Theatre
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Finding Neverland A Spectacular Journey
American Rep Wows With Broadway Bound Musical
By: - Aug 15th, 2014Based upon the story of the creation of the 1904 now classic play Peter Pan, Finding Neverland at the American Repertory Theatre is a wonderful theatrical multigenerational event. With spectacular performances, magnificent stagecraft and beautiful music, this is a sight and sound treat. Already set for Broadway in 2015, getting a ticket might be difficult, but well worth the effort. Bravo Diane Paulus and A.R. T.!
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A Chorus Line at The Weston Playhouse
Vermont Production Highlights Turmoil of Broadway's Gypsys
By: - Aug 15th, 2014Innovative when it was developed in 1975, time has stolen some of the sizzle from this intimate dance-centered musical. The dance and music are still entertaining and the heart and passion of the young characters carry the show. Weston’s production is solid and professional with a talented cast.
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Dancing Lessons by Mark St. Germain
Swept Off Our Feet at Barrington Stage
By: - Aug 14th, 2014Dancing Lessons is the ninth play and eighth world permiere by Mark St. Germain at Barrington Stage Company. As a signifier of their long standing relationship the new play is directed by Julianne Boyd the founder of the company. In recent years his plays have gone on to successful tours of regional companies. Starring the astonishing John Cariani with a stunning dancing partner in Paige Davis this play has the potential to be on the road for years.
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Breakfast with Playwright Mark St. Germain
Discussing Dancing Lessons for Barrington Stage
By: - Aug 11th, 2014Honoring his many contributions The Mark St. Germain Stage was named for him by Pittsfield's Barrington Stage Company. A number of his best known works- Freud's Last Sessions, Best of Enemies, Dr. Ruth- have premiered for the company of artistic director, Julianne Boyd. This week the latest Dancing Lessons will open. In what has become an annual ritual we met at Dottie's in Pittsfield for breakfast to discuss this new work as well as the challenges of a life in theatre.
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WAM Theatre Fresh Takes
reading of Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England by Madeleine George
By: - Aug 11th, 2014WAM Theatre will present the reading on Sunday, August 17 at 3:00 p.m. at No. Six Depot Roastery and Café, 6 Depot Street in West Stockbridge, MA. Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England is the fourth presentation in the new Fresh Takes play reading series, which offers new and reimagined works that tell women’s stories. The series has proven popular with audiences and the first three readings sold out.
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Signature Magical Piece for Shakespeare & Company
By: - Aug 11th, 2014A delightful comedy of love combining the world of reality with the unseen world of spirits and faeries, all with a backdrop of the Jazz Age of New Orleans.
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Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 at Shakespeare & Company
Shorter and Sweeter in Jonathan Epstein's Adatation
By: - Aug 09th, 2014Sitting through Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 can be a long slog on Elizabethan inspired cruel on the bottom benches at Shakespeare & Company. In a brisk, rich and often hilarious reduction and conflation by Jonathan Epstein to two long acts with intermission, clocking at three hours, through this delicious production mind prevails over matter. One's sore bottom in this case. During his 450th year S&Co. has been presenting Shakespeare up the wazoo.
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Penny Arcade Returns to Joe's Pub
Longing Lasts Longer at NY's Public Theatre
By: - Aug 09th, 2014Though Longing Lasts Longer had a limited run in June, it is being brought back, to Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre this coming October and November. For the past number decades, Penny Arcade, who worked with Warhol at the tender age of 15, has been taking her act around the world. And wherever she performs people line up to hear what she has to say.
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The Old Man and the Old Moon
PigPen Theatre Co. Anchors WTF Season
By: - Aug 08th, 2014The original production of The Old Man and the Old Moon by PigPen Theatre Company ran for 100 performances Off Broadway. The company which was formed in 2008 twice won first prize for a new play during the annual NYC Fringe Festival. It arrives to end the Williamstown Theatre Festival's season on its Nikos Stage. This fairy tale for kids of all ages will primarily appeal to those under thirty.
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Design For Living at the Unicorn in Stockbridge
A Revival of Noel Coward by Berkshire Theatre Group
By: - Aug 08th, 2014Noel Coward wrote this play to be performed with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. They met in 1921 and became friends, often discussing their dreams of success. They made a pact that all three perform in one of Coward’s plays once they had all become successful.
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Kander Ebb's The Visit at Williamstown
Chita Rivera in Something Old with Something New
By: - Aug 07th, 2014When it opened at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago the Kander and Ebb Broadway bound musical The Visit got nipped in the bud by 9/11. After mixed reviews for a 2008 production, also starring Chita Rivera, it gathered dust. With a revised book by Terrence McNally and judicious cuts to one act by director John Doyle it is enjoying a strong run and mostly favorable reviews at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through August 17.
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Ronald Harwood’s Quartet at Old Globe
Charming Comedy In San Diego to August 24
By: - Aug 06th, 2014Ronald Harwood’s deliciously sly comedy features four meaty roles for actors of a “certain ageâ€, and those roles are filled by four actors who perform as though they were born for their parts: Old Globe favorite Robert Foxworth plays shy and introverted Reginald Paget, a fussy, classically trained singer, of the old school who bristles at the suggestive shenanigans and randy language of Wilfred Bond, portrayed by Roger Forbes who fancies himself as the retirement home lothario.
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Buyer and Cellar at Mark Taper Forum
Stars Michel Urie In Barbra Streisand Homage
By: - Jul 31st, 2014The wacky 90 minute satire, is pure fiction when it comes to the narrative, however, celebrity super-stars like Barbra Streisand often become the subjects of faux stories, books and plays. Playwright Jonathan Tolins’ pays his homage to Streisand throughout in a tender way but doesn’t let her off the hook completely.
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Julius Ceasar at Shakespeare & Company
Tina Packer Directs Seven Actors in Forty Roles
By: - Jul 31st, 2014Seven actors masterfully play a modern version of Shakespeare's timeless tale of Julius Caesar. Packer got the idea of seven actors from Shakespeare himself, who used that number of actors when he took his plays on tour.
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Cedars at Berkshire Theatre Group
James Naughton Solos in Premiere by Erik Tarloff
By: - Jul 30th, 2014James Naughton, two time Tony award winner, brings his formidable acting skills to this one man play. We get to know him as a son, husband, father, lawyer and, at times, a complete wreck. Naughton’s voice is a true instrument, displaying anger, humor, despair, bitterness, weakness, fear.
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'Cedars' World Premier starring James Naughton
Berkshire Theater Festival hosts a World Premier
By: - Jul 30th, 2014A play with two characters, one comatose, that takes place in a hospital room. Though the setting is constricted, the play reveals the complexity of its main character, Gabe, and his relationships. James Naughton delivers a nuanced performance.
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The Orphan of Zhao at La Jolla Playhouse,
BD Wong in Ancient Chinese Tale
By: - Jul 29th, 2014“The Orphan of Zhaoâ€, at La Jolla Playhouse, is receiving an intelligent and intense revival of the classic Chinese legend that has roots in the fourth century BC. Starring Tony winner BD Wong (M Butterfly) it runs through August 2.
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Ether Dome by Elizabeth Egloff a Snore
West Coast Premiere at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - Jul 29th, 2014“Ether Dome†written by Elizabeth Egloff, and directed by Michael Wilson, is a fascinating subject for exploration regarding the subject of pain and the quest of medicine to conquer a condition that has afflicted human beings since the dawn of time. Compelling as the subject matter may be, the action of the piece comes off as sluggish; periodically engaging the audience, only later to “anesthetize†them (pun intended) by having the story wander to Paris, France, New York City, and then back to Boston.
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Into the Woods at Old Globe
Inventive Co Production with Fiasco Theatre
By: - Jul 29th, 2014The musical has seen many script versions and hundreds of stagings by theatres all over the world in the last twenty-eight years. It’s considered to be one of the greatest musicals of all time. “Into the Woods†2014 version, is once again a reimagined, inventive and energetic co-production this time Old Globe partnered with the critically acclaimed Fiasco Theatre that originated at the McCarter Theatre Center.
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Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love
Cowboy Chic in Williamstown
By: - Jul 25th, 2014Now 70 Sam Shepard has created a riveting existential American theatre through a cowboy chic deconstuction of the mythology of the American West. In the manner of Beckett's theatre of the absurd the tense and tight drama of Fool for Love is confined to a motel room. There is a death struggle between Tony winner, the formidable Nina Arainda, and the desperate cowboy played by Sam Rockwell. Since 1970 it is the sixth Shepard production for Williamstown Theatre Festival.
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The Golem of Havana
Oi Vey Olé
By: - Jul 24th, 2014Set in Cuba during the last gasp of the Batista regime a new musical for Barrington Stage company is a complicated balancing act between Jewish history and mythology and Cuba's Santaria tradition during the Revolution. The Golem of Havana mixes musical mataphors between Eurpoean Klezmer and Cuban Salsa
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Berliner Festspiele, Foreign Affairs - 2014
An Attempt to Understand
By: - Jul 23rd, 2014The 2014 Berliner Festspiele continued with a July program titled 'Foreign Affairs.' Artistic Director, Matthias von Hartz, presented a third summer festival of theatre, dance, music and visual arts that lasted nearly three weeks and ended July 13. It was a quest for collaborations and finding new forms of cultural expressions.
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Breaking the Code at Barrington Stage Company
Enigma of Alan Turing Brilliantly Portrayed by Mark. H. Dold
By: - Jul 21st, 2014As a member of the top secret team of 10,000 at Bletchley Park Alan Turning was key to the effort to Breaking the Code of the German enigma apparatus. With endless daily permutations it was used to send orders to the maurading U Boat fleets decimating allied shipping. In the role of a lifetime Mark H. Dold has totally inhabited the persona of the complex and tormented individual whom Churchill credited with shortening and ending the war. Time Magazine named Turing among the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. At Barrington Stage until August 2.
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Living on Love in Williamstown
Theatre Debut for Diva Renée Fleming
By: - Jul 20th, 2014The theatrical debut of Renée Fleming in the comedy Living On Love is a delight and triumph. The renowned opera diva plays, what else, a renowned opera diva. That would seem to be easy and obvious but Fleming underplays the role with a naturalism that parallels her real life persona. She is just charming and enchanting. Especially when intereacting with a superb cast directed by Tony winner Kathleen Marshall. Based on marquee bankability and an enthusiastic reception this Williamstown production has a shot of making it to Broadway.
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This is Our Youth: Steppenwolf to Broadway
Kenneth Lonergan's Classic Play Coming to the Cort
By: - Jul 19th, 2014If these are the children of the 80’s and now the parents of the 21st century, what kind of kids are they producing? In the upper echelons of New York, many of these characters are working their way out of adolescence in paretts’ homes or supported by their successful parents. Drugs and alcohol continue to make the passage to adulthood even more complicated than it always has been. If our children have to smell a bit to help us release the offspring we love so much and wish to protect, the stink has not gone. And Broadway should welcome them in this taut, funny, moving Steppenwolf production.
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