Theatre
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Georgie: The Life and Death of George Rose
Sharon Playhouse Season Opens May 14
By: - Jan 14th, 2015Sharon Playhouse will present a developmental workshop of Ed Dixon’s Georgie: The Life and Death of George Rose to kick off its 2015 Season from May 14-17 and May 28-31 in the Stage 2 at the Bok Gallery. John Simpkins directs.
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Barrington Stage Company's 10X10
Set for February 12 to March 1
By: - Jan 14th, 2015Barrington Stage Company, has announced casting for the 10-minute plays for the 4th Annual 10X10 New Play Festival, with performances February 12 through March 1, as part of the 2015 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival.
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Barrington Stage Announces 2015 Season
Dreaming the Impossible Dream
By: - Jan 13th, 2015On a miserable January day the media gathered for lunch on stage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Artistic director Julianne Boyd announced programming for the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage. There are still slots to fill on the Mark St. Germain second stage. Once that is complete Boyd will move on to schedule the cabaret largely based on who is available for the 99 seat basement venue. The company will again collaborate with the Berkshire Museum to present a youth oriented production.
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A Perfect Future At SpeakEasy Stage
30something Angst in the 21st Century
By: - Jan 13th, 2015A Play of 21st Century manners, A Perfect Future tells the story of Claire and Max finding their values put to the test. When their best friends Alex and Elena announce they are having a baby, things begin to unravel in their perfect world. Claire is climbing the corporate ladder in advertising, while her husband Max is a puppeteer for PBS. With friends entering into parenthood, they begin to ask themselves who they are and where they are going so fast. And what happened to the indie-rock kids that hated everything their parents believed in?
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Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
A Delightful Chekhovian Spicy Comedy at Huntington Theatre
By: - Jan 08th, 2015A Chekhovian mashup from master of comedy playwright Christopher Durang, Vanya and Sonia's quiet, bucolic and rather boring life is upended when their glamorous movie star sister Masha arrives with her brawny boy toy Spike in tow. This Tony Award-winning Broadway treat is both a rollicking and touching comedy that pays loving homage to Chekhov's classic themes of loss and existential longing.
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Molly Ivins' Wit and Wisdom at Lyric
Karen MacDonald Triumphant as Red Hot Patriot
By: - Jan 06th, 2015Splendidly portrayed by Karen MacDonald, Molly Ivins was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal from deep in the heart of Texas,. She had a rapier wit that made her one of America’s highest-regarded political satirists and beloved rabble-rousers. Red Hot Patriot weaves personal anecdotes with Molly’s humor and wisdom, celebrating her courage and tenacity. This is especially true even when a complacent America wasn’t listening. She was a personable monument to First Amendment rights and virtues. This is a terrific play about an American original.
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Callback
Parts Unknown
By: - Jan 01st, 2015When Arnie Reisman was our editor at Boston After Dark my friend Larry Stark covered theatre. That was the 1960s and he's still at it. For the New Year he sent this story now posted with his permission.
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Indianapolis Theatre
Top Ten Shows of 2014
By: - Dec 25th, 2014Every theatre is unique and the shows that they produce there reflect that diversity. I’m grateful Indy has so many great ones to choose from. There were some wonderful shows in 2014 and here’s a top ten list of my personal favorites. Make sure you keep an eye on these theatre in 2015!
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Renée Fleming Broadway Bound
Yet Another Williamstown Theatre Festival Transfer
By: - Dec 23rd, 2014In what was widely reviewed as a potential career move last summer artistic director Jenny Gersten enticed opera diva Renee Fleming to appear as an opera diva in a comedy for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Living on Love, starring Fleming, will open on Broadway in April. It will join another WTF production of Elepant Man with Fool for Love to follow. Gersten also exported the musicals Far from Heaven and Bridges of Madison County. She is currently on a hiatus from theatre.
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Playwright Mark St. Germain on Theatre
Keynote Address at Orlando Shakespeare Festival
By: - Dec 20th, 2014Some months ago playwright Mark St. Germain mentioned a keynote address he delivered to the Orlando Shakespeare Festival. It included comments on critics and their role. It is a lively topic which we have often discussed. Here is the text of that speech.
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10x10 Upstreet Arts Festival Returns to Pittsfield
Short New Plays at Barrington Stage
By: - Dec 18th, 2014The 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival returns to downtown Pittsfield for the fourth year from February 12-22, 2014, and features music, theatre, dance, film, visual art, spoken word, comedy and more, including BSC’s 10X10 New Play Festival. Directors for the 10X10 New Play Festival are BSC Artistic Director Julianne Boyd and Artistic Associate and Director of New Play Development Stephanie Yankwitt.
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A Beef & Boards Christmas
Seasonal Celebration in Indianapolis
By: - Dec 16th, 2014The show mainly stumbles when it tries to do too much. There are times when Lucas, the quartet, co-hosts Wims and Shepard, Santa and six dancers are all vying for the audience’s attention on stage at the same time. The frantic nature of those numbers makes it hard to appreciate any single element, much less all of them at once.
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Willy Holtzman's Smart Blonde
World Premiere at Pittsburgh's City Theatre
By: - Dec 16th, 2014Willy Holtzman moves the story along at a brisk pace, pausing just long enough to give us a glimpse of some of the major milestones in Judy Holliday’s career and personal life (the show runs eighty minutes without intermission). The flashbacks shift fluidly into each other, thanks to quick costume changes and skillful choreography on the part of actors Jonathan Brody and Adam Heller, who play the roles of all of the other figures in Holliday’s life.
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A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
2014 Tony for Best Musical
By: - Dec 14th, 2014Based on the 1949 treasure Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets this 2014 Tony winning musical version A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is a smashing pure delight. Through two marvelous acts we just laughed ourselves silly.
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Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar
Among 2014 Top Ten Plays for NY Times
By: - Dec 12th, 2014In one act and 90 minutes Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar has compressed an explosive take on medieval Islam and its square peg in a round hole of the conundrum of contemporary American society. How does an ambitious individual of Muslim heritage assimilate and succeed in our corporate culture? Not really according to the compelling play Disgraced.
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George Eastman's Happy Hour
Set for CV REP’s 2015/2016 season.
By: - Dec 11th, 2014Playwright George Eastman has written a play rich in memory and in the memories of his two characters: eighty-three year-old Harry Townsend, and his forty-year-old married son Alan. Harry still lives in the get-away chalet he and Alan’s mother built in Vermont many years ago. Now he is just another widower living alone with his memories. The play is still in development.
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New York New York It’s a Helluva Town
Berkshires on Broadway
By: - Dec 09th, 2014In 2013 Shakespeare & Company produced a star studded gala Broadway in the Berkshires. With On the Town from Barrngton Stage and Williamstown Theater Festival's Elephant Man both currently enjoying rave reviews it seems more like The Berkshires on Broadway. Now WTF's Fool For Love is headed for the Great White Way next year.
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Hugh Jackman in The River
Fish Story of Ones That Got Away
By: - Dec 08th, 2014In the current film Birdman a cartoonish Hollywood star seeks to make his bones on Broadway. While Wolverine star Hugh Jackman is no stranger to Broadway in The River he appears up close and personal in an intimate play staged in the miniscule, by Broadway standards, Circle in the Square. Fans paid top dollar to get close to a beefy but uncannily talented celebrity.
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Necessary Monsters At SpeakEasy
Playwright/Actor Kuntz Disrupts Narrative Expectations
By: - Dec 07th, 2014Set in a cage and creatively dramatizing different presentations forms, "Necessary Monsters" by John Kuntz is a play that tells a fragmented story. Its title figuring into at least four story lines. “Necessary Monsters†is the name of a romance novel, a horror film, a bit of film noir, and a children’s television show. This is an unusual production that is part dream sequence, part pill-induced hallucination and serial killer nightmare. It is a provocative thinking person's entertainment.
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The Secret Garden at Capital Repertory Theater
A Great Way to Introduce Kids to Theater
By: - Nov 30th, 2014When actors take the stage as musicians, there are some sacrifices to be made. Can Cap Rep pull off this balancing act between innovation and performance standards? Just barely.
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Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin
LA's Geffen, Gil Cates Main Stage Until January 4
By: - Nov 28th, 2014In “Hershey Felder as Irving Berlinâ€, directed by Trevor Hay, now on the boards of the Gil Cates Main stage theatre, the genius of Berlin, is not only his longevity (he lived to be 101 years-old), but the prodigious output of his canon. We’re talking over one thousand songs over his career, many becoming major hits, which made him a household legend before he turned thirty.
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame
La Jolla Playhouse Premiere
By: - Nov 28th, 2014The masterful staging and direction of Scott Schwartz, who combines new orchestrations for this production from Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz’s 1996 original score, is blessed not only with a solid cast of supporting players and ensemble performers, but benefits from the local San Diego area SACRA/PROFANA choir whose singing and Gregorian chanting enriches all of the musical aspects of this impressive production.
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What the Butler Saw
Mark Taper Forum through December 21
By: - Nov 28th, 2014“What the Butler Saw†written by English playwright and ‘infant terrible’ Joe Orton, is classic English farce performed with stiff upper lip by a cast of clueless characters that looked as if they just stepped out of a West End theatre production. They find themselves on the stage of the Mark Taper Forum, bewildered as ever, but supremely confident in the correctness of their decisions.
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The Tale of the Allergist's Wife At Lyric Stage
Charles Busch's Broad Comedy of Culture
By: - Nov 23rd, 2014A middle-aged Upper-West-Side doctor’s wife spends her mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at MOMA, and evenings at BAM. Plunged into a mid-life crisis of Medea-like proportions, she’s shaken out of her lethargy by the sudden reappearance of a fascinating and somewhat mysterious childhood friend. This is a comedy filled with cultural humor about mid-life malaise.
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Brainy Funny Ruby Wax At Oberon
Absolutely Fabulous Writer/Actor Speaks Neuroscience
By: - Nov 20th, 2014American comedian/writer/television host Ruby Wax's Out Of Her Mind is a hilarious and a bit dark show. Brash but thoughtful, she touches on the contemporay toxins of envy, fame, television, getting rich, getting the perfect body, marriage, careers, the insatiable drive to win. And above all, staying busy while looking like you’re actually accomplishing something is a special annoyance. Ruby has written for and co-edited every episode of the British TV comedy Absolutely Fabulous, and her best-selling memoir How Do You Want Me? is a classic autobiography. She is a special talent.
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