Theatre
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Conor McPherson's Shining City at Barrington Stage
Irish Drama Features Mark H. Dold as Priest Turned Therapist
By: - Jun 22nd, 2015The title Shining City is a Bliblical reference that "A town built on a hill cannot be hidden." But there is much that is obscure and repressed in this drama by the Irish playwright Conor McPherson.
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Thoreau or, Return to Walden
David Adkins Bonkers in the Woods
By: - Jun 21st, 2015If you have read Walden and think you know Henry David Thoreau guess again. The world premiere Thoreau or Return to Walden written by and starring David Adkins, directed by Eric Hill presents the New England transcendentalist and abolitionist as an eccentric just short of lunacy.
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Heisenberg with Mary Louise Parker
Simon Stephens Brings Quantum Entanglement to Life
By: - Jun 20th, 2015Heisenberg is a dashing new play by the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog, a hit on Broadway. His new play is more complete and satisfying, although its subject might disturb people who need predictability and order. Certainly Mary Louise Parker doesn't, as she loosey-goosey's through her life. Don't be put off by hints of quantum physics in the title. The play is uproarious and the best take on a May-December romance you'll see. It begins with a kiss, passes through the usual, and ends with indeterminacy.
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The Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon Continues Series C
Love in Many Surprising Forms
By: - Jun 19th, 2015The EST, play after play, performance after performance, delivers first rate productions of new playwrights. The EST is of the most exiting companies in New York, or anywhere.
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Monteverdi Trilogy Heads to the Berkshires
Early Music Festival Travels to Great Barrington
By: - Jun 18th, 2015Every two years the Boston Early Music Festival schedules a week of concerts and operas that make Boston the world capital of early music. This year's focus was on Claudio Monteverdi, the first great opera composer. All three of his surviving operas were given stylish productions and featured some of the best singers of early music in the world. Taken from Greek myth and ancient Roman history, the stories resonate with the lives we live today.
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New Country at Cherry Lane Theatre in NYC
Intimate Show Makes a Big Noise
By: - Jun 16th, 2015The good news is that the edgy. enticing New Country, due to popular demand, has been extended to June 27 at Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City. It is good enough to see twice. This is the kind of show that comes along every once in awhile. Presented by Fair Trade Productions in association with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and written by Mark Roberts this is a must see production.
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Man of La Mancha Thrills at Barrington Stage
Jeff McCarthy in a Career Defining Performance
By: - Jun 15th, 2015When Jeff McCarthy brings down the house with an iconic barnburner The Impossible Dream it is richly evident that the fifty-year-old musical Man of La Mancha still packs a whallop that can blow the socks off of an audience. This Barrington Stage production that launches the Mainstage of Barrington Stage in Pittsfield is the benchmark hit of the still new 2015 Berkshire theatre season. It is doubtful that any actor will match or surpass his performance as the male lead in a musical.
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Gilbert Conducts Joan of Arc at the Stake
Marion Cotilliard Simply Magnificent as Joan
By: - Jun 13th, 2015The North American continent does not have military heroines. A 17th century Mexican nun, Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, was censored for her apostatic writings, but never picked up a sword. Without queens and saints, we have struggled into modern times. For comfort when France was challenged, as it often has been in history, the country looks to its patron saint, Joan of Arc, who helped end the Hundred Years War before she was burned at the stake. The New York Philharmonic reminded us of her trials in the ineffably moving composition of Paul Claudel and Arthur Honegger.
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Harold Pinter's Betrayal
The North Coast Repertory Theatre to June 28
By: - Jun 13th, 2015The North Coast Repertory Theatre’s potent production of marriage infidelity and betrayal is full of clever directorial touches, like the timing of Pinteresque pauses and the overall pacing between the excellent ensemble cast of Carla Harting, Jeffrey Frace, and Richard Baird, with Benjamin Cole contributing as a pompous and frustrated European waiter.
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Everybody's Talking World Premiere
Harry Nilsson Based Musical at San Diego Repertory Theatre
By: - Jun 09th, 2015“Everybody’s Talkin’” is more of a free-flowing musical tribute than a traditional book musical. There isn’t one line of scripted dialogue spoken by the performers. It’s just the genius of Harry Nilsson who was a poet/philosopher and a reluctant troubadour performer, whose songs lend themselves to the inspired arrangements by Gunderson and the staging by Velasco that propel the show along.
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After All The Terrible Things I Do At Calderwood
Self-Loathing and Acceptance Emotionally Wrestle
By: - Jun 05th, 2015What makes ordinary people do terrible things? Daniel, a young, gay aspiring writer, seeks a fresh start and a new job at the local bookstore that he loved as a child. When he meets Linda, the Filipina-American bookshop owner, they discover a connection that goes deeper than a love of literature. Artistic Director Peter DuBois directs the New England premiere of A. Rey Pamatmat’s at times gripping and intimate new play about changing attitudes, forgiveness and second chances.
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The Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon
Existential Questions Dramatic and Personal
By: - Jun 05th, 2015The Ensemble Studio Theatre just won a 2015 Drama Desk Award its commitment to producing new works by American playwrights since 1968. This year's 35th Marathon of Short Plays shows why the award is so deserved.
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Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
Tenn Annual Festival September 24 to 27
By: - Jun 03rd, 2015The 10th anniversary Festival will take place in various venues in the seaside village of Provincetown from Thursday, September 24 through Sunday, September 27, 2015. The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival was founded in 2006 in the birthplace of American Modern Theater where Williams worked on many of his major plays during the 1940s. The TW Festival is the nation’s largest performing arts festival dedicated to celebrating and expanding the understanding of America’s great playwright.
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Fugard Theatre's A Human Being Died that Night
Truth and Reconciliation at the BAM Fisher
By: - Jun 03rd, 2015Both Plato and Aristotle wrote about the catharsis of tragedy in drama. South Africa with some success took the idea and tried to find truth and healing post apartheid. In large measure they succeeded. This wonderful play, conceived by Eric Abraham and written by Nicholas Wright, suggests why in a personal and incredibly moving adaptation of a true story.
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The How and the Why at S&Co.
Going With the Flow
By: - May 31st, 2015After a brutal winter on ever level Shakespeare & Company has launched the season with an intense and absorbing two hander The How and the Way by dramatist Sarah Treem. It stages a tense meeting between two brilliant women and scientists. A seething graduate student Rachel (Bridget Sacarino) has just learned the identify of her birth mother Zelda (Rod Randolph) a renowned scholar. By coincidence and one of many impossibilities the women are remarkably alike and even share the same field of evolutionary biology. If you can get beyond that unlikely twist of fate and other absurd literary devices this is an absorbing evening of tense and spellbinding theatre with superb performances by two fine actresses.
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A.R.Gurney's What I Did Last Summer
Jim Simpson Directs at the Signature
By: - May 28th, 2015What I Did Last Summer is A.R. Gurney's latest play and a delight. How could it be a dream summer at the beach when Dad is off fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, Mom is lonely, Elsie is trying to lose weight and Charlie is trying to become a man without a model around? Yet it is as directe by Jim Simpson
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Arms and the Man at Old Globe
First Class Shavian Production
By: - May 27th, 2015“Arms and the Manâ€, crisply directed by Jessica Stone is blessed with cast of talented and seasoned performers who when they find themselves on a stage in a sharply and insightfully written farce/satire, know exactly how to handle their characters and the situations.
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Raven Theatre
Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
By: - May 26th, 2015The script and production are the same as earlier versions in most every way, with the addition of a few Russian place names and two characters with Russian accents. The playbill doesn't mention the era and geographic setting (or any of the scene locations) that AstonRep has chosen.
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Masha's Seagull at Berkshire Theatre Group
Stunning Solo by Virginia Scheuer Launches Season
By: - May 23rd, 2015Launching the season on a chilly Memorial Day weekend Bekshire Theatre Group is presenting a variation on Chekhov with Masha's Seagull. In a transfer from Bentonville, Arkansas, directed by Eric Hill it proves to be a family affair. The play is written by Justin Scheuer, stars his wife, Virginia, with set and lighting by their son Nathan. Given the quality of the production it deserves a longer run.
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Playwright Lillian Hellman
Reflections on Two Chicago Productions
By: - May 23rd, 2015Last week I saw two masterpieces of 20th century theater by Lillian Hellman, the great playwright and left wing political activist. (I‘m a fan on both counts.) The two shows were extremely different in production values but demonstrated the power of performance.
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Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon of One Acts
Series A Opens the 35th Year
By: - May 22nd, 2015The Ensemble Studio Theatre is presenting its 35th anniversary Marathon of one act plays. Although proud of their production, Hand to God, which is now on Broadway with five Tony nominations, they are hardly sitting on their laurels.
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Hand to God at the Booth on Broadway
Stunning Performances in an Edgy Play
By: - May 21st, 2015Robert Askins' play started at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and has not stopped since. It arrived on Broadway in time to receive five Tony nominations this year: three for actors, one for the play and the other for direction. Shows you what aa hand to God can do.
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Butler by Richard Strand
Civil War Comedy Launches Berkshire Season
By: - May 21st, 2015With a striking resemblance to the Civil War General Benjamin Butler the hilarious performance by David Schramm in "Butler" launches the Berkshire season at Barrington Stage Company. Based on actual characters and events the playwright, Richard Strand, stretches the facts to create an evening of outrageous comedy.
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The Last Two People On Earth Sings at A.R.T.
An Apocalyptic Vaudeville Full of Fun and Despair
By: - May 20th, 2015Literally Apocalypse Wow, it’s the end of the world as we know it. A flood of biblical proportions leaves the earth with only two people. An always happy one and a mostly despairing one discover their common language is song and dance. Together they chronicle the rise and fall and hopeful rise again of humankind through music. Song and dance run the gamut from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim, and R.E.M. to Queen.
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Inana by Michele Lowe
Timeline Theatre's Chicago Premiere
By: - May 19th, 2015Playwright Michele Lowe started out as a journalist with a degree from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Her plays have been produced around the U.S. and in other countries. Both Inana and Victoria Musica were finalists for the American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Award in 2010, the first time that a playwright was nominated for two plays in one season.
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