It takes stamina and seven league boots to keep up with my running buddy Jack Lyons. He was my plus one for the recent American Theatre Critics Association annual New York Conference. In addition to a day of panel discussions and lunch with the stars at Sardi's he took in the three plays covered here. When out of breath trying to keep with some affection I call him Jack Rabbit.

The Museum of Fine Arts last featured Boston Expressionist Hyman Bloom in a 1959 group show. The current exhibition Hyman Bloom Matters of Life and Death, curated by Erica E. Hirshler, attempts to make up for that lapse. The focus on cadaver paintings and drawings is bold and spectacular. The work is ghastly with haunting beauty. On a national level it is among the year's best museum exhibitions.

The conventional wisdom is that everyone is a critic. Which is an insult to those of us who pursue the difficult and complex craft. Why on earth would I give a fig about the year end movie list of former president Obama? I don't dabble in politics or take up brain surgery as a hobby. Having an opinion, and posting on social media, does not make you a critic.

“But why did he come to Copenhagen? What was he trying to tell you?” This opening line by the deceased Margrethe Bohr is the entry point of Michael Frayn’s multilayered delight of a Tony-winning Best Play – equal parts science lesson, mystery, biographical drama, and morality play.

In this two part play, that runs more than six hours, Matthew Lopez focuses on the modern generation of gay men whose current acceptance is built on the backs of earlier generations.

Iron & Coal is a live rock show presented as part of the Prototype Festival at the Gerald Lynch Theater in New York. The title refers to an iron will to survive, but also to the charred emotions that remain after a concentration camp incarceration. The songwriter Jeremy Schonfeld tells the story of his father’s arrival in America at 11. He searched for his place in our sun, and especially to answer the question: for what purpose did I survive when so many others did not.

Barrington Stage Company will present two World Premiere musicals and new productions of a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical classic, a Tony Award-winning musical revue, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. BSC will also perform outdoors for the first time with free performances of one of the company’s World Premiere musicals and featuring the company’s popular Youth Theatre.

Jo Sandman: The Photographic Work on view February 8–June 7, 2020 at the Fitchburg Art Museum explores Sandman’s turn to photography in the 1990s.

A national equity tour of Aladdin features spectacle and substance. Aladdin continues to enthrall with its magic and visuals. The Disney show is making stops in Florida.

Steven Dietz was among the five most produced playwrights in America during 2019. And now his latest play “Bloomsday,” is on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre (NCRT), making its Southern California debut.

Berliner Festspiele invited this young company, Gauthier Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, to dance for five exciting days and to great success. For the rest of the year they will travel and perform internationally, including at Jacob's Pillow, in Becket, Massachusetts, the week of July 13. The Pillow invites yearly for their three months long summer festival dance companies from around the world.

Graves are marked with sticks crossed. They seem to bend in the movement of the professional mourner and his followers. Light is spotted from the ceiling, sometimes two spots and at others six. The lights rhythmic entrances and exits fit perfectly with incessant beats of the feet. The brilliant South African choreographer Gregory Vuyani Maqoma has adapted Zakes Mda’s novel Cion.

Kendra and Betty are southern women, together for six years, but their relationship is fraying, if not unraveling. As it turns dark, they’re stuck in a boat that won’t move. The Gulf by Audrey Cefaly is About Face Theatre’s latest production, directed by Megan Carney, now on stage at Theater Wit. The gulf, of course, is both literal and symbolic.

Although the playwright’s intent and narrative often lack clarity, the dialog is clever and the situations amusing. In the hands of a fine ensemble of actors, Custom Made Theatre offers a very funny and provocative production of How to Transcend a Happy Marriage.

Timon of Athens gets a brilliant characterization by Kathryn Hunter at Theatre for a New Audience. This huge character is played by a diminutive woman who holds us in her thrall every moment she is on stage. In the first part of the play, Timon enjoys her wealth, mindlessly giving her ‘friends’ whatever they want. Her Steward tries to tell her that if she keeps gifting at this pace, she will soon be penniless. Distinctive characters move across the stage, intriguing us.

For the past three years the Berkshire International Club has celebrated Chinese New Year. On a Sunday afternoon sixty members enjoyed a banquet at Panda House.

Credit Lindsay-Abaire for building a comedy not just around women, but older women whose motivations are not limited to the sole objective of doting on grandkids. He makes his female protagonists full-bore individuals with zesty personalities who are willing to fight tooth-and-nail for what they want.

The old rock trope says that punk music is “three chords and the truth.” That holds true for the fact-based story about a kid punk band from Evanston in the 1980s, which just opened in a world premiere by House Theatre. Verböten is the name of the play and the band.

My Name Is Lucy Barton written by Elizabeth Stout and published to a chorus of Hosannas in 2016, is now a one-woman, 2-character play, running through February 29 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Adapted from the book by Rona Munro and directed by Richard Eyre, Lucy Barton stars Laura Linney.

The King of the Delta Blues, Robert Johnson, died in relative obscurity on August 16, 1938. Fifty years later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when it was founded in 1986. In 1961 Columbia released King of the Delta Blues Players with Volume Two in 1970. The Complete Recordings a two-disc set, released on August 28, 1990, contains almost everything Johnson recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes.

Groundhog Day is a meaty, moving and humorous story on stage. A shining Slow Burn Theatre Company/Broward Center for the Performing Arts co-production runs through Feb. 16. An ingenious, symbolic set design are among the strong production values. A talented cast shines in this convincing, vivacious production. The stage musical is based on the 1993 film starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors.

The Williamstown Theatre Festival launches with Streetcar Named Desire starring Audra McDonald on June 30. The season will feature five world premieres.

Manahatta, now at the Yale Rep through Saturday, Feb. 15, offers a great deal to think about. It is getting its east coast premiere, having had its initial production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018. Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is a lawyer, writer and activist.

“Adoption Roulette” is an Actors play. The action takes place on a bare-bones stage with no props or set furniture. The physical movements in the play are mimed, and the actors play multiple roles.

New York critic Edward Rubin remembers Lynn Cohen an actress fondly remembered as the Ukranian maid Magda in the TV series Sex in the City. Ed has often been close with the performers he writes about.