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Theatre

  • Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in Vermont

    Finding Comedy in the Overwhelming Futility of Life.

    By: Leanne Jewett - Jul 19th, 2014

    A modern comedy mirroring the structure and themes of the master playwright Anton Chekov, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike finds humor in the regrets and disappointments of life as they are confronted during two days in the family home by three siblings in their middle age. This play wll run through July 26 at Vermont's Weston Playhouse.

  • A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter

    Produced by Eve Mugar Off Off Broadway

    By: Ariel Petrova - Jul 14th, 2014

    Jimmy's 43 E 7th St, New York, NY 10003 provided an off off setting for Harold Pinter's Slight Ache was produced by Eve Mugar.. Due to its brevity and the limited number of actors in the play, it provided the opportunity to mount a play in New York. She purchased the rights, sent the word out to fellow actors, raised some money on line and rented a venue for two nights

  • Out of the City Premieres at Dorset Theater Festival

    Turning 60 and Still Discovering Themselves

    By: Leanne Jewett - Jul 13th, 2014

    Two couples, celebrating a 60th birthday "out of the city" are still finding themselves in this new light comedy by Leslie Ayvazian set in the Poconos.

  • Michael Frayn’s Benefactors

    Skyscrapers for 1%ers at Berkshire Theatre Group

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 13th, 2014

    The triumph of the one percent and destruction of the middle class is underscored by the soaring speculation of urban real estate and resultant skyscraper residences. The 1984 play Benefactors by Michael Frayn focused on this topic which is being given a superb production at Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge

  • A Great Wilderness in Williamstown

    Drama Launches Nikos Season for WTF

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 11th, 2014

    In a mountaintop retreat in Samuel D. Hunter's, A Great Wilderness, through prayer, scripture and intent listening Walt counsels young men struggling with identity, confusion and the "sin" of homosexuality. This intense and thought provoking drama opens the Nikos Stage season for the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

  • Renée Fleming Living on Love

    First Career Dramatic Role at Williamstown Theatre Festival

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 07th, 2014

    Over the Fourth of July weekend Renée Fleming was the featured soloist for the opening night performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer season in Tanglewood. On July 16, for the first time in her career, Fleming will appear in a play Living on Love at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Depending upon its success at WTF the production may be bound for Broadway.

  • June Moon Brightens Williamstown

    Vintage Lardner / Kaufman Comedy Launches WTF Season

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 04th, 2014

    Mostly a moldy fig, the vintage, 1929 comedy June Moon about Tin Pan Alley, by Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman, seems like an oddly conservative choice to launch the Williamstown Theatre Festival season. With tedious plot exposition the play slogged through the first act but under the adept direction of Jessica Stone came alive hilariously in the second act.

  • Jessica Stone Returns to Williamstown Theatre Festival

    Remembering Her Mentor and Friend Nicholas Martin

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 02nd, 2014

    Jessica Stone made her debut as a director when through a hunch her mentor and friend, Nicholas Martin, tapped her for an all male production of Sondheim's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." That first effort was a smash hit for Williamstown Theatre Festival. It was followed by "Last of the Red Hot Lovers." She returns to the main stage this season directing "June Moon." Poignantly she discussed WTF as a family and the legacy of Martin.

  • Dog and Pony at Old Globe

    Wolrd Premiere Musical by Rick Elice and Michael Patrick Walker

    By: Jack Lyons - Jul 02nd, 2014

    California's Old Globe premiered a musical Dog and Pony by writer Rick Elice and composer Michael Patrick Walker. The wobbly story that Elice and Walker have fashioned comes from a meeting the two had discussing the idea of a workplace romantic comedy. It has been directed by Roger Rees.

  • The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful

    Drag Farce Launches Berkshire Theatre Group’s Season

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 30th, 2014

    The actors, Bill Bowers and Tom Hewitt, appears to have having as much if not more fun than the audience in a campy, over the top, drag farce the Charles Ludlam classic Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadul. It launches the season for the Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge. It's a hoot if you like that sort of thing.

  • Camus; Les Juste at The Trap Door

    Dynamic Reversals Charge This Chicago Interpretation

    By: Susan Hall - Jun 29th, 2014

    In some ways Camus’ plays are as difficult to translate as the famous first line of The Stranger, best expressed, “Today, mother died.” It is the ‘todayness’ that often gets lost in translation. By 'Regarding the Just' and twisting from stage action to commentary, Chicago's Trap Door succeeds in making Camus live.

  • Analog & Vinyl at the Weston Playhouse

    A World Premier

    By: Leanne Jewett - Jun 28th, 2014

    Weston Playhouse presents the World Premier of Paul Gordon's Analog and Vinyl. This quirky and charming modern musical comedy has been in development for three years.

  • David Suchet in The Last Confession

    Reaching Beyond Hercule Poirot in LA

    By: Jack Lyons - Jun 25th, 2014

    At LA’s Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre, David Suchet portrays Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, a friend and adviser to the recently crowned caretaker Pope John Paul I, the successor to the conservative Pope Paul VI. The actor is best known as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot through 74 episodes for Masterpiece Mystery on PBS.

  • The Country House by Donald Margulies

    LA’s Geffen Playhouse a World Premiere

    By: Jack Lyons - Jun 24th, 2014

    “The Country House” a world premiere by Donald Margulies deftly directed by the award winning Daniel Sullivan is a bit of a mishmash when it comes to knowing what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a comedy? Well, maybe. On the other hand, perhaps it’s a melodrama.

  • Working on a Special Day Transforms Italian Movie

    Chalk Talks at Barrington Stage

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 23rd, 2014

    Una Giornata Particolare was a 1977 Italian movie which earned two Academy Award nominations. It has been adapted for the stage as Working on a Special Day in a performance acted and directed by the Mexican couple of Ana Graham and Antonio Vega. The charming and absorbing one act play inventively explores the boundaries between illusion and theatrical reality.

  • The Dorset Theatre Festival Presents RED

    An Exploration of the Value and Meaning of Art

    By: Leanne Jewett - Jun 22nd, 2014

    Red is a play imbued with tensions between the past and the future, art and commerce, light and dark, the intellectual and the emotional. Does art matter?

  • Tony Winner Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell for WTF

    To Co Star in Sam Shepherd Drama in Williamstown

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 19th, 2014

    In 2011 Nina Arianda one of the most talented actresses of her generation was nominated for a Tony as the lead in a revival of Born Yesterday. Some say as a young unknown she was robbed. In 2012 she returned to Broadway and nailed a Tony for Vanda the dominatrix in the David Ives play Venus in Fur. Amazingly she will come to Williamstown Theatre Festival through a casting change announced today. With the hot Sam Rockwell as her co star act fast if you want to see the Sam Shepherd play Fool for Love.

  • Doubt at Oldcastle Theater

    A Neat little Parable in One Act

    By: Chris Buchanan - Jun 17th, 2014

    Oldcastle actors make a good effort and interesting choices in John Patrick Shanley's award-winning play. The ever capable Christine Decker plays Sister Aloysius with a wry humor that makes her character more human, more likeable perhaps, and yet also more fallible.

  • Kiss Me Kate at Barrington Stage

    A Musical Birthday Cake for 20th Season

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 16th, 2014

    Kiss Me Kate was Cole Porter's biggest hit and the only one of his shows to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award presented for Best Musical. It is being given a stunning revival at Barrington Stage Company in a lavish production celebrating its 20th anniversary. With all of that iconic music and stunning choreography this is a fabulous way to launch the season in the Berkshires.

  • Noises Off is a Silly Play

    At The Public in Pittsburgh

    By: Wendy Arons - Jun 15th, 2014

    Noises Off (by playwright Michael Frayn, now playing at the Public) is a silly play about a silly play. Or, more accurately: it’s a silly play about the silly things that occur when a group of people tries to put on a silly play.

  • Death of the Author at LA's Geffen Playhouse

    World Premiere by Steven Drukman

    By: Jack Lyons - Jun 06th, 2014

    Steven Drukman’s multi-layered text of ambition, heartbreak, and cutthroat competition that is now center stage in American culture is not only cleverly written it is also funny. The opening night audience, heavily weighted with young people in their twenties, and students from UCLA, caught and punctuated with laughter, every nuance and irony of the situations the characters found themselves in.

  • Emmy Winner Marg Helgenberger Riveting

    Stars in The Other Place by Sharr White at Barrington Stage

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 06th, 2014

    At mid career Emmy winner Marg Helgenberger is making the transition from TV to stage in the Berkshires. She is galvanic in Sharr White's complex and riveting The Other Place at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. She would like to take this hit production back home to LA.

  • Smart People Funny Treatment of The Serious

    Playwright Lydia Diamond Articulates Race and Sex in America

    By: Mark Favermann - Jun 05th, 2014

    Are our biases and prejudices hard-wired? Four Harvard-connected intellectuals: a doctor, an actress, a psychologist, and a neurobiologist studying the human brain’s response to race all search for love, success, and identity. But it is a complex world. Written with insight tempered by barbed wit, Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly) cleverly speaks to the nature of racism, stereotypes, and sexual mores in the 21st Century. It is provocative, funny but often painfully true.

  • Shakespeare’s Will Stars Kristin Wold

    Launches 37th Season of Shakespeare and Company

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 01st, 2014

    On the occasion of the 450th birthday of William Shakespeare the 37th season of Shakespeare & Company is chock full of the Bard. Even the contemporary play by Vern Thiessen "Shakespeare's Will" is about him. Well, his wife and mother of their three children, Anne Hathaway, actually. In a brilliant one woman performance the redoubtable Kristin Wold plays several characters with compelling skill and heart warming charisma.

  • Old Globe Play by Christopher Durang

    Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in San Diego

    By: Jack Lyons - May 29th, 2014

    Chistopher Durang has been poking his playwright fingers into society’s eyes for years with the result being he now has a loyal and growing fan base. And with good reason too. He’s a brilliant, highly educated, critical -thinking writer and playwright who loves his chosen profession. And he’s not afraid to write over-the-top material for actors.

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