Theatre
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Berkshire Theatre News - July 2009
Local Theatre Community Thriving, Growing
By: - Jul 01st, 2009In recent years the Berkshires has emerged as a major theatre community. With four professional companies and eight stages it's becoming a force in American theatre. And behind the scenes there is another show going on as well. Read all about it.
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A Revolutionary Hamlet Returns to Shakespeare & Company
Clashing Characters Whip Up a Perfect Storm on Stage
By: - Jun 28th, 2009The intensity of this production is so overwhelming it's hard to believe that it's been trimmed by an hour for modern audiences. Despite the simple setting and smaller cast Shakespeare & Company's Hamlet has more heart and guts than most. If you didn't see this groundbreaking Hamlet last time 'round it's time to get thee to Lenox.
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Carousel Spins into Pittsfield
Triumphant Hit for Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jun 22nd, 2009The Main Stage season for Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield always starts with a musical. Artistic director, Julianne Boyd, has produced a winner in the old chestnut and certain hit the 1945 "Carousel" by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Be still dear heart.
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Not So Random Thoughts about Harold Pinter
Pinter's Mirror at Shakespeare & Company
By: - Jun 21st, 2009Harold Pinter's - "Pinter's Mirror" is presented with riveting performances by Shakespear & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. It is one play in two acts and three unique pieces: A Slight Ache - Family Voices - and Victoria Station.
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Broadway by the Year at Berkshire Theatre Festival
A Joyful Look Back at the Hit Songs of 1930 and 1964
By: - Jun 21st, 2009We all know that Broadway shows of the past reflected the times in which they were created, but were often wrong about the direction of things. In 1930 the songs were still upbeat and in 1964 they were still had happy endings. Turns out Stephen Sondheim was way ahead of his time.
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Pinter's Mirror at Shakespeare & Company
Agony and Ecstasy of Three One Act Plays
By: - Jun 20th, 2009The nonsensical patter between Edward and Flora in Pinter's "A Slight Ache" recalls the tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, arguing over carrots and turnips in Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." Here the futile, absurdist desperation is acted out in a seemingly bucolic but actually barren and desperate English cottage garden, over tea, during the gorgeous longest day of the year. Not. How Pinteresque.
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An Older and Wiser Hamlet Returns to Shakespeare & Company
Time Changes Everything Says Director Eleanor Holdridge
By: - Jun 19th, 2009Shakespeare's great play Hamlet is one anyone can understand and learn from. Even Presidents and Kings. This immensely popular version of the classic play began in Lenox, traveled the country, and returns for a Summer long run.
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Theatre Returns to The Mount
Edith Wharton's Xingu August 20-23
By: - Jun 19th, 2009Until its move to the Lenox campus Shakespeare & Company for many years presented its productions at the historic home of writer Edith Wharton The Mount in Lenox. From August 20-23 The Wharton Salon in partnership with The Mount will stage her comedy Xingu adapted from a short story by Dennis Krausnick.
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Golda's Balcony with Annette Miller
Shakespeare & Company Completes Its Diva Series Trilogy
By: - Jun 18th, 2009William Gibson's "The Miracle Worker" won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1959. But Gibson's "Golda" folded after a few performances in 1977. It was reworked as a one woman play "Golda's Balcony" with a premiere at Shakespeare & Company in 2002. Annette Miller won the Norton Award for that performance. She is back in Lenox, with original director, Daniel Gidron, as one third of the sensational Diva Series at S&Co.
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Freud's Last Session at Barrington Stage Company
Freud Spars With C.S. Lewis About God, Sex, Suicide
By: - Jun 15th, 2009In a classic meeting of the minds, two titans of the Twentieth Century, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis debate timeless issues that still resonate today.
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Colonial Cabaret Opens With Mandy Patinkin
A Sensational Start to a New Series
By: - Jun 14th, 2009In a great addition to the Summer's offerings, a rewarding evening with singer-actor Mandy Patinkin paves the way for monthly cabaret performances at the Colonial.
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Penelope Kreitzer in The Actors Rehearse the Story of Charlotte Salomon
Second Play in the Diva Series at Shakespeare & Company
By: - Jun 11th, 2009Before Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943)and her husband were murdered at Aushwitz, in the South of France, where she had fled from Germany she created 769 works on paper comprising a picture play "Life? or Theatre? A play with music." Attempts to mount the play in Israel resulted in the disaster and conflict that is conveyed in the one woman performance of "The Actors Rehearse the Story of Charlotte Salomon" stunningly performed by Penelope Kreitzer.
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The Producers a Smash Hit at Pittsfield's Colonial Theatre
First Rate Production from Cohoes Delivers the Goods
By: - Jun 05th, 2009Last night the near-sellout audience in the Colonial howled with laughter and gasped with delight as scene after scene of merry mayhem unfolded. As the company of The Producers took their first bows in the Berkshires, the audience stood and literally cheered this modest but clever company from Cohoes, New York. It was a moment, and a show, to remember.
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Tina Packer Is Shirley Valentine
Diva Series at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox
By: - May 28th, 2009Tina Packer, the founder of Shakespeare & Company, drew on memories of her mother and aunt to develop her signature role as "Shirley Valentine" the mad Liverpool housewife who tosses the apron for a fling on a Greek island. The stunning one woman performance launches the Diva Series in Lenox.
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Enchanting Pirates At Huntington Theatre Co.
A Brilliant Adaptation of Pirates of Penzance
By: - May 25th, 2009Pirates are always an interesting subject. Lately, the romance has been taken away by the threatening, even deadly Somali pirates on the waterways off the Horn of Africa. But a revival of positive pirate interest may evolve from the wonderful Pirates! at the Huntington Theatre Company. It is a compellingly entertaining late Spring entertainment.
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Romeo and Juliet Launches Shakespeare & Company's 32nd Season
The First of a Record 18 Productions
By: - May 24th, 2009"Romeo oh Romeo wherefore art though Romeo?" Well, at Shakespeare & Company, actually, to start a busy season of 18 productions in Lenox, Mass. This version of Romeo and Juliet has been on the road since January with more than 70 performances by a group of seven talented young actors in 14 different roles.
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Intense Faith Healer Opens Berkshire Theatre Festival
Like the Play, Sometimes it Works, Sometimes it Doesn't
By: - May 24th, 2009The BTF season begins with this challenging play by Brian Friel exploring the shifting concept of truth in the modern world. Does he heal? How does it happen? Three characters tell their intertwined stories through four extended monologues. They do not appear on stage together until the final curtain call.
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Second Sight: Grey Gardens at Lyric Stage
The Litter Box as Musical Theatre
By: - May 18th, 2009Big Edie Bouvier Beal was the aunt of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. She lived for many years in a ramshackle 28 room mansion "Grey Gardens" with her daughter, Little Edie, Beal in East Hampton, Long Island. In 1975 the Maysles Brothers documented them living with cats, and rodents amid mountains of garbage. They were the subject of a recent HBO drama as well as the musical now running at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston.
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David Mamet's Romance at American Repertory Theatre
Courtroom Farce Makes a Mockery of the Law
By: - May 17th, 2009There is a long standing relationship between the American Repertory Theatre and arguably the greatest American playwright of his generation, David Mamet. While ART has seen world premieres of several of his plays it is currently staging a mini festival with "Romance" (2005) on its main stage, the Loeb Drama Center, and two successive Mamet productions for its smaller Zero Arrow Theatre.
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Berkshire Theatre Professionals Receive Several Elliot Norton Awards
Receiving Honors are Nicholas Martin, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, Kate Burton
By: - May 13th, 2009As Berkshire Fine Arts has stretched to cover more Boston theatre, the Elliot Norton Awards have looked westward to honor several of the Berkshire's best.
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A Spellbinding Grey Gardens Rises at Boston's Lyric Stage Company
The Prisoners of a Crumbling Estate
By: - May 12th, 2009Lyric Stage Company is in top form with the New England Premiere of this Tony award musical about the famously dysfunctional branch of the Kennedy dynasty—the Bouvier-Beales—who were being hounded by county health officials threatening to evict them from their cottage in the Hamptons, Grey Gardens.
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Mandy Patinkin at the Colonial Theatre June 13
Accompanied by Paul Ford on Piano
By: - May 07th, 2009Tony and Emmy Award-winner Mandy Patinkin has an extensive list of theatre credits that include Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theater. He won a Tony Award for his 1980 Broadway debut as Che in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita and was again nominated in 1984 for his starring role in the Pulitzer Prize winning musical Sunday in the Park With George. He returned to Broadway in the Tony Award-winning musical The Secret Garden (1991). He will perform in Pittsfield for a one nighter at the Colonial Theatre on June 13.
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Dickey Betts and the Producers Slated for the Colonial Theatre
Springtime for Hitler in Pittsfield
By: - May 06th, 2009For a night of country cookin with a bluesy twang check out Dickey Betts in a one nighter at the Colonial Theatre on May 20. They'll be goose stepping down the aisle from June 4 through 8 when The Producers hits the boards in Pittsfield.
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Jerry Springer: The Opera at Boston's Speakeasy Stage Company
NE Premiere of Musical Satire Attracts Pickets and Praise
By: - May 06th, 2009Like "Porgy and Bess" and "Tommy" before it, this musical parody uses the high art form of operatic theatre, but is down to earth in content. This spunky New England Premiere by the SpeakEasy Stage Company is a jaw dropper, and that is why audiences are flocking to see it.
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Mahaiwe: Berkshire Playwrights Lab Launches Project with New David Mamet Play
Gala Event on May 29 Features Celebrities
By: - May 05th, 2009New plays by David Mamet, Eric Bogosian, Larry Gelbart and Joan Ackermann will be read by Karen Allen and others at the BTL Gala at the Mahaiwe on May 29. Proceeds will help fund the free series of readings.
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