Theatre
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Beauty and the Beast
A Big Show Presented Small
By: - Aug 26th, 2023The desire to produce shows that are well-known is understandable, but it is also important for theaters to focus on what they do best.
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A New Brain a Smash at Barrington Stage
Revival of Bill Finn and James Lapine Musical
By: - Aug 25th, 2023Absorbing, insightful, fun and hilarious are dumbfounding but accurate terms to describe the William Finn and James Lapine musical A New Brain being revised at Barrington Stage Company. It's a musical about neurosurgery.
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Here Lies Love on Broadway
Concept, Music, and Lyrics by David Byrne
By: - Aug 22nd, 2023Once the show actually began, I was engaged. While it is just making its Broadway debut, Here Lies Love, with concept, music, and lyrics by David Byrne, music by Fatboy Slim, and additional music by Tom Gandey and Jose Luis Pardo, began as a concept album in 2010. From there, it ran at off-Broadway’s Public Theater (2013, 2014-15) and London (2014-15), both times garnering multiple awards.
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On Cedar Street at Berkshire Theatre Group
World Premiere Musical
By: - Aug 20th, 2023On Cedar Street is an intimate, compact musical compressed into one long act on a busy, cluttered set. On Cedar Street which entails the late life romance of widow and widower in rural Colorado is having its world premiere at the Unicorn Theatre of Berkshire Theatre Group.
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Here You Come Again
Goodspeed’s Terris Theater in Chester
By: - Aug 19th, 2023Entering Goodspeed’s Terris Theater in Chester to see Here You Come Again, you view a cluttered living space with decorations for multiple holidays, a disco ball, things hanging from the ceiling, etc. Is this a hoarding situation?
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Mahabharata
A Highly Abbreviated Version of the Longest Poem Ever Written
By: - Aug 14th, 2023The Mahabharata is regarded by many to be the fifth veda, or sacred Hindu religious text. Appropriately, the storyteller in this production, J Jha, is transgender, as the stories are told from both male and female perspectives, and sexual ambiguity plays an appreciable role. Jha gives an inspired solo performance in delivering a narrative that centers on a war between competing bands of cousins fighting for control of BCE Bharat, which would become India.
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Summer Stock by Cheri Steinkellner
World Premiere at Goodspeed
By: - Aug 10th, 2023Summer Stock is a new old-fashioned musical bringing joy to audiences at Goodspeed. It is unabashedly old-fashioned.
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Barrington Stage All Stars
Julianne Boyd Directs Brian Friel’s Faith Healer
By: - Aug 08th, 2023Julianne Boyd, the founding artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, retired last year. Unburdened by administrative responsibilities, she has been lured back to direct a dark, moody masterpiece, Faith Healer by Brian Friel (1929-2015) the greatest Irish playwright of his Generation. For this triumphant return she cherry picked a dream team trio of Christopher Innvar (Frank), the faith healer, Gretchen Eglof his long abused wife Grace, and Mark Dold as the whimsical roadie Teddy.
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The Nightingale & Erwartung - A Double Bill
West Edge Opera Offers a Dynamic Duo of Short, Atonal Operas
By: - Aug 08th, 2023Stravinsky's "The NIghtingale" sets a simple but thoughtful Hans Christian Anderson tale to music. Production values sizzle. With Schoenberg's "Erwartung," the setting of the psychologically-driven soliloquy is switched from forest to hospital. The use of dancers as mute characters adds depth and diversity to the narrative.
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Rusalka
Fine Performances Benefit This Appealing Opera
By: - Aug 06th, 2023“Rusalka” ranks as Dvorák’s most popular opera and with good reason. Applying Wagnerian principles with leitmotifs and in sung-through fashion, it also draws from Czech folk music. The thoroughly romantic, luxuriant music possesses extractable set pieces of compelling melody and emotion. The fairy tale story draws on several sources, mixing light and dark, with a resulting dramatic outcome.
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Blues for an Alabama Sky By Pearl Cleage
At Barrington Stage Company
By: - Aug 06th, 2023In his first season as artistic director Alan Paul has selected the 1995 play by Pearl Cleage. Set during the Harlem Renaissance its a good but not great play given a flawed production directed by Candis C. Jones for Barrington Stage Company.
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Pelléas et Mélisande
Santa Fe Opera's Take on a Brooding Tale from Debussy and Maeterlinck
By: - Aug 05th, 2023Claude Debussy sought a prospective opera libretto in which characters seemed out of place, out of time, and only half disclosed. For “Pelléas et Mélisande,” he found his soulmate in future Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, whose opaqueness suited Debussy so well that he adapted the playwright’s work almost verbatim. The result was a turn-of-the-century landmark - Debussy’s only completed opera.
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August Wilson's Masterpiece
Fences at Shakespeare & Company
By: - Aug 04th, 2023The power of Fences derives from the mastery with which August Wilson conflated the mojo of the blues with the paradigms of Greek tragedy. This play is as intricately structured as works by Sophocles and Aeschylus. While rooted in the African American culture of Pittsburgh, Wilson was at heart every bit a classicist.
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Orfeo
A Scintillating World Premiere Orchestration of This Oldest Opera
By: - Aug 03rd, 2023The uniqueness of Santa Fe Opera's facility and setting make for a stunning visualization of Monteverdi's early masterpiece. With the back stagewall initially open to nature, the scenario begins in literal and figurative brightness; followed by a threatening storm in the mesas behind; leading to brutal darkness on stage with deliciously harsh lighting effects. Modern orchestration smooths the Baroque edges of the music.
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Is it Thursday Yet at La Jolla Playhouse
Jenn Freeman and Sonya Tayeh Join Forces in Dance and Drama
By: - Aug 01st, 2023"Is it Thursday Yet", playing at the La Jolla Playhouse, tells the story of dancer Jenn Freeman, who was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) when she was 33 years old. Using actual recordings of her therapy sessions and home videos Jenn’s father recorded as she grew up, the play is essentially a documentary of Jenn Freeman’s life from infancy to young adulthood. Neither Jenn nor her family knew she had ASD.
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Katrin Hilbe at Berlin Opera Academy
Acting Skills Now Fundamental
By: - Jul 28th, 2023he advent of Freudianism somehow severed the mind from the body, but over the past decades, there has been a return to the wisdom of late 19th century philosopher William James who saw the body and mind as deeply interrelated.
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Berkshire Opera Festival Brings in Boheme
Epic Love and Loss of Innocence Central to the Drama
By: - Jul 28th, 2023Berkshire Opera Festival continues its 2023 summer season with a mainstage production of La Bohème on August 26, August 29, and September 1 at The Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. One of the most beloved operatic love stories of all time, La Bohème is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which follows the lives of young people living in the Latin Quarter of Paris
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Cruzar la Cara de la Luna: A Mariachi Opera
Mariachi Music Makes it to the Opera House
By: - Jul 25th, 2023The story is about Laurentino, a man in New York who immigrated from Mexico half a century before. On his deathbed, he reveals an undisclosed past to his family. He had a first wife in Mexico who died in the crossing and a son who returned to his native land. A poignant metaphor of the butterfly recurs in the music and conversation. When the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis and moves on from its life as a caterpillar, it never returns to the same location, reenacting life’s transformation in a new land. It is only the descendants that circle back to the homeland of earlier generations.
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The Coronation of Poppea
West Edge Opera Right Sizes a Classic
By: - Jul 24th, 2023The narrative is historical only in the broadest sense. While the plot points actually occurred from AD 58 to AD 65, not only are they condensed into one day, but their order is shifted! Further, the librettist fancifully changes the character of characters, making some good who were actually bad and vice versa. Who would have thought of the barbaric and narcissistic Nero as also having room for love and magnanimity? So, for those who lambaste Hollywood for being fast and loose with the facts, let it be known that it had models to draw on
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Marina Carr at the Abbey Theatre
Dublin Looks at Girl on the Altar
By: - Jul 23rd, 2023Marina Carr has joined Lady Augusta Gregory in the pantheon of playwrights pictured on the walls of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Her new play "Girl on the Altar" is playing now.
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Barrington Stage Company's Black Voices Matter
3rd Annual Celebration of Black Voices
By: - Jul 19th, 2023Barrington Stage Company, as part of its Black Voices Matter initiative, is sponsoring the 3rd annual “Celebration of Black Voices” community festival. For 2023, “Celebration of Black Voices” will take place over 4 days - from Thursday, August 10 through Sunday, August 13 on Pittsfield’s West Side. The festival will feature six free events celebrating the local Black community through artistic engagement.
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Little Montgomery
New City Players in South Florida
By: - Jul 18th, 2023"Little Montgomery" is a touching comic-drama with relevant themes. New City Players' production runs through this Sunday. Performances take place at Island City Stage near Ft. Lauderdale.
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The Rape of Lucretia
The Act That Gave Rise to the Republic of Rome
By: - Jul 14th, 2023Roman officers, including Prince Tarquinius, who are in a military camp wager whether their wives have remained constant. Investigations prove that the wives of all of the men in the discussion have had indiscretions, with one exception. Lucretia has remained faithful. Tarquinius is determined to corrupt her morals. Returning to Rome, his amorous advances toward Lucretia are repelled, and he forces himself on her. Although not dealt with in the opera, this incident was the crowning blow to the king’s reign, and his overthrow led to the period of the Republic of Rome.
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Les Misérables
A Powerful Indictment of Justice in an Unjust Society
By: - Jul 08th, 2023Jean Valjean spends his adult life paying for having stolen a morsel of bread for his sister. Even after a long prison sentence, he finds himself needing to hide and lie to avoid the relentless Inspector Javert, who obsesses over making Valjean pay endlessly for his petty crime.
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Connecticut Critics Circle Awards
Best of the Best
By: - Jul 08th, 2023A powerful production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Yale Repertory Theatre and an exuberant production of “42nd Street” at Goodspeed Musicals took top honors at the 31st annual Connecticut Critics Circle Awards (ctcritics.org).
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