Theatre
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Playwright John Guare at Barrington Stage
Updating His Adaptation of His Girl Friday
By: - Aug 01st, 2015The renowned playwright John Guare was in Pittsfield recently for the first days of rehearsal of his play His Girl Friday. It is being directed by Julianne Boyd for Barrington Stage Company. He and others in the production met with the media for a lively give and take.
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Feast a Celebration of Ethnic Diversity in Chicago
Albany Park Theater Project and Goodman Theatre
By: - Jul 31st, 2015No food is consumed by audience members in Feast, although by the end of the production, I was thinking fondly of a plate of lamb biryani with pappadums or perhaps some chicken mole.
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Greensboro: A Requiem at American Theater Company.
Chicago Production by ATC Youth Ensemble
By: - Jul 31st, 2015The play tells the story of the demonstration by mostly black textile mill workers in Greensboro to protest the Ku Klux Klan. The march was publicized as taking place on November 3, 1979, and the marchers had obtained a police permit. It resulted in five deaths.
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Rezo Gabriadze's Ramona at Lincoln Center
An Enchanting Puppet Romance Between Two Engines
By: - Jul 29th, 2015"The long forgotten and warm word 'locomotive' awoke in my mind - breathing vapor clouds, hoarse, smelling of coal smoke, even in wet weather." The passionate romance of two engines began here and takes an improbable journey as Ermon reminds his wife Ramona that you never say no when someone is in trouble. This is grown up puppetry from a great Georgian artist.
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Side by Side by Sondheim
North Coast Repertory Theatre through August 16
By: - Jul 28th, 2015The North Coast Repertory Theatre production of “Side By Side By Sondheim”, does Mr. Sondheim proud! That enormous canon is selectively and lovingly brought to life by four gifted and talented singer/actors in a 90 minute free flowing tribute to his genius under the inspired direction of North Coast artistic director David Ellenstein.
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Girlfriend at the Kirk Douglas Theatre
World Premiere Musical by Todd Almond & Matthew Sweet
By: - Jul 28th, 2015Todd Almond’s new rock musical “Girlfriend” with music and lyrics by Matthew Sweet is a vanguard production that addresses the issues of understanding, acceptance, as well as the hopes and dreams of two gay teenage boys who discover one another in rural Nebraska in the summer of 1993.
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Kafka on the Shore at Lincoln Center
Murakami's Tale Adapted for the Stage by Frank Galati
By: - Jul 26th, 2015When the director, Yukio Ninagawa, was a small boy he was struck by the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. In Murikama's book, Ninagawa found the perfect use for dioramas in theatre. Ninagama writes that this tale has intimate detail in scenes as well as dynamic narrative scale. On stage, the 'dioramas' move fluidly between scenes, which are enacted in one frame, but surrounded often by others.
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Opera Is Coming to Cambrige, NY
Rigoletto and Old Maid & the Thief at Hubbard Hall
By: - Jul 25th, 2015Hubbard Hall Opera Theater offers up something for everyone with their summer season.
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Yasmina Reza Two-Hander at S&Co;. in Lenox
The Unexpected Man Directed by Seth Gordon
By: - Jul 25th, 2015From 1987 to 2006 the French playwright, Yasmina Reza, has written seven plays of which two, Art (1994) and God of Carnage (2006) have been hits. From 1995 Shakespeare & Company is presenting the rarely produced two-hander of strangers on a train, an author and a woman who has read him in depth, The Unexpected Man.
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Partch's Delusion of Fury at Lincoln Center
Heiner Goebbels Expands the Experience
By: - Jul 25th, 2015The stage at City Center was beautifully packed with an array of instruments designed by Harry Partch, a modern American composer of original theatrical events. Classifying him as a composer of concert music is, as Partch said, as foolish as saying he is a kangaroo. The brilliant director Heiner Goebbels expands the Partch experience with set objects and lighting. Here is the future of American musical production conceived over a half century ago.
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Blair Underwood in Paradise Blue
World Premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival
By: - Jul 24th, 2015For the fourth production of the season at Williamstown Theatre Festival yet again it is a world premiere with the casting of stars like Blair Underwood and De'adre Aziza. Unlike the prior three productions last night there was a genuine and encouraging standing O from the enthusiastic audience. There are compelling components in an uneven play by Dominque Morisseau. She aspires to do for her native Detroit what August Wilson achieves in his Century Cycle for Pittsburgh,
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Jarry's Ubu Roi by Cheek by Jowl
Lincoln Center Festival Presents a Classic
By: - Jul 23rd, 2015Guess who's coming to dinner? Turns out Pere and Mere Ubu and their coterie of political acquaintances. Cheek by Jowl embeds the Jarry play at a dinner party. We can not decipher the dinner table conversation, but surely it is the same subject as the century-old play that is fresh and even futuristic. Here we see war, and regicide. Czars are toppled and Ukraine and Lithuania are in the news. Gold is hidden away in beneficial accounts. Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose.
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Lost in Yonkers Soars at Barrington Stage
First Neil Simon Production for Pittsfield Company is Staggering
By: - Jul 20th, 2015Back in January Julianne Boyd announced to the media how she had always wanted to present a play by an American master, Neil Simon. She chose his Pulitzer and Tony winning Lost in Yonkers a bitter sweet saga of a poor immigrant Jewish family under the thumb of a mean and brutal matriarch. Director Jenn Thompson earned a Drama Desk nomination for a prior production of the play which she has now staged brilliantly in the Berkshires.
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Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash
Through August at Chicago's Mercury Theatre
By: - Jul 19th, 2015Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash is a jukebox musical with no plot to speak of. It is playing at the Mercury Theatre in Chicago through August
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Talking with Chicago Star Faye Butler
Currently on Stage at Goodman Theatre
By: - Jul 19th, 2015Faye Butler describes herself as an actor who sings, not a singer who acts. She's a theater and musical star in Chicago and nationally and has won many awards and honors for her work. She currently plays the cleaning lady, Cassandra, who knows the source of her name only too well, in the current Goodman Theatre production, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. I interviewed her about that role and her other stage and cabaret work. She let me in on a few secrets about her voice, her vocal practices -- and her dreams. (Also see our review of the play.)
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Hilarious World Premiere by Suzanne Heathcote
Collaboration with Berkshire Theratre Group Launches New Neighborhood
By: - Jul 19th, 2015In a bold move Berkshire Theatre Group has collaborated with New Neighborhood and a world premiere of its very first production. I Saw My Neighbor On the Train and I Didn’t Even Smile by the brilliant young British playwright, Suzanne Heathcote, is the must see show of the Berkshire season.
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Cynthia Nixon in Carey Perloff’s Kinship
Sisterhood is Powerful at Williamstown Theatre Festival
By: - Jul 17th, 2015Given the all star casting a number of shows during Mandy Greenfield's first season as artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival have sold out. This is particularly true for the smaller Nikos Stage where Tony, Emmy and Grammy winner Cynthia Nixon is featured in the three-hander Kinship by Carey Perloff, directed by Jo Bonney. In an example of gender reversal, the apparent point of this play, a woman in power, a successful editor, mentors a rookie reporter and risks career and family in an obsession that turns as dark as the fate of the Greek queen Phèdre. Perloff was directing a production of the Racine classic when it inspired her to write this play.
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Brilliant Adventures by Alistair McDowall
St Chicago's New Steep Theatre Through August 15
By: - Jul 14th, 2015Brilliant Adventures, the grim and grimly funny new Steep Theatre production, was written by Alistair McDowall and directed by Robin Witt. It was first performed in Manchester in 2011 and won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.
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Bells Are Ringing at the Colonial
Reviving a 1950s Hit Broadway Musical in the Berkshires
By: - Jul 12th, 2015The terrific husband and wife team of Kate Baldwin and Graham Rowat star in a revival of the 1950s musical Bells are Ringing. It brings star power to the Colonial in Pittsfield to July 26.
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Tony Winning Actor/Director Roger Rees at 71
Artistic Director of Williamstown Theater Festival 2004 to 2007
By: - Jul 11th, 2015Roger Rees, who has died following a medical procedure in May, had a long association with the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The renowned Tony winning actor/ director first came to Williamstown as an actor. From 2004 to 2007 he was the artistic director of WTF. He returned last summer for a revival of the Kander and Ebb musical The Visit which is currently on Broadway starring Chita Rivera.
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912Oz by Lloyd Pace at NY's Sanctuary
Katrin Hilbe Directs a Timeless Moment
By: - Jul 09th, 20159/11 is a tempting topic for playwrights and novelists who want to dig deeper into its impact. Lloyd Pace bores into the hearts and spirits of two survivors who are in the grips of the Big Events long after the rubble is cleared and New York starts to recover. In nooks and crannies of the darting words that erupt, we feel some of the intense, lasting impact. Brilliantly directed by Katrin Hilbe and staged with unusual simplicity and power.
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Foreign Affairs, Berliner Festspiele, Germany 2015
International Performing Arts Festival ended July 5
By: - Jul 08th, 2015Artistic Director Matthias von Hartz offered a 'Gesamtkunstwerk,' combining performance and visual arts aspects during the ten day long festival. Included were the 24 hour long lasting 'Mount Olympus' by Belgian director/choreographer Jan Fabre with Troubleyn Company. Then, Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment offered 'Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare' - all 36 Shakespeare plays, reduced to each 45 minute plots, over nine days. A stunning success! As intended, performers and audiences were challenged to their limits.
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Deathtrap at Berkshire Theatre Group
Now Kissing in Stockbridge
By: - Jul 08th, 2015In this staging of Ira Levin's enduring 1978 comic-mystery the men do not kiss. That cause a sensation decades ago on Broadway. The lip smacker is now banned by Levin's estate. But in a play that is chock full of clues you would have to be utterly clueless not to conclude that the washed up playwright Sidney (Gregg Edelman) isn't shagging his former student Clifford (Tom Pecinka). For a fun evening with no heavy lifting get thee to Stockbridge.
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"Composition…Master-Pieces…Identity”
Breathing Life into the Words of Gertrude Stein
By: - Jul 07th, 2015Here, curiously, Edward Rubin conflates his passion for Gertrude Stein and Ludwig Wittgenstein! Go figure. The Off Off production that prompts him to quote generously from Stein has, alas, closed at the time of posting this review. If you are intrigued by "A rose is a rose is a rose" then this is a name that surely will smell as sweet.
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Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in Chicago
Durang Play at Goodman Theatre Through July 26
By: - Jul 06th, 2015Steve Scott's new Goodman Theatre production is funny and charming and much of its wit rests on the many theatrical references and stage in-jokes (fond references to Chekhov and Greek tragedies, and to theater masters such as Stanislavski and Meisner). In addition, monologues by three of its characters are compelling and humorous set pieces.
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