Frothy delights like “Falstaff” present particular challenges. Comic timing, enthusiastic affect, and vocal versatility must be heightened. Opera San Jose’s production excels in every dimension. Performers sing with joy and act with charm. All of the artistic elements strike the right note, resulting in a production that glitters.

For Rockport psychologist and playwright, Lawrence Hennessy, art imitates life in his new play Annisquam. Is the playwright moonlighting as a shrink or the other way around? Tickets for the three performances are available at Gloucester Stage.

Vaclav Havel’s Audience circulated widely in a sanitized form during the Soviet occupation of his country after the Second World War. During the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, Havel provided a narrative of the invasion on Radio Free Czechoslovakia and was banned from his work in the theater. To survive, he took a job in the Kraknos brewery in Trufnov. This is the setting of Audience.

New York Festival of Song Presents  Amor: A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Steven Blier's Professional Debut at Kaufman Music Center on February 15, 2023

"The Science of Leaving Omaha" is a layered play about the power of words and the desire to matter and be acknowledged. The play's world premiere production is running through Feb. 19 at Palm Beach Dramaworks in South Florida. Carter W. Lewis, a playwright who has won several national playwrighting awards, penned the play.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is enjoying a must-see run at the Irish Repertory Theatre.  Starring Bill Irwin, the clown and Beckett aficionado, as Clov and John Douglas Thompson as Hamm, here uncharacteristically for Thompson, the “insider.” He is bound to a wheelchair, blind and dependent on painkillers, yet the clear force of the moment. Clov lurches around him. 

What a performance of La Cage Aux Folles at the Komische Oper, Berlin!! This musical with music by Jerry Herman and a book by Harvey Fierstein has seen many international interpretations since it opened in 1983 at the Palace Theatre in New York.

 The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) announces that longtime museum supporters James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes have made a significant donation to enhance PEM’s 120,000-square-foot Collection Center in Rowley, Massachusetts.

The new Broadway musical – already seen in London and Toronto — & Juliet (and Juliet) has a clever concept, that grows on you. I like the play now more than I did while I was in the theater. The clever idea behind  & Juliet is what saves it from being preachy and predictable.

HallSpace presents paintings by Adriana G. Prat, an academically-trained scientist with a Ph.D. in Biophysics. Adriana’s curiosity for the natural world stemmed in her country of birth, Argentina. In Topographical Visions, Prat shares her awareness of the environmental crisis.

The "innovative, clever and thoroughly professional" BERKSHIRE OPERA FESTIVAL (BOF) announces its 2023 season in Great Barrington and Pittsfield, MA, and for the first time in New York City. The only company of its kind in the Berkshire region, BOF produces opera at the highest level under the vision of esteemed co-founders Brian Garman (Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production). The festival has "destination" status. Others write: "No longer need we confine our opera-going to HD films—now we have the highest quality productions and performers in our own backyard." 

For all of human history and eons before, Mount Everest has stood as steady as a rock – literally. In its eight years, the opera “Everest: An Immersive Experience” has had three very different realizations, even though under the baton of Nicole Paiement for each version. The genesis of the opera’s narrative is a real-life tragedy about three members on an Everest expedition in 1996, two of whom never came back.

In one smashing performance, Opera Philadelphia presented two Credos, statements of belief by composers who lived and worked at about the same time, in strikingly different circumstances. Carl Orff survived the Nazi regime in Germany by not protesting. Margaret Bonds grew up in a thriving Chicago art community.

Valentines Day is drawing near and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Germany, seems to bow to this occasion with its new production 'Amore' under the direction of Aram Tafreshian.

The play interweaves three elements – the life and works of the Yiddish author Sholem Asch, the history of productions of his play The God of Vengeance, and the stories of the people involved in a Broadway production of the show in the 1920s. It may sound confusing, but it isn’t.

The playwright Christine Quintana makes an interesting point about communication in the program of Hartford Stage’s production of Espejos:Clean. She says, “Every interaction we have with one another is an act of translation.”

No small theatrical space is better used than the Irish Repertory Theatre's W. Scott Lucas Studio. The stage fills the room, inviting the audience in. Selections are always apt. Ronan Noone’s  The Smuggler is no exception.

Dominique Morisseau has written a sometimes funny but always tense noirish drama which Director Dawn Monique Williams plumbs for all its nuance. The actors find the essence of each character and deliver a gripping entertainment.

“Cashed Out” takes place on the Gila River Reservation in southern Arizona, home to the Pima tribe, traditionally noted for their finely woven baskets – tightly twined bowls with crisp angular patterns.  While the compelling narrative gives interesting insights into the culture of the native people, universal themes abound – the power of love in family and friendship; internal struggle and external conflict; forgiveness and redemption.  The production is striking and highly appealing.

"Rotterdam" is an emotionally-rich play receiving a strong production at Island City Stage. The production runs through Feb. 19 at the company in Wilton Manors, near Ft. Lauderdale. "Rotterdam" opens Island City Stage's 2022-23 season.

Theatre Lab in Boca Raton is producing a fine world premiere of "Last Night in Inwood" byu Alix Sobler. The production runs through Feb. 12. Theatre Lab, Florida Atlantic University's resident professional theater company, is dedicated solely to new work.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC), under the leadership of Artistic Director Alan Paul, will produce a 2023 season that will feature two major musical revivals, two world premiere plays, and two modern classic play revivals.

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.

Rhiannon Giddens talks often of being comfortable in the crossroads of her art. The new configuration of Zankel Hall in Carnegie looks like a crossroads. The audience comes from every direction to focus on the world being presented. The stage is a hybrid space where different music from different times can exist side by side.

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.