Coral Gables' GableStage is the first regional theater to mount Joshua Harmon's explosive 'Admissions.' A palpable urgency, tension hovers over the stage in this triumphant production. 'Admissions' is a highly complex, yet taut satire covering topics such as affirmative action.

You may not recognize the title or know much about the show; it arrived quietly on Broadway in April 2006 and immediately captured multiple Tony award nominations. It won for best book and best score but was beat out for Outstanding Musical by Jersey Boys.

Despite the limits of 90 minutes, two characters, and mostly one room, Dancing Lessons covers a lot of ground. It’s about relationships and truth. A script full of laughs and things to think about; great direction by Joy Carlin and fine creative elements by her team; plus two terrific performances yield an entertaining evening.

Bernhardt/Hamlet is a new play by Theresa Rebeck that tries to capture both Bernhardt and comment on our modern era. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

In celebration of his 80th birthday, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presented Charles Wuorinen's two String Trios, composed fifty years apart. In conversation before and between the superb performances of the Goeyvaerts String Trio, whose take on his work was praised by the composer, Wuorinen commented on his state of mind and ear at the time of the first composition. The Second String Trio is a world premiere commissioned by Works & Process.

Prior to this week, the Russian conductor Tughan Sokhiev was an unknown quantity at the New York Philharmonic. Currently music director of the Bolshoi Theater and the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, he made his debut on the podium at David Geffen Hall, armed with a triptych of works from his native land by Borodin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.

The Basso family from Avellino in Campania is motivated by the area of the world that they live in. The terroir and history of Campania, with its seaside of the Amalfi Coast, its pizza from Naples and the buffalo milk that is responsible for mozzarella di bufala has historical significance. Villa Raiano believes in the past and is now growing in the future with young family members taking over the daily grind at the vineyard.

If you’re a Kurt Vonnegut reader, Happy Birthday, Wanda June will sound familiar. If you’re in New York, or can get there by November 29, you have the chance to see this wacky dark satire of American culture and America’s propensity for war and death, filtered through Vonnegut’s mad genius lens

During a session of the NY Conference of American Theatre Critics Association we met with creators of the soon to be smash hit musical King Kong. The star of the show stands 20' high, weighs 2000 pounds, and roars with a rage that is absolutely terrifying. He is one very pissed off great ape.

The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting Philip Glass' Satyagraha at the Harvey Theater in Brooklyn. Not every opera can be mounted by a circus troop, but the forms are complimentary. When they meld, as they do here, it is a thrilling evening of theater. Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör from Sweden brings a matching visual rhythm and pace to the classical forms of Glass and extend our sense of this meditation on pacifism

The Hungarian National Opera's arrival in New York for a two week stay has been among the more interesting events of this fall season. Unfamiliar operas, unique productions and some vocal discoveries have been made at Lincoln Center. On Monday night, the Opera's orchestra, under the leadership of music director Balász Kocsár came to Carnegie Hall for a marathon concert: its one chance to display a wide variety of orchestral wares.

During the exposition of this retelling of the classic 1933 film there is an enervating response to a generic musical. It conveys the familiar tale of a pretty farm girl falling on hard luck trying to make it big in show business. Lured into a film shoot on remote and unihabited Skull Island things change big time. From the first thrilling appearance of Kong there is little doubt that he is the new King of Broadway.

Odyssey Opera mounted a terrific production of Charles' Gounod's A Doctor in Spite of Himself at the Huntington Theater in Boston. Gil Rose, the inspired founder of this company, points out that critics often blame institutions for riding the coattails of a big birthday of an musical original. If this is so, why is Gounod's 200th not being celebrated. It turns out that it is, in Boston.

Wednesday night's concert at the New York Philharmonic felt more like Mostly Mozart. It wasn't just the program: a brief but satisfying blend of Beethoven and Schubert. It was the presence of frequent MM guest Iván Fischer, who, for a number of seasons has enlivened that summer festival by bringing his orchestra charges: the Budapest Festival Orchestra (an ensemble he founded and still currently leads) to play symphonies and operas at Lincoln Center. Here, Fischer found himself at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, but wasted no time in ensuring that this was a very different kind of concert.

Amigos: Charles Giuliano, Robert Henriquez, David Zaig is the final exhibition of the season of Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams. The commonality of these Berkshire based artist friends is the scale and ambition of their work. The exhibition opens on Friday, November 16, 5 to 8 PM.

The Phantom Limb Company presents Falling Out at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A decade after 9/11 in the US, an earthquake in Japan created a tsunami which swept over swept over Otsuchi, Japan. A terrorist attack and nature's own are comparable in the name dates by which they are remembered. The tsunami caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. Hundreds of thousand of residents were affected in what came to be called 3/11.

For the third annual Berkshire Theatre Awards, at the Zion Luteran Church in Pittsfield, it took two hours to present trophies in 21 categories. Some 27 critics voted on awards to companies in the Berkshires extending into New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The top honors went to Barrington Stage Company with nine awards and Williamstown Theatre Festival which took home five.

Ayn Inserto delivered a tour-de-force performance with her personal journey Down the Rabbit Hole accompanied by an orchestra that was sharp and flexible. She is clearly at home in any environment, executing complicated orchestration of original jazz pieces in a small, tight venue for 17 plus musicians.

Playwright Carole Lockwood’s play while set in the past resonates much too much in today’s world.

Yes size is definitely on the theatrical table for purposes of this “review/essay” of King Kong along with other observations. Perhaps, I should label this review with a sub-headline called “In Defense of Spectacle”.

“Church & State”, now on stage at the Pearl McManus theatre, in downtown Palm Springs, explores the hot button topics and issues concerning the role of guns, the Second Amendment, the NRA, and the role that God and religion play in our politics, but not necessarily in that order.

In order to survive and remain vital American Theatre Critics Association must become younger and more diverse. Intersectionality and inclusion is an ever greater driving force for producers, theatre companies and their critics. The dynamics of that synergy were explored through panels and programming of what has evolved as an annual New York conference.

As the mostly sold-out shows for the Boston Lyric Opera’s premiere of Schoenberg in Hollywood attest, the internationally acclaimed composer Tod Machover’s brilliant operatic treatment and modernist-like musical score shines. A minimal cast is “small but big.”

In a New York Times interview, the playwright, Jaclyn Backhaus, admits that the work is essentially an expanded autobiography. As it opens, an almost-30-year-old, single Punjabi-American woman is talking to herself while she’s digging into fistfuls of dirt in the backyard.

Kaija Saaariaho weaves live music, enhanced voices and electronically generated extensions of the orchestra through the Rose Theater in Only the Sound Remains. Her opera based on two Noh stories is having its US premiere at the White Light Festival of Lincoln Center. This is an intimate work which succeeds mysteriously in filling a large space.