David Ives is a master at translation from French into English and then adapting the source material into a fresh play or a movie script. He likes to call the process: “translaptations”. Two of his “translaptations”; are two of my favorite Ives’ plays: “Venus in Fur” and “All in the Timing”.

Acknowledging the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the BSO programmed music by some of the greats based on his works. Music director Andris Nelsons brought his lively intelligence to the enterprise, in which a new work based on Ophelia's words by the Dane Hans Abrahamsen was the stand-out hit.

This version of Snow White is for adults only. Here is a second opinion of a controversial New York production. This is a new twist in every sense of a fairy tale.

The 2016 season features an Israel Horovitz world premiere, two New England premieres, the return of Academy Award-nominated actress, and Gloucester resident, Lindsay Crouse, Managing Director Jeff Zinn’s GSC directorial debut, the re-teaming of last season’s hit, Out of Sterno director Paula Plum and playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer, and the Gloucester Stage debut of Elliot Norton Award winner Benjamin Evett and Tony nominee Barbara Walsh.

Mitsuko Uchida plays and conducts Mozart with the Cleveland Symphony. Will she continue in a new career as a conductor? In Munich, the Bayerische State Opera is often conducted by Oksana Lyniv. Gemma New is at the New Jersey Symphony, and Mirga Gražinyt-Tyla is the new music director of the Birmingham Symphony. Women are coming to the podium.

Annie and her two teenage best buds want the same things: the hottest new phones, cute boys, designer bags. But when they enter into a pregnancy pact, she wonders if there might be a different path and a brighter future. Huntington Playwriting Fellow Kirsten Greenidge (Luck of the Irish) finds raw humor and grit in this provocative production, torn-from-the-headlines drama.

The classic depression era tale Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is being given a compelling production by Threshold Repertory Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina.

Thomas Merton observed that the meditation exercises in the Buddhist tradition in many ways were more refined and subtle than those of Christianity and sought to integrate them into the monastic tradition of the Church without changing the importance of Christian notions of salvation. At a moment when his drift toward Eastern thought was picking up speed he died accidentally from electrocution due to bad wiring in a Thai hotel.

This is a strong, sweet production but it’s not clear to me why it is remounted just 2.5 years after the last identical production. If you missed it before, do see it now. The Glass Menagerie runs 2.5 hours with one intermission; the Hypocrites production continues through March 6 .

A collection of 11 short plays by Neil LaBute is now being staged at the theater in Buena Park. Each play has its own cast and directors. Amazingly, in this 4.5 total hours of theater over two separate shows, there’s not a dog in the pack. Each play is sharp and memorable.

American Buffalo is David Mamet's story of one day in the life of three Chicago hustlers who try to run a home burglary to get at a rich man’s coin collection. (The buffalo nickel is an often prized version of an early 5-cent piece.) Donny (Richard Cotovsky, a founding member of Mary-Arrchie and its artistic director, is the usually calm, business-focused owner of Don’s Resale Shop. Bobby (Rudy Galvan) is his gopher, and Teach (Stephen Walker) is a neighbor, an angry, emotionally needy man.

On a recent visit to Tereceira Island in the Azores, we discovered an amazing, local, restaurant run by Jose Costa.

Company XIV has a World Premiere of adults-only Snow White at the Minetta Lane Theatre in NYC -- the third offering in a season of rowdy entertainment by Austin McCormick and the multi-talented cast.

Toiling for years off-Broadway, John Patrick Shanley has now zoomed to the top tier of much-in-demand playwrights and screenwriters. His latest theatrical effort is the romantic comedy “Outside Mullingar”, which takes place in rural Ireland.

The Williamstown Theatre Festival season, running from June 28 – August 21, 2016, begins on the Main Stage with a production of Tennessee Williams’ Tony Award-winning play The Rose Tattoo (June 28 – July 17) directed by Obie Award winner Trip Cullman and featuring Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei; continues with the world premiere of Boo Killebrew’s comedy Romance Novels For Dummies (July 20– July 31), directed by Tony Award nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel; and closes with the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter (August 3 – August 21), directed by Evan Cabnet.

It seems just yesterday that Placido Domingo marched into General Manager Peter Gelb’s office and told him that he must keep the great soprano Sondra Radvanovsky on the Metropolitan Opera roster. Gelb could not say no. And so we have this season Donizetti’s Queens with Radvanovsky singing Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Elizabeth.

Puppets in the collage-inspired work of Eric Carle engage in story-telling on Broadway. Three actors tell four of Carle's stories in the magical tones of familiar classics, the audience is incanting phrases like, "but he was still hungry." The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Art and its literacy programs in Amherst benefit from this production of Jonathan Rockefeller's charming puppetry.

Orpheus’ performers clearly come to an agreement before they come onto stage, leaderless. This form gives the music a chance to implode and explode in the hands of gifted individuals coming together.

Charlotte Moore has directed The Burial at Thebes to make it not only timely, but even more important, present. Each character is etched individually and then brought together with loved ones and adversaries, incidental characters and crucial ones. The chorus has disappeared, its lines and messages now humanized in individuals. This tale is about people and the gods are hardly considered.

On January 27, 2016, New York Philharmonic Chairman Oscar S. Schafer and President Matthew VanBesien announced that conductor Jaap van Zweden will become the Orchestra’s next Music Director, beginning in 2018–19. It will be the orchestra’s 177th season. Mr. van Zweden will serve as Music Director Designate in the 2017–18 season.

Old world charm has been restored to Quinta Do Martelo by Gilberto Vieira and his staff of workers at this Terceira Island gem. A four star restaurant serving organic food, all grown on the farm, highlights dishes from a bygone era. The guesthouse rooms evoke a different era.

Kayla Ferguson and Reggie D. White reprise their roles from the Merrimack Repertory Theatre as two teenagers seemingly randomly throw together to complete a class project. But Lauren Gunderson's "I & You" is actually about far weightier things -- life, death, the connectedness of all human beings -- all brought home in a riveting finale that had audiences gasping in surprise. Directed by Sean Daniels, "I & You" is having a limited run at 59E59 Theaters from January 15 - February 28.

Artifact is one of those recordings that warrants repeated listening. Each time I listen to the CD, there is something new to marvel at, especially the organic, full and clean masterful guitar tones. Add the masterful song writing with actual melodies that stick out in each song and you have an album that stands out and sticks in one's brain.

On a frozen Minnesota lake, the ice is beginning to melt as is Salvador Dali's Melting Watch paintings. It’s the end of the fishing season, and two men are out on the ice angling for answers to life’s larger questions. TONY and Olivier Award-winning Mark Rylance, who co-wrote the play with the American poet Louis Jenkins is spectacular. Based on Jenkins' prose poems, it is a Waiting for Godot on ice. It deserves to be a contemporary classic.

Craving adventure theatre critic Fast Eddy Rubin was thrilled by blizzard of 2016, one for the record books. Scheduled for a matinee he and a neighbor trudged up town. Only to find all of Broadway including restaurants shut down. Imagine if you had those precious seats to Hamilton? Stomping about our ersatz Sargent Preston of the Yukon stumbled onto one of the few theatres where the show went on. Mush you huskies. He just loved Restless at the intimate St. Luke's Theatre.