When Jeff McCarthy brings down the house with an iconic barnburner The Impossible Dream it is richly evident that the fifty-year-old musical Man of La Mancha still packs a whallop that can blow the socks off of an audience. This Barrington Stage production that launches the Mainstage of Barrington Stage in Pittsfield is the benchmark hit of the still new 2015 Berkshire theatre season. It is doubtful that any actor will match or surpass his performance as the male lead in a musical.

The North American continent does not have military heroines. A 17th century Mexican nun, Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, was censored for her apostatic writings, but never picked up a sword. Without queens and saints, we have struggled into modern times. For comfort when France was challenged, as it often has been in history, the country looks to its patron saint, Joan of Arc, who helped end the Hundred Years War before she was burned at the stake. The New York Philharmonic reminded us of her trials in the ineffably moving composition of Paul Claudel and Arthur Honegger.

During the Pluralism of the 1980s the Italian born artist Francesco Clemente was a part of the neo expressionist movement. Having recently reinvented himself the artist who lives in New York and India had a series of glitzy decoratve tents fabricated by artisans. The artist has painted the interiors with provocative, fluid, naive narratives. This imajor installtion in Mass MoCA's vast Building Five has been paired with the cartoon inspired, theatrical scaled paintings of the populist artist./ musician conceptualist Jim Shaw. The work is obviously fun and accessible but skates on thin ice.

The North Coast Repertory Theatre’s potent production of marriage infidelity and betrayal is full of clever directorial touches, like the timing of Pinteresque pauses and the overall pacing between the excellent ensemble cast of Carla Harting, Jeffrey Frace, and Richard Baird, with Benjamin Cole contributing as a pompous and frustrated European waiter.

On a perfect June evening a booklaunch, my first, on the terrace of Edith Wharton's The Mount in Lenox. Witty exchanges with director Susan Wissler. Reading Gonzo poems from Shards of Life. Elegant gathering with Berkshire friends and neighbors, artists, writers and citizens of the world. Superb food and fine wine. Guests exploring the formal gardens. Signed a ton of books.

Valmor Products’ advertising and packaging is the subject of a funny, provocative and eye-opening exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center. Love for Sale: The Graphic Art of Valmor Products runs until August 2 in the 4th floor north exhibit hall, just across from the not-to-be-missed exhibit of the paintings of Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist.

On June 10, 2015, Alan Gilbert will present Honegger's most famous composition, Joan or Arc at the stake. Modestly, Honegger said he only followed the inspiration of his librettist Paul Claudel. Their collaboration was inspired. Gilbert discussed the dramatic oratorio with Come de Bellescize, the stage director, and Pierre Vallet, who assisted Seiji Ozawa with his production of the oratorio.

“Everybody’s Talkin’” is more of a free-flowing musical tribute than a traditional book musical. There isn’t one line of scripted dialogue spoken by the performers. It’s just the genius of Harry Nilsson who was a poet/philosopher and a reluctant troubadour performer, whose songs lend themselves to the inspired arrangements by Gunderson and the staging by Velasco that propel the show along.

What makes ordinary people do terrible things? Daniel, a young, gay aspiring writer, seeks a fresh start and a new job at the local bookstore that he loved as a child. When he meets Linda, the Filipina-American bookshop owner, they discover a connection that goes deeper than a love of literature. Artistic Director Peter DuBois directs the New England premiere of A. Rey Pamatmat’s at times gripping and intimate new play about changing attitudes, forgiveness and second chances.

I have known and much appreciated the witty and whimsical artist Raeford Liles since the 1960s. He was represented by the East Hampton Gallery when I worked there. Some years ago the artist returned to Birmingham, Alabama where he grew up. Now in assisted living his family has been working to catalog, archive and preserve decades of his work. From this extensive project has emerged the publication of a series of digital prints from his inspired Greek Pots series.

The Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative (BFMC) has released an economic impact study to examine the effects of a film shoot on the economy of rural communities. The study, “When Movie Making Comes to Town: An Economic Impact Analysis and Strategies for Development” was authored by Rick Feldman of InCommN, LLC, who was one of the developers of IMPLAN, a widely used economic impact analysis software program.

The Ensemble Studio Theatre just won a 2015 Drama Desk Award its commitment to producing new works by American playwrights since 1968. This year's 35th Marathon of Short Plays shows why the award is so deserved.

Yes Downton Abbey returns in January. PBS premieres the Civil War drama Mercy Street on September 27. Come fall PBS yet again will roll out an entertaining cornucopia of programming.

The major exhibition this summer at the Williams College Museum of Art is "Warhol by the Book" through August 16, 2015. Of the 500 works on view some of the most intriguing material entails collaborations involving Warhol's graphic design and his mother Julia's calligraphy. We spoke about Julia with former Warhol associate the poet Gerard Malanga who knew her well.

The 10th anniversary Festival will take place in various venues in the seaside village of Provincetown from Thursday, September 24 through Sunday, September 27, 2015. The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival was founded in 2006 in the birthplace of American Modern Theater where Williams worked on many of his major plays during the 1940s. The TW Festival is the nation’s largest performing arts festival dedicated to celebrating and expanding the understanding of America’s great playwright.

Both Plato and Aristotle wrote about the catharsis of tragedy in drama. South Africa with some success took the idea and tried to find truth and healing post apartheid. In large measure they succeeded. This wonderful play, conceived by Eric Abraham and written by Nicholas Wright, suggests why in a personal and incredibly moving adaptation of a true story.

Since its founding in 1981, the Boston Early Music Festival has become one of the leading cultural organizations in Boston, a city not lacking in them. Its biennial festival draws performing groups and audiences from all over the globe. Its focus is on a historically informed Baroque opera - this year it is doing three! All three of Monteverdi's surviving operas in one week. What bliss.

Warhol by the Book at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is on view through August 16, 2015. Creating books was a vital part of Warhol's career’s. It is the first in depth presentation of a relatively unexplored aspect of his work. Taking over the top level galleries of the museum there are 500 works on view featuring some 300 from the Williams collection and many works from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. We spoke about the project with MCMA director, Tina Olsen.

Throughout the five boroughs of New York, Carnegie Hall has presented live music to audiences of every age nd every hue. Community colleges, town halls, libraries and churches have opened their doors to music makers. Catching up at the seaason's end we heard Julia Bullock and Renate Rohling at St. Michael's Church in Manhattan and the Whistling Wolvves in the extraorinarily inviting Weill Music Room in Carnegie's new wing.

Enigmatically, sculptor Patrick Dougherty bends, weaves and flexes saplings into architectural sculptures that dynamically relate to the landscape and built environment. Over the last 30 years, he has created more than 250 works throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Constructed from saplings collected by area volunteers, "What the Birds Know" provides a wonderful and viscerally accessible counterpoint to the highly finished wood-frame early 18th Century Crowninshield-Bentley House. This is the first time PEM has commissioned an outdoor sculptural installation. And the bar has been set very high.

After a brutal winter on ever level Shakespeare & Company has launched the season with an intense and absorbing two hander The How and the Way by dramatist Sarah Treem. It stages a tense meeting between two brilliant women and scientists. A seething graduate student Rachel (Bridget Sacarino) has just learned the identify of her birth mother Zelda (Rod Randolph) a renowned scholar. By coincidence and one of many impossibilities the women are remarkably alike and even share the same field of evolutionary biology. If you can get beyond that unlikely twist of fate and other absurd literary devices this is an absorbing evening of tense and spellbinding theatre with superb performances by two fine actresses.

Two Natures Talking: Poetry and Visual Arts at Gallery 51 of MCLA in North Adams brings together the paintings of Wilma Rifkin with the poems they inspire by her husband Stephen. The exhibition which has been curated by Julia Morgan-Leamon also pairs the visuals of Ellen Joffe-Halpern and poems by Annie Raskin.

What I Did Last Summer is A.R. Gurney's latest play and a delight. How could it be a dream summer at the beach when Dad is off fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, Mom is lonely, Elsie is trying to lose weight and Charlie is trying to become a man without a model around? Yet it is as directe by Jim Simpson

“Arms and the Man”, crisply directed by Jessica Stone is blessed with cast of talented and seasoned performers who when they find themselves on a stage in a sharply and insightfully written farce/satire, know exactly how to handle their characters and the situations.

The script and production are the same as earlier versions in most every way, with the addition of a few Russian place names and two characters with Russian accents. The playbill doesn't mention the era and geographic setting (or any of the scene locations) that AstonRep has chosen.