Barrington Stage Company (BSC) announces full casting for the world premiere of Mark St. Germain’s new play The Happiest Man on Earth (May 24-June 17) and a new production of the legendary Kander & Ebb musical Cabaret (June 14-July 8).

Now 82, at long last the Native American artist, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, is the subject of a retrospective at a major New York Museum. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from April 19 to August 13, 202

Aside from their earth tones, this footwear has nothing to do with Frank Lloyd Wright. As a branding strategy, it is an extremely strange choice for a contemporary sports shoe design.

The Winter’s Tale can be a confusing play. Written late in Shakespeare’s career, it is usually grouped with The Tempest, Pericles, and Cymbeline, as one of the “romance” plays.

Hoosic River Watershed Association (HooRWA) invites poets and musicians in the Hoosic River Watershed to find inspiration and craft a poem, song, or instrumental piece about and for the Hoosic River and/or its tributaries.

The 2023 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) New Play Award goes to "the ripple, the wave that carried me home." The 2023 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award goes to Madison Fiedler for her play, "Spay." ATCA also presents citations to Suzan-Lori Parks for her play, "Sally & Tom," and Rebecca Gilman for her piece, "Swing State."

The Metropolitan Opera’s heavily promoted Champion is concluding its run in New York. The first opera by Terrence Blanchard, which succeeds his Fire in My Bones at the Met, has a weaker score than its successor.  One feels that Blanchard as composer of film scores (he is well-known as a colleague of Spike Lee), may have succumbed to the notion that music should lie under the visual track.  

Flynn has made hundreds, perhaps thousands of drawings over the last 50 years. Choosing just 50 (really 61) drawings is nearly an impossible task. William Flynn is an artist that spends days drawing. He finds ways to express the beauty in mundane objects; an old baseball mitt, ski boots, a bicycle that was run over and flattened, cars at junkyards, an old arm chair, pop-up books, whirly-gigs.

Live from the Edge by Universes has moments that will reach you emotionally. But the question remains, “What is it?” – Theater? A performance piece? A poetry slam?  They describe themselves as a theater company, but I would describe it as being closer to a performance piece/poetry slam than theater.

Fat Ham turns Shakespeare’s Hamlet upside down without minimizing the issues the original raises or the brilliance. The play by James IJames won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it is easy to see why.

Yes, there are some funny moments and some touching ones, but overall, it is hard to become engaged with the characters. Except for Janice, they appear only in short scenes that allow for little depth of character.

The Season opens May 26 with Ken Ludwig's Dear Jack, Dear Louise, with David Gow and Zoya Martin, outdoors in The Roman Garden Theatre.

The headline concerts include two striking vocalists: Roberta Donnay with the Prohibition Mob Band, and the first pairing of vocalist Alexis Cole with the Amherst Jazz Orchestra. Free “jazz-al-fresco” takes place on Saturday, June 10, and there will be two jazz brunches.

This exhibition in North Adams ends on May 29 and so we also introduce the Old Stone Mill Center in Adams, MA, on Rt. 8, outside of downtown, direction to S. Adams. Both are worth a visit!

As a painter Jeff Weaver is a man for all seasons. Some of the most engaging works are winter scenes. It’s the Gloucester that tourists never see. He creates meticulous paintings of weathered, storm battered, Gloucester commercial and residential landmarks. The works document vintage images of a working port and fishing community undergoing a change to an economy based on tourism and a glut of generic condos.

Tan Dun became famous for his Academy Award-winning track for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger.  A crossover classical composer who grew up in the country in China, and had not heard Beethoven until he was eighteen, he has made a career, merging East and West, using the conventions and tonalities of each culture.  This merger is most effective in his operas, symphonies and concertos.

 Hosted by MacArthur Genius-Award-winning playwright, director, and performance artist Taylor Mac, BSC’s Gala will transport attendees to the pre-war Berlin Kit Kat Club for an evening of pleasure featuring a cabaret lineup that will include burlesque artist Gypsy Layne Cabaret & Co.

Rather than a simple blood-sucking horror, the play focuses largely on the relationship between Oskar, a bullied teenage boy from a broken home with a drunken mother and a largely neglectful father, and Eli, a new neighbor - who possesses an androgynous look; acts mostly like a girl; but insists that she’s not a girl, with no further explanation.

The new comedy "Tracy Jones" is running at the Ft. Lauderdale-area's Island City Stage as the last leg of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. "Tracy Jones," by Stephen Kaplan, is about a lonely woman who throws a party for every other woman in her state also named Tracy Jones. The play highlights loneliness and the human need for connection. .

An example of Department of Play’s approach was recently on display at Northeastern University’s Gallery 360’s exhibition At Play. The collective views its mission as fostering group discovery and involvement in the thoughtful (playful?) envisioning of an evolving urban environment.

Each year at the Ojai Festival in California a different Music Director is given the freedom and the resources to imagine four days of musical brainstorming. Ojai’s signature blend of an enchanted setting and an audience voracious in its appetite for challenge and discovery has inspired a distinguished series of musical innovators—from Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, and Igor Stravinsky and Jeremy Denk, Dawn Upshaw and Barbara Hannigan.  John Adams has directed twice. 

By popular demand Barrington Stage Company brings back a world premiere by Mark St Germain on the stage that bears his name. The Happiest Man on Earth is a one-man show based on the holocaust memoir The Happiest Man on Earth published by Eddie Jaku when he was one hundred years old. It is profoundly performed by Kenneth Tigar.

Whenever it's on the menu I generally order osso bucco. I have enjoyed it from Palm Beach to Bologna. Even made it from time to time at home. The version at Frankie's in Lenox was among the best ever

The show is based on the novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which was turned into a fine film in 1993 and a more recent film in 2020. The young adult book, as it would now be described, was written in 1911.

A longtime Pillow favorite, Mark Morris Dance Group will bring audiences The Look of Love, an homage to the music of the late Burt Bacharach, which had its world premiere in 2022 and which Fjord Review called “a breath of fresh, brilliant, joyous—and much needed—air.” A towering figure of popular music, Bacharach is known for his soaring melodies and unique orchestrations influenced by jazz, rock, and Brazilian music.