A vibrant equity national touring production of "Aladdin" is playing in Miami through Sunday. "Aladdin" offers a feast for the eyes. The popular musical's basis is a 1992 animated film, which an ancient folktale inspired.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC),  announces the 10-minute plays, playwrights and casting for the 12th Annual 10X10 New Play Festival, part of the 2023 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival. Performances February 17 through March 5, 2023.

Quarries, Poles Hill, Ocean Ledges and gratitude weave through the following essay, with 30 plus photographs.

VERY is pleased to begin the winter season with Death Show, a special compilation exploring how death reveals itself as both an unspoken subtext and conscious motif in the work of ten artists. Employing diverse mediums, these artists express the material and existential implications of the force that affects all.

The Komische Oper Berlin is one of three opera houses in the Capital. Committed to presenting lighter fare, it just celebrated its 75 birthday in January with a big gala and two operas by Jaques Offenbach: Oyayaye and Fortunio's Lied.

It has taken months for Martin Mugar to get a fix on the remarkable Philip Guston exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The work is now on the road. Mugar attempts to unpack the complex phases of the work from initial Social Realism to Abstract Expressionism to a late phase entailing controversial cartoonish images of the Ku Klux Klan. Initially the late work cast him as a pariah in the art world. During which he taught at Boston University and was embraced by like minded professors and students.

So, what makes “Annie” so popular? Where to start? Set during the Great Depression and opening in an orphanage with conditions straight out of a Charles Dickens novel doesn’t seem a likely starting point.

While manager of the Boston Tea Party Steve Nelson booked, first the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page, then later the Jeff Beck band for four nights. Beck was touring with Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Mick Waller. (Editor: I saw that lineup at the Newport Jazz Festival.) On the cusp of superstardom Beck broke up the band. Rod went solo and Ron eventually joined the Rolling Stones.

"Time Alone" is a moving and intense play about two prisoners. Boca Stage is presenting a riveting production of Alessandro Camon's play. The production runs through Jan. 22.

The Rose Art Museum names Arghavan Khosravi (b. 1984) the 2023 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence. Since 2002, the Perlmutter Residency has been part of the Rose Art Museum’s longstanding tradition of promoting emerging artists of extraordinary talent whose work addresses contemporary issues of vital urgency.

MASS MoCA has promoted veteran curator Denise Markonish to become its new Chief Curator, the first in MASS MoCA’s nearly 25-year history. Markonish joined MASS MoCA in 2007.

Julianne Boyd says, “I am thrilled to be directing Faith Healer, Brian Friel’s hauntingly beautiful play that has been on my short list for years – and I am excited to be reunited with three tremendously talented actors and BSC Associate Artists, Christopher Innvar, Mark Dold and Gretchen Egolf.”

Victoria Bond will conduct at the UN on January 27. The event can be live streamed. She will then travel to Stockton, California for a tribute to Ray Charles .

A fine cast delivers with lesser material in Broadway in Lauderhill's opening season production of "The Full Monty." The Full Monty is charming and amusing in places, but a musical mess in others. The production runs through Jan. 29 at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center.

David Lang is not surprisingly a highly educated, impish composer. We can’t take him at face value. Or perhaps we can. Discussing his new opera, presented as part of the Prototype Festival, he said that although he had first been intrigued by Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short stories at age 16, he knows nothing about Japanee culture. Yet he is Japanese.

This spring, theater companies around Wisconsin are launching World Premiere Wisconsin, a statewide festival celebrating new plays and musicals that has been years in the making.  We have 52 participating theaters along with festival partner Ten Chimneys. Quite the undertaking as we look to put new plays back at the center of our work post-pandemic.  

A strong equity national touring production of "Turner: The Tina Turner Musical" is playing in Ft. Lauderdale through Jan. 29. This jukebox musical focuses on the life of a legendary performer. Triple threat performers shine in the production.

Berkshire fans will recall seeing Crosby Stills and Nash at Tanglewood, September 2, 2010. Crosby known for a crash and burn lifestyle, as well as an angelic voice that made gorgeous harmonies, has died at 81. I first heard him with the Byrds at Soundblast '66 at Yankee Stadium.

Look for this production to come to Broadway and finally redeem the show. Merrily We Roll Along isn’t a great musical, but in reality, it is more interesting than many of the long-running “hits.”

All of us have had that restaurant experience in which we thought the food would never come. In this case, the cause is not a lost order or long prep time or overtaxed restaurant staff. It is willful delay by the server from hell.

The Clark Art Institute continues its art in public spaces program in 2023 with a year-long installation presenting the work of contemporary artist Elizabeth Atterbury (b. 1982, West Palm Beach, Florida; lives and works in Portland, Maine). Elizabeth Atterbury: Oracle Bones is a free exhibition on view in the Clark Center’s lower level and in the reading room of  the Manton Research Center through January 21, 2024.

Opera’s legendary femme fatale returns to Lyric Opera of Chicago with Bizet’s Carmen — March 11 – April 7, 2023 — starring J’Nai Bridges, a leading interpreter of the famous title role and a singer with deep Chicago roots.

In the hands of some, a sandwich may be a most humble joining of Wonder Bread with a plain and prosaic filler of any sort. In another, it can be a sublime assemblage of aspiration and dreams. Such is the aesthetic divide between most of the truckers who patronize Clyde’s Sandwich Shop in Reading, PA, and the unseen kitchen staff who fill their orders. The Berkeley Rep production exceeds every standard the script demands.

The realist painter Alfred Leslie had a major impact on the Boston Art World. In 1976 he had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. He also commuted to teach at the Boston University School of Fine Arts.

Anyone who says they never got caught telling a fib is probably telling a fib.  But what is worse is covering the tracks of the first lie with another, and then another, until the wheels finally come off.  Often, the result is loss of respect from others, compounded by loss of self-respect.  If there is a road back, it is an arduous one.