Williamstown Theatre Festival

The Williamstown Theatre Festival launches with Streetcar Named Desire starring Audra McDonald on June 30. The season will feature five world premieres.

On a night that was colder than a witch's tit the faithful packed the pews of Zion Lutheran Church in Pittefield. We gathered for the fourth annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. Because the heating system failed baby it was cold inside. But an evening in honor of great theatre proved to be a stellar and heart warming occasion.

Located in the belly of the beast the annual Anerican Theatre Critics Association New York conferences consistently feature superb programming. The best and brightest of American theatre are as accessible as a phone call and cab ride away. This year a day of panels were held for some 60 national members and guests at the new MCC theatre complex. Where else can you encounter a Pulitzer winning playwright interviewed by a fellow Pulitzer Prize winner. The panels. convened from 9 to 5, were varied, provactive and galvanic.

When Marisa Tomei developed her role in Rose Tattoo at Williamstown Theatre Festival Mandy Greenfield made sure that she was off limits to local critics. That made it all the more exciting to get up close and personal with the her during the annual ATCA lunch at Sardi's. We also enjoyed quality time with the outrageous Charles Busch. He proved to be accessible, charming and down the earth.

Last night, attending the world premiere of Before the Meeting by Adam Bock at Williamstown Thatre Festival, felt like an historic occasion in contemporary American theatre. This new play will surely make the rounds of regional theatres after a likely New York run. The success of future productions will entail finding a greal actress like Deidre O'Connell to perform the soon to be classic monlogue of Gail a recovering alcoholic.

Another diva season wraps on the main stage of Williamstown Theatre Festival through August 18. A new translation of Henrick Ibsen’s Ghosts by Paul Walsh features Uma Thurman as Mrs. Helene Alving. In 2018 there were mixed reviews for her Broadway debut in Parisian Woman. It was a Beau Willimon rewrite of an 1888 play by Henri Becque.

With promises of visas and relocation to the United States the mlitary recruited interpreters in Afghanistan. That promise was reneged on when America started to withdraw and wind down in 2011. The world premiere play Selling Jabul by Sylvia Khoury focuses on the fate of one individual and his family who was left high and dry.

A new play by Jonathan Payne, A Human Being, of a Sort, at Williamstown Theatre Festival is based on an historical event. In 1906 a Congolese Pigmy native, Ota Benga, was brought to New York City, placed in a cage along with monkeys, orangutans and other primates for display in the Bronx Zoo. From this Payne has created a social justice drama that explores racism at the turn of the 20th century.

Six decades later Williamstown Theatre Festival is presenting the Lorraine Hansberry masterpiece Raisin in the Sun. A superb cast is anchored by S. Epatha Merkerson (Lena Younger [Marner]), Francois Battiste (Walter Lee Younger), and Mandi Masden (Ruth Younger). The director Robert O'Hara has stated that he avoided presenting the classic drama as a "museum piece." His improvements and updates, however, are less than judicious

The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan conveys how families are torn apart coping with and caring for elders with dementia. In a downward spiral Gladys Green, in another stunning performance by Annette Miller, is struggling to hold on. A small Greenwich Village vanity gallery gives her something to do. In a bold move Shakespeare & Company has launched its season with a slow and demanding drama.

Yet again Williamstown Theatre Festival mixes old and new for its 2019 season.

Chuck Yates is one of the finest actors in the Coachella Valley winning many Desert Theatre League (DTL) Award trophies for excellence in theatre. In Rebeck's masterful The Understudy we have two male actor-candidates and one avenging female stage manager from Hell named Roxanne. She puts two male actors Harry and Jake auditioning for the role of the ‘understudy’ through their paces before giving them the okay to join the performing cast.

Holiday season is prime time for Broadway. Here is a tip sheet of six shows we saw during a recent week on the Great White Way.

In order to survive and remain vital American Theatre Critics Association must become younger and more diverse. Intersectionality and inclusion is an ever greater driving force for producers, theatre companies and their critics. The dynamics of that synergy were explored through panels and programming of what has evolved as an annual New York conference.

For the third annual Berkshire Theatre Awards, at the Zion Luteran Church in Pittsfield, it took two hours to present trophies in 21 categories. Some 27 critics voted on awards to companies in the Berkshires extending into New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The top honors went to Barrington Stage Company with nine awards and Williamstown Theatre Festival which took home five.

The stars came out in droves for the annual luncheon with critics at Sardi's the show bis watering hole. Sixteen individuals representing thirteen current plays broke bread with the scribes.

This week the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association is voting on the final award list in preparation for the Third Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony to be held on Monday, November 12 at 7 pm at the Zion Lutheran Church, 74 First Street (Route 7) in Pittsfield, MA. --

Anchoring the season of Nikos Stage at Williamstown Theatre Festival is Dangerous House a riveting social justice drama. It took years and multiple drafts for Jen Silverman to polish a harrowing play set during the World Cup in South Africa. It focuses on the systemic rape and murder of lesbians. There was indiffernce to these crimes in the black community on the part of government and the police.

It took five years for Carson McCullers to write the novel The Member of the Wedding published in 1946. She adapted it for stage with a January 5, 1950 Broadway opening and 501 performances. It was produced by Young Vic in London in 2007. It has been revised by Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Seared by Therese Rebeck is her third play to permiere at Williamston Theater Festival. Set in a 16 seat boutidue Brooklyn restaurant Seared is a hillarious sendup of trendy foodie fanatacism.

Fleeing the Russian Revolution Tamara Lempicka (born Maria Gorska, 16 May 1898-18 March 1980) settled in Paris. Initially the couple with an infant girl survived selling the last of family jewlery. Her husband, Tadeusz Lempicki, a lawyer and aristocrat at first refused to get a job. She took up painting society portraits as a means of supporting their daughter. During the 1920s she was a leading exponent of the Art Deco style. It fell out of fashion during the depression and war years. Williamstown Theatre Festival has a world premiere musical about her life and career.

For the past decade there has been a tradition of at least one Afircan American themed production each season. This time its a benign and charming comedy Artney Jackson by James Anthony Tyler. Arguably there is progress that the well crafted and superbly acted play is a step back from polemical social and political agendas.

The Williamstown Theatre Festival started its 2018 season with two new plays on June 26/27, both billed as World Premieres. 'The Closet,' a comedy or farce, is presented on the main stage and 'The Sound Inside,' a two person drama, fills Nikos Stage. Mary-Louise Parker plays the protagonist, Bella Baird, and Will Hochman is Christopher Dunn, her 'curious' student.

PC or not to be was the question in a world premiere comedy The Closet by Douglas Carter Beane at Williamstrown Theatre Festival. It stars Broadway's Matthew Broderick in his first WTF appearance. He is backed by renowned WTF veterans Jessica Hecht and Brooks Ashmanskas. There was also a breakout performance by Ann Harada.

With judicious tweaking, cuts, and color blind casting director/ adapter, Scott Edmiston, mounted a stunning producton of Anna Christie at Boston's Lyric Stage. The 1921 drama by Eugene O'Neill won a Pulitzer Prize. He would go on to earn three more Pulitzers including for a posthumous production of the autobiographical family epic A Long Day's Journey Into Night.