen Playhouse
Talky Two-hander by Laura Eason
By: - Mar 24th, 2016In “Sex with Strangers, the plot revolves around Olivia (Rebecca Pidgeon), an intelligent, mid-career, one-book novelist who is having second thoughts about her ability is a writer, and Ethan (Stephen Louis Grush), a wildly successful, young, hyper-energetic stud/blogger with an ego to match, who meet in a mutual friend’s borrowed cabin on a snowy winter night in Michigan.
-
Tom Gore Sonoma Farmer Winemaker
All About the Grape
By: - Mar 22nd, 2016Tom Gore, from Sonoma, California, learned about farming from his father. He took farming seriously, planted grapes and has become an authority on grape maturation.
-
Classic 'cult' wine, Conundrum Celebrates It's 25th Anniversary
Charles Wagner, Sr. Is the Master Mixologist
By: - Mar 21st, 2016In the 1970s, co-founder of Caymus Vineyards, Charles Wagner, Sr., would mix white wines at the dinner table to create a blend that would pair with food. He used this concept to create Conundrum, a wine that was always different. I plan to serve it for the nine guests at our Easter dinner.
-
Beautiful Madama Butterfly at MET Opera
Directed by Oscar Winner Anthony Minghella
By: - Mar 20th, 2016The Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Madama Butterfly is a timeless classic with the ultimate tragic heroine. When coupled with dramatic direction by Anthony Minghella (Oscar winner for The English Patient) and modern, other worldly staging as this production is, the audience is spellbound for the full three + hours and more than a few could not hold back tears at the heart-wrenching end.
-
Lucy Prebble's Compelling The Effect
Off Broadway at Barrow Street Theatre
By: - Mar 20th, 2016Lucy Prebble selects topics of heightened interest and then makes of them marvelous plays. Enron on the collapse of a fake US energy company is now followed by an exploration of drug trials and what they tell us about human beings.
-
Susan Schwalb at Garvey|Simon
Abstract Metalpoint Works on View in New York Gallery
By: - Mar 19th, 2016An exhibition by Susan Schwalb features abstract, linear compositions of mixed metalpoint on colored surfaces, many of which investigate absence or the void as a constructive element The exhibition at Garvey/ Simon Gallery in New York will run from April 28 – June 4, 2016
-
Lorca's Blood Wedding
Anemic Production at Chicago's Lookingglass
By: - Mar 18th, 2016Blood Wedding was part of Federico Garcia Lorca’s plan for a “trilogy of the Spanish earth”—unfinished when he was killed in 1936. Most critics include Yerma and The House of Bernada Alba in the “rural trilogy” but Lorca did not include the latter. The decision to set this production in the more-realistic Depression-era U.S. diminishes the mythic nature of Lorca’s story.
-
Paul Appleby, the Natural, at Carnegie
A Master of Language and Meaning
By: - Mar 17th, 2016Paul Appleby has rocketed to the top of the music world. This modest, charming man has a voice for the ages and communicates in many languages with an easy skill. At Zankel Hall in New York he sang about the infinite varieties of love as expressed by Schumann, Wolf, Berlioz and Villa Lobos. Matthew Aucoin's Merrill Songs were premiered. This irresistible master tenor speaks to the heart.
-
Dak'Art African Contemporary Art Biennale
Dakar, Senegal from May 3 - June 2
By: - Mar 16th, 2016Dak’Art 2016 is inspired by the theme “The City in the Blue (La Cité dans le jour bleu)” and will be curated by Simon Njami who was also named as the fair’s new artistic director. As inspiration from the theme, Njami selected the extract of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s poem: “Your voice cries out for the Republic - let us raise up that city in a blue daylight: Of equality for brotherly peoples. So we sing in our hearts. “We are here, Guélowar!”
-
Off Broadway Musical Ruthless
Falling In Love Again Is Simply Marvelous
By: - Mar 16th, 2016That NY critic, Edward Rubin, is a bit gonzo and over the top is no secret to his friends who know him as Fast Eddy. He refers to us as kids in a flurry of daily notes and links to reviews and articles of interest. In general we deplore the use of personal pronouns for reviews. Professional standards and decorum strive for objectivity. Now and then, as is the case here, his passion and enthusiasm know no bounds. Regarding an Off Broadway musical Ruthless he gushes "I loved, loved, loved Ruthless." That's just for openers.
-
Barrington Stage Company Announces Programming
Rounding Out 2016 Season
By: - Mar 15th, 2016Following its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theater, Peerless by Jiehae Park (Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, Wondrous Strange), and directed by Margot Bordelon (Okay, Bye; At the Rich Relatives), will be the third production for the St. Germain Stage.
-
Nasreen Mohamedi at Met Breuer
Work of Exquisite Indian Artist Launches Rebranded Museum
By: - Mar 15th, 2016The Metropolitan Museum of Art has leased the iconic Madison Avenue building that was formerly the home of the relocated Whitney Museum. The artist Susan Schwalb offers an insightful and personal view of the work of the Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990) which launches the new space.
-
Salonen Honors Messiaen at NY Phil
Tristan and Exhaulted Love Revealed in Turangalila
By: - Mar 13th, 2016Audiences were often ahead of critics in appreciating Messiaen's music. Turangalila was given a warm, tener, violent, expressive, often magical and always colorful performance at David Geffen Hall. Young people were packed in to hear the composer.
-
ATCA Announces Playwriting Finalists
Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award
By: - Mar 13th, 2016The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has selected six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2015.
-
LaMama Discovers American Music
Dvorak Pricks Up His Ears
By: - Mar 12th, 2016The ever inventive Czecholovak-American Theatre tracks Antonin Dvorak's arrival in America and shows us how he discovered unique American sounds from cottonpickers in the South to Hiawatha.
<< Previous Next >>