Theatre
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The Dorset Theatre Festival Presents RED
An Exploration of the Value and Meaning of Art
By: - Jun 22nd, 2014Red is a play imbued with tensions between the past and the future, art and commerce, light and dark, the intellectual and the emotional. Does art matter?
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Tony Winner Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell for WTF
To Co Star in Sam Shepherd Drama in Williamstown
By: - Jun 19th, 2014In 2011 Nina Arianda one of the most talented actresses of her generation was nominated for a Tony as the lead in a revival of Born Yesterday. Some say as a young unknown she was robbed. In 2012 she returned to Broadway and nailed a Tony for Vanda the dominatrix in the David Ives play Venus in Fur. Amazingly she will come to Williamstown Theatre Festival through a casting change announced today. With the hot Sam Rockwell as her co star act fast if you want to see the Sam Shepherd play Fool for Love.
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Doubt at Oldcastle Theater
A Neat little Parable in One Act
By: - Jun 17th, 2014Oldcastle actors make a good effort and interesting choices in John Patrick Shanley's award-winning play. The ever capable Christine Decker plays Sister Aloysius with a wry humor that makes her character more human, more likeable perhaps, and yet also more fallible.
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Kiss Me Kate at Barrington Stage
A Musical Birthday Cake for 20th Season
By: - Jun 16th, 2014Kiss Me Kate was Cole Porter's biggest hit and the only one of his shows to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award presented for Best Musical. It is being given a stunning revival at Barrington Stage Company in a lavish production celebrating its 20th anniversary. With all of that iconic music and stunning choreography this is a fabulous way to launch the season in the Berkshires.
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Noises Off is a Silly Play
At The Public in Pittsburgh
By: - Jun 15th, 2014Noises Off (by playwright Michael Frayn, now playing at the Public) is a silly play about a silly play. Or, more accurately: it’s a silly play about the silly things that occur when a group of people tries to put on a silly play.
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Death of the Author at LA's Geffen Playhouse
World Premiere by Steven Drukman
By: - Jun 06th, 2014Steven Drukman’s multi-layered text of ambition, heartbreak, and cutthroat competition that is now center stage in American culture is not only cleverly written it is also funny. The opening night audience, heavily weighted with young people in their twenties, and students from UCLA, caught and punctuated with laughter, every nuance and irony of the situations the characters found themselves in.
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Emmy Winner Marg Helgenberger Riveting
Stars in The Other Place by Sharr White at Barrington Stage
By: - Jun 06th, 2014At mid career Emmy winner Marg Helgenberger is making the transition from TV to stage in the Berkshires. She is galvanic in Sharr White's complex and riveting The Other Place at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. She would like to take this hit production back home to LA.
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Smart People Funny Treatment of The Serious
Playwright Lydia Diamond Articulates Race and Sex in America
By: - Jun 05th, 2014Are our biases and prejudices hard-wired? Four Harvard-connected intellectuals: a doctor, an actress, a psychologist, and a neurobiologist studying the human brain’s response to race all search for love, success, and identity. But it is a complex world. Written with insight tempered by barbed wit, Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly) cleverly speaks to the nature of racism, stereotypes, and sexual mores in the 21st Century. It is provocative, funny but often painfully true.
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Shakespeare’s Will Stars Kristin Wold
Launches 37th Season of Shakespeare and Company
By: - Jun 01st, 2014On the occasion of the 450th birthday of William Shakespeare the 37th season of Shakespeare & Company is chock full of the Bard. Even the contemporary play by Vern Thiessen "Shakespeare's Will" is about him. Well, his wife and mother of their three children, Anne Hathaway, actually. In a brilliant one woman performance the redoubtable Kristin Wold plays several characters with compelling skill and heart warming charisma.
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War of the Roses at EclecticPond
Shakespeare in Indianapolis
By: - May 29th, 2014In a city that rarely sees a production of Shakespeare without an easily recognizable name, the EclecticPond Theatre Company (ETC) has become a welcome respite. The group, which was founded in 2010, has embraced some of the Bard’s lesser-known works, with productions like “The Comedy of Errors†and “Shakespeare Wrote What? and “10x10.†Now, about to close its third season, ETC decided to tackle something big.
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Old Globe Play by Christopher Durang
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in San Diego
By: - May 29th, 2014Chistopher Durang has been poking his playwright fingers into society’s eyes for years with the result being he now has a loyal and growing fan base. And with good reason too. He’s a brilliant, highly educated, critical -thinking writer and playwright who loves his chosen profession. And he’s not afraid to write over-the-top material for actors.
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If/Then Stars the Amazing Idina Menzel
Lightweight Musical by Team that Created Next to Normal
By: - May 27th, 2014Were it not for the star power of Idina Menzel "If/Then" an underwhelming Broadway musical would never have made it past previews. It is actually selling well by the team that created "The Normal Heart" which is currently a special for HBO. In addition to the bankable Menzel keep an eye on the fabulous LaChanze in a galvanic supporting role.
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BenDeLaCreme in Terminally Delightful
Camp Following Off Broadway
By: - May 27th, 2014With much fanfare, whistles, hollers, shouts from the audience, and a rousing musical introduction, the larger than life, black-haired and fully made up LaCreme, wearing a glistening blue sequined gown with a sash that read Miss Congeniality, took to the stage.
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The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno
Beckett in Suburbia
By: - May 26th, 2014Set in suburbia near the mountains The Realistic Jones revolves around the Jones couple John and Pony barging in on their new neighbors the Jones couple Bob and Jennifer. What starts as nonsensical small talk soon devolves into nasty barbs and sparing males with distraught, perplexed, suffering wives. There is dark humor in this critically acclaimed existential play which soon after its high energy opening scenes stops making sense.
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Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill
Audra McDonald Evokes Jazz Legend Billie Holiday
By: - May 26th, 2014There is an uncomfortable duality about Audra McDonald's performance of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. The script presents an over the top, improbable take on the sordid life of jazz legend Billie Holiday. But when she sings the result is so real and authentic that it feels like a documentary. While the play is a cliche ridden jumble of a truly sad life the music is simply magnificent.
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'Die letzten Zeugen' - Berliner Festspiele 2014
Thoughts about Theatertreffen, May 2-18
By: - May 18th, 2014The 2014 Theatertreffen included pure theatre productions, as well as performances, installations, podium discussions and the docu-drama 'Die letzten Zeugen' (The Last Witnesses) of six Jewish concentration camp survivors. The venerable Burgtheater, Vienna, presented the drama to standing room audiences.
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The Tempest Is Magical At A.R.T.
A Brilliant Reshaping of Shakespeare's Storm-Swept Saga
By: - May 17th, 2014Prospero is a brilliant sorcerer in this like no other production of The Tempest. Magic and dreams intertwine. The magic was created by Teller (the silent one of illusionists Penn & Teller). When a gaggle of shipwrecked aristocrats wash up on the shores of Prospero’s mysterious island, they find themselves immersed in a world of revenge, trickery and amazement. Accompanied by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's Dust Bowl balladry, beautifully staged, Teller’s magic, and Pilobolus's movement, this Shakespearean homage wonderfully animates spirits, monsters and myths. This is theatre as spectacle and spectacular theatre.
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Julianne Boyd on 20 Years of Barrington Stage
A Commitment to Serious Theatre in the Berkshires
By: - May 17th, 2014Exhausted from an allnighter of becoming a grandmother for the fourth time Julianne Boyd was as high octane as usual. She has an all consuming, combustive approach for building and sustaining Barrington Stage Company though its first twenty years. That growth and success has come from a commitment to a balanced program pf popular musicals and risk taking productions of dramas that address serious social and political themes.
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Julianne Boyd of Barrington Stage Company
Celebrating Twenty Years in the Berkshires
By: - May 15th, 2014Arriving at Dottie's in Pittsfield for breakfast with Julianne Boyd, artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, several individuals notified me that she was running late. She had been up all night texting with family and friends about the birth of her fourth granddaughter. Eventually she arrived both exhausted and energized to discuss the upcoming 20th season of the company.
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Hope and Gravity at City Theatre
A Freefalling Drama in Pittsburgh.
By: - May 14th, 2014Hope and Gravity (currently at City Theater, in an excellent production directed by Tracy Brigden), interweaves the stories of nine characters whose lives intersect with an inexplicable and tragic elevator accident.
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Candida and Blithe Spirit in Pittsburgh
Exploring Similarities of Classics
By: - May 14th, 2014The productions of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida (at the Pittsburgh Public Theater) and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit (at PICT Classic Theatre) have a good deal in common: both plays are twentieth-century British comedies that dig humor out of marital relations and shine some light (more brightly in the Shaw, less so in the Coward) on male chauvinism, and both productions faithfully reproduce the period and style of the playwright and his era.
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Barrington Stage's New Associate Artists
Pat McCorkle, Scott Pinkney, Brian Prather, Charlie Siedenburg
By: - May 14th, 2014Barrington Stage Company announces four new Associate Artists, all of whom are working at Barrington Stage in 2014 – casting director Pat McCorkle, lighting designer Scott Pinkney, scenic designer Brian Prather, and press director Charlie Siedenburg.
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Into the Woods A Terrific Trip At Lyric Stage
Sondheim's Musical Walk On the Fairy Tale Wild Side
By: - May 13th, 2014A Stephen Sondheim sonata to the childhood bedtime stories with adult twists, Into the Woods at the LyricStage Company is a nearly picture perfect illustration of somewhat fractured melodious fairy tales. With an outstanding cast, there is glorious score, sprinkled humor, very human disappointment and scary supernatural presented in wonderful music, movement and words. This may be one of Artistic Director Spiro Veloudos best productions. It is a wonderful last show to celebrate the Lyric's 40th Anniversary year.
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Carrie, The Musical Rages At SpeakEasy
Tormented High School Girl Wins Violent Retribution
By: - May 13th, 2014Kids can be cruel. Hell, people can be cruel. Carrie White has always been an outsider. Constantly bullied and tormented at school and tyrannized by a fanatical religious mother, she begins to have hope that things will change when unexpectedly she is asked to the senior prom. But severe cruelty by her classmates is unleashed, and Carrie's terrifying and horrific power is her revenge.
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Of Mice and Men at Hubbard Hall
A Steinbeck Masterpiece
By: - May 13th, 2014The Theater Company at Hubbard Hall makes a good attempt at bringing life into the hardluck story of friendship between two migrant farm workers in this classic human parable.
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