The production uses elements from the original script as well as elements from the movie and subsequent Broadway revivals. This means that the two songs Richard Rodgers wrote for the film – “I Have Confidence in Me” and “Something Good” are included and the original “An Ordinary Couple” is omitted.

"Little Montgomery" is a touching comic-drama with relevant themes. New City Players' production runs through this Sunday. Performances take place at Island City Stage near Ft. Lauderdale.

Jacob's Pillow is pleased to announce programming for the eighth week of the 2023 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, when the world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Graham’s Cave of the Heart and Errand Into the Maze, and Hofesh Shechter’s CAVE, in the Ted Shawn Theatre from Aug. 16-20.

Barrington Stage Company, as part of its Black Voices Matter initiative, is sponsoring the 3rd annual “Celebration of Black Voices” community festival.  For 2023, “Celebration of Black Voices” will take place over 4 days - from Thursday, August 10 through Sunday, August 13 on Pittsfield’s West Side.  The festival will feature six free events celebrating the local Black community through artistic engagement.

Tony Bennett who won 20 Grammys has died at 96. With a raspy voice that defied description he was a master of phrasing, swing, and insightful interpretation. I saw him upclose in a 1980s pairing with pianist Dave McKenna for PBS. Then more recently at Tanglewood.

Marina Carr has joined Lady Augusta Gregory in the pantheon of playwrights pictured on the walls of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  Her new play "Girl on the Altar" is playing now.

Berkshire Opera Festival continues its 2023 summer season with a mainstage production of La Bohème on August 26, August 29, and September 1 at The Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. One of the most beloved operatic love stories of all time, La Bohème is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which follows the lives of young people living in the Latin Quarter of Paris

he advent of Freudianism somehow severed the mind from the body, but over the past decades, there has been a return to the wisdom of late 19th century philosopher William James who saw the body and mind as deeply interrelated.  

Noted for its Wax Works the Annisquam Seafair is now 178-years-old. We attended this past weekend.

A series of august jazz programming, is the upcoming month. With our friends at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute paying increased attention to jazz, two local dates by itinerant pianist Peggy Stern, and the second annual Bousquet Jazz Festival, there’s plenty to choose from.

The uniqueness of Santa Fe Opera's facility and setting make for a stunning visualization of Monteverdi's early masterpiece. With the back stagewall initially open to nature, the scenario begins in literal and figurative brightness; followed by a threatening storm in the mesas behind; leading to brutal darkness on stage with deliciously harsh lighting effects. Modern orchestration smooths the Baroque edges of the music.

The power of Fences derives from the mastery with which August Wilson conflated the mojo of the blues with the paradigms of Greek tragedy. This play is as intricately structured as works by Sophocles and Aeschylus. While rooted in the African American culture of Pittsburgh, Wilson was at heart every bit a classicist.

Claude Debussy sought a prospective opera libretto in which characters seemed out of place, out of time, and only half disclosed. For “Pelléas et Mélisande,” he found his soulmate in future Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, whose opaqueness suited Debussy so well that he adapted the playwright’s work almost verbatim. The result was a turn-of-the-century landmark - Debussy’s only completed opera.

Stravinsky's "The NIghtingale" sets a simple but thoughtful Hans Christian Anderson tale to music. Production values sizzle. With Schoenberg's "Erwartung," the setting of the psychologically-driven soliloquy is switched from forest to hospital. The use of dancers as mute characters adds depth and diversity to the narrative.

Summer Stock is a new old-fashioned musical bringing joy to audiences at Goodspeed. It is unabashedly old-fashioned.

Recently, Jason Travers an artist in the Providence area and a former student from AIB sent me an image of the kind of “drawing” he sees in the asphalt fillings that are ubiquitous on New England roads: an effort to fill in the cracks formed on roads due to frost heaves. The cracks left unattended only speed up the deterioration of the road.

On Cedar Street is an intimate, compact musical compressed into one long act on a busy, cluttered set. On Cedar Street which entails the late life romance of widow and widower in rural Colorado is having its world premiere at the Unicorn Theatre of Berkshire Theatre Group.

Jacob’s Pillow today announced the artists who will participate in 10 onsite residencies this fall through next summer, as part of the Pillow Lab residency program. Artists participating in this series, in chronological order, are: Ilya Vidrin, Sekou McMiller, LaJuné McMillian, Minty Fresh Circus, Aakash Odedra, Kyle Marshall Choreography, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, Hari Krishnan/inDANCE, Theresa Ruth Howard, and Miguel Gutierrez.

The venerable and totally contemporary Martha Graham Dance Company was in residence from August 16 to August 20 at Jacob's Pillow. The dancers gave memorable and also frenzied performances.....

These paintings, inspired by the Major Arcana cards in the traditional Rider-Waite tarot deck, are also the inspiration for a Major Arcana-specific 22-card tarot deck released by Jane Hudson this summer with WIld Soul River.  

The desire to produce shows that are well-known is understandable, but it is also important for theaters to focus on what they do best.

The Delray Beach Playhouse is the new home for Boca Stage in Southeast Florida. Up until recently, Boca Stage mounted its productions in Boca Raton's intimate Sol Theatre. In its new space, Boca Stage will be able to seat more than 140 patrons, compared to 70 at the Sol.

In a photo essay Steve Nelson documented the destruction and salvage of a torched fishing vessel "Two Friends." It's a poignant signifier of the demise of Gloucester's once vibrant fishing fleet and industry.

September at Gallery Naga opens with a bang--prepare to be transported into the frenetic universe that is Gerry Bergstein’s brain.   

Oppenheimer, the film. Prepare your rotten tomatoes. The movie is loud, gray and one-dimensional.