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Theatre

  • Elizabeth Aspenlieder Sparkles in Bad Dates at Shakespeare & Company

    Buoyant Theresa Rebeck Comedy a Perfect Antidote for the Midwinter Blues

    By: Larry Murray - Jan 19th, 2009

    Not to be missed is this one-waman show showcasing the extraordiary talents of Elizabeth Aspenlieder. The rollicking comedy about dating is directed by Adrianne Krstansky and plays at Shakespeare & Company's Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre through March 8.

  • The Seagull Startling At American Rep

    A New Perspective on a Modern Classic

    By: Mark Favermann - Jan 17th, 2009

    Not your expected Chekhov's usual fare, this version of The Seagull is quite contemporary and dreamlike. The American Repertory Theatre's edginess works in unexpected ways with a modern classic. This Seagull brilliantly flies its own unpredictable course.

  • Barrington Stage Company Plans Exciting 15th Anniversary

    Carousel, Sleuth, Streetcar on Mainstage, World Premiere on Stage 2

    By: Larry Murray - Jan 16th, 2009

    Barrington's Main Stage will feature audience favorites Carousel, Streetcar Named Desire and Sleuth, while on Stage 2 Mark St. Germain's Freud's Last Session will receive its world premiere, followed by Glen Berger's off-Broadway hit, Underneath the Lintel. Bill Finn's Musical Theatre Lab will be back with two workshops, as will the Barrington Stage Company's Youth Theatre presenting Disney's High School Musical 2.

  • Charming The Corn Is Green at Huntington

    Kate Burton Shines in Spirited Portrayal

    By: Mark Favermann - Jan 15th, 2009

    The Corn is Green is a delightful play about hope and redemption. Set in a Welsh coal mining village, the narrative follows an eccentric spinster's journey of educating the children of the area in spite of community opposition and personality quirks. Her unsophisticated star pupil has the ability to gain a scholarship to Oxford, but fate and love raise their hands.

  • Bad Dates at Shakespeare & Company, Take Two

    Elizabeth Aspenlieder prepares for the role of a lifetime

    By: Larry Murray - Jan 11th, 2009

    Bad Dates by Theresa Rebeck examines the subject of relationships with humor and irony. Elizabeth Aspenlieder stars and Adrienne Krstansky directs. This second look examines the timeless themes underlying a bittersweet comedy.

  • Actor Paul Benedict Dead At 70

    Character Actor Dies on The Vineyard

    By: Mark Favermann - Jan 07th, 2009

    Paul Benedict was one of those actors that always brought a smile. He had a distinctive and unusual face and a strange British accent though he was born in New Mexico and raised in Massachusetts. He appeared often with distinction in theatre, film and television. Perhaps not a giant in the world of entertainment, he was certainly a super supporting star. Often he was cast as an eccentric, a looney or an oddball. He was an American original.

  • Elizabeth Aspenlieder to Star in Bad Dates

    Shakespeare & Company Stages Theresa Rebeck Play

    By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 19th, 2008

    We dropped in on Elizabeth Aspenlieder and the director Adrianne Krstansky as they were rehearsing the one woman play "Bad Dates" by Theresa Rebeck. It runs through March 8 at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. It's the first winter production in the new Evelyn P. Bernstein Theatre.

  • Berkshire Theatre Festival Announces Adventurous 2009 Season

    World Premiere of Red Remembers with David Garrison

    By: Larry Murray - Dec 18th, 2008

    BTF promises a fast paced 2009 with Broadway show tunes, "Peter Pan" and "Candide." A world premiere of "Red Remembers," a play about baseball and Red Barber starring David Garrison. The regional premiere of the disturbing play Sicko, plus Neil Simon, Ibsen and Brian Friel.

  • Greetings from Nicholas Martin

    Williamstown Theatre Festival Looks Forward to 2009 Season

    By: Nicholas Martin - Dec 17th, 2008

    By every account, from a strong box office, the enthusiasm of the audience, and rave reviews from critics, the first season of Nicholas Martin as artistic director of the renowned Williamstown Theatre Festival was an unqualified success. The world, however, has changed, and not for the better, since we last heard from him at the end of the summer season. Here Martin updates us with some reassurances for the coming season that will not compromise on its remarkable artistic standards.

  • August: Osage County at the Music Box

    2008 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award Winner

    By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 14th, 2008

    The play by Tracy Lotts "August: Osage County" premiered with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2007. On Broadway it won the 2008 Tony Award as Best Drama as will as a Pulitzer Prize. In addition to New York the play is currently running in London and a US tour will start this summer.

  • Surrealism at American Repertory Theatre

    Charlie Chaplin's Granddaughter Performs Magically

    By: Mark Favermann - Dec 11th, 2008

    A bit magical, a bit dance, even a bit dreamlike and a whole lot entertaining, Aurelia's Oratorio is a surprisingly beautiful holiday performance present from ART. Aurelia Thierree is a lissome limbed , gifted performer whose personality shines in sometimes spectacular ways performing an art that is part imagination and part athleticism.

  • Vermont's Weston Playhouse and Dorset Theatre Festival Summer Schedules

    Two gems nestled in the Northeast Kingdom

    By: Larry Murray - Dec 09th, 2008

    As winter descends on New England, it is the perfect time to plan for the joys of Summer, 2009. Here a sneak preview of what is planned for the Weston Playhouse and Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont.

  • Steve Cuiffo Is Lenny Bruce at Mass MoCA

    Yaddee, Yaddee, Yadda

    By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 07th, 2008

    By the time he overdosed on drugs in 1966 Lenny Bruce was broke and wasted. He was routinely busted for obsenity and few if any club owners would book him. Also on any given night you never knew which Lenny would show up, the hilarious stand up comic, or the sincere but not really funny crusader and social commentator. Cuiffo presented more of the latter than the former.

  • This Wonderful Life at Barrington Stage Company

    Tom Beckett Recreates Capra's Beloved Film

    By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 06th, 2008

    With remarkable affection and daunting energy Tom Beckett, in a smash hit, one man show, compresses the 1946 Frank Carpa 130 minute film "It's a Wonderful Life" to just an hour and twenty minutes while portraying some 30 characters. During these hard times our spirits soar as Clarence the Angel earns his wings.

  • Rock 'n' Roll at Huntington Theatre Company

    Perhaps Tom Stoppard's Best Play Extended to Dec. 13

    By: Mark Favermann - Nov 13th, 2008

    This boffo hit has been extended to December 13. Beginning in August 1968 with Russian tanks rolling into Prague and flower children mellowing in Cambridge, England and ending in 1990 with the tanks rolling out of Prague and the Rolling Stones rocking and rolling, this is a sweeping panoramic drama spanning two very different countries, three interconnected generations, and 22 unstable years. The Huntington showcases Tom Stoppard brilliantly intertwining love, rock and roll and the fall of Communism.

  • Anne Galjour You Can't Get There From Here

    One Woman Performance at MCLA's Gallery 51

    By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 11th, 2008

    This new one woman show "You Can't Get There From Here" presented at MCLA's Gallery 51 by Ann Galjour was commissioned by Dartmouth College as a part of its Class Divide initiative. Although Cajun born in Louisiana here Galjour evokes a number of individuals in rural, down and out New England.

  • David Mamet's November

    Timely Production by Boston's Lyric Stage Company

    By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 02nd, 2008

    In David Mamet's play "November" having its hilarious New England premiere at Lyric Stage Company of Boston we view the desperate final days of the lame duck President Charles Smith played with ferocious zest by Richard Snee.

  • Wishful Drinking at Huntington Theatre Co.

    Carrie Fisher's Star Shines in Spite of Her Life

    By: Mark Favermann - Oct 31st, 2008

    From a teenage sexpot in Shampoo with Warren Beatty to a sexy Princess Leia in Star Wars with the intergalactic hairstyle of all time, Carrie Fisher was well on her way to becoming, if not a Tinseltown icon like her mother Debby Reynolds, a second generation Hollywood star. Somehow the hair-raising trauma of her dysfunctional family life, personal addictions and bipolar condition derailed her adult life. One of the results is this clever, witty and often brilliant telling of the highs and mostly lows of her unique life. She says it best, " If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that's unacceptable." Pop culture at its twisted best, laughing with Carrie Fisher is phenomenal.

  • Machinal by Sophie Treadwell at Williamstheatre

    Avant-garde Production of Expressionist Drama

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 25th, 2008

    In 1927 Ruth Snyder was convicted of murdering her husband. A witness to the execution, Thomas Howard, published a front page image in the Daily News that caused a sensation. Based on this event Sophie Treadwell wrote the 1928 play "Machinal" which was a Broadway hit. It has been stunningly recreated by Williamstheatre.

  • The Communist Dracula Pageant World Premiere At American Repertory Theatre

    Ceausescu Meets Vlad the Impaler About History

    By: Mark Favermann - Oct 24th, 2008

    Nicolae Ceausecu and Elena Ceausescu were Romanian tyrants who over time became more egregious in their actions and more charicatures of what they actually wanted to be. Playwright Anne Washburn creates a fantastic theatrical mix and throws in Vlad the Impaler to give the play a bit of red blooded myth along with political history.

  • Boleros For The Disenchanted at The Calderwood Theatre in Boston's South End

    Playwright José Rivera's Puerto Rican Family Offering

    By: Mark Favermann - Oct 21st, 2008

    The Puerto Rican migration from the Caribbean island paradise to the gritty Bronx was a mass movement that effected hundreds of thousands of families. José Riviera's new play focuses upon one family's trials and testament.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird at Barrington Stage Company

    Harper Lee's Tale of Southern Racism

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 16th, 2008

    Harper Lee's 1960 novel of coming to age in a racist town in the Deep South in the mid 1930s "To Kill a Mockingbird" won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. It has become a standard in class rooms. And an inspiration to the many students attending and writing reports on this stunning Barrington Stage Company production.

  • Yvonne Latty's In Conflict

    Temple University Production at NY's Culture Project

    By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 30th, 2008

    The play "In Conflict" based on interviews by Yvonne Latty with Iraq veterans originated at Temple University. It won the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is now running Off Broadway in repertory with "The Atheist" through Culture Project.

  • Kristin Scott Thomas in Chekhov's The Seagull

    British Production Soars on Broadway

    By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 30th, 2008

    In London Kristin Scott Thomas won the Olivier Award as Best Actress for her performance of Arkadina in Chekhov's "The Seagull." Through December 21 the stunning Royal Court Theatre production is staged at New York's Walter Kerr Theatre.

  • Irina Brook Debuts Canterville Ghost at Shakespeare & Company

    Oscar Wilde Adaptation has Plenty of Laughs, Not Much Heart

    By: Larry Murray - Sep 29th, 2008

    Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost (1897) has served as the foundation for at least six film and television adaptations (1944-1996), several ballets (2006 and others) and even an opera (1966). The classic Oscar Wilde story is wonderfully suited to the theater as well, having been presented on stage by theatre companies throughout the world. With such a rich creative history, why then did Shakespeare & Company decide to start over from scratch?

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