La Cage Aux Folles marks first show at Stage Door Theatre's brand new venue in South Florida. Popular Broward County company makes a triumphant debut at its new facility. Theater company imbues Jerry Herman, Harvey Fierstein classic with glamor, humanity and heart

One of the big international dance festivals, the Berlin based Tanz im August, celebrated its 30th anniversary with a thought-provoking and breath-taking array of works.

In an unusual alteration, perhaps opera’s most famous closing line, “La commedia è finita” which is written for Canio, is spoken by Mamma Lucia, who is a character from Cavalleria. This change is the most explicit link between the two operas, and it also suggests that the speaker represents humanity, demanding an end to the destructive chaos of primitive morality evidenced in both pieces.

Gaetano Donizetti is recognized as a master of bel canto, with its vocal ornamentation, agility, vibrato, glissando, and precise demands on breath and register control. Although not designed as companions, he wrote operas of three queens in that style, now known as the Tudor Trilogy – Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux.

The Pond is an adventuresome young producing group whose mission is to seek out bold playwrights from Ireland and the UK and give American audiences a chance to know them. Playwright Jaki McCarrick deserves wide exposure. Terrorist acts are more familiar to the Irish than Americans, Yet the impact of these events on the families of terrorists is new territory and a fascinating one in The Naturalists.

Chicago critics Nancy Bishop and Matthew Nerber team up to cover four plays with brief reviews. This is one approach to focus on the wealth and diversity of productions in the Windy City.

A New musical has its touching moments, but is hampered by cliches, sentimentality. The world premiere of Now & Then runs through Sept. 30 at the newly-named Wilton Theater Factory near Ft. Lauderdale. A strong, versatile cast performs in Now & Then's first-ever production in South Florida.

The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? is certainly a problem play, in the classic sense in which characters debate critical social issues in a realistic context. Think Ibsen, “kitchen sink drama” and the socialist plays of the 1920s and ‘30s. Albee also makes many references to classical tragedy, literature and Greek mythology throughout The Goat.

Hurricane Agnes is raging outside the small living space of a group of friends in their early 20s. The play focuses on Charlie, who has been diagnosed at the upper end of autism. We see him struggle to become just like everyone else, or getting as close to more conventional people as possible. His perspective is surprising and dramatic.

HIR by Taylor Mac, at Shakespeare & Company, demonstrates that we are now well beyond LGBT. The new acronym is LGBTTSQQIAAF. For Maxine who is transitioning to Max the correct pronoun is hir passing through ze. The playrwight answers to the pronoun judy. The play which took 17 years to create is described as Mac's most biographical.

Today is Sunday and the last day of the Fresh Grass Festival. With four stages, wonderful cuisine and an enthusiastic young crowd, why not drive to North Adams, Massachusetts and enjoy the nation's best museum themed bluegrass festival. Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder headline today at 5:50pm.

(At press time, I didn't have a list of winners that were announced at the Fresh Grass Festival's banjo and band awards) Nonetheless, the Fresh Grass Festival 2018 vesion has come to an end.

Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1968 classic is now 50 years old, and remains as puzzling as ever. On Friday night, as part of this year's The Art of the Score festival, the New York Philharmonic performed the complete orchestral and choral music of 2001 as accompaniment to a large scale screening of the film at Lincoln Center.

On opera’s dramatic measuring rod, any production of Abduction would fall on the comedic rather than the tragic end, but Opera San José pushes the comic meter to the point that opera detractors might even appreciate it as a stage comedy with music.

Under the aegis of new artistic director Matt Shakman, The Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, premieres playwright Jose Rivera’s mystical new work “The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona,” directed by acclaimed, award-winning director Jo Bonney,

Opening night at the New York Philharmonic is a yearly tradition an occasion for fat cat donors to dine on the Promenade of Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall, and for ordinary critics (like your humble scribe) to put on suits and hobnob with each other before the performance. This year's ceremonies, held Thursday night, were also notable as it marked the long-awaited official debut of Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra's new music director.

Sky on Swings is a collaborative opera. The three principal artists, Lembit Beecher, Hannah Moscovitch and Joanna Settle have worked together for more than a year to bring a musical portrait of death-by-Alzheimer’s to the stage.

Berlin's Komische Oper (Comic Opera) opened its 2018/19 season with some of the most successful productions of the previous season. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'Zauberflöte' (Magic Flute) and Jerry Bock's 'Anatevka' which is better known as Fiddler On The Roof.

The Barrington Stage Company production of The Cake has gone West young man to LA's Geffen Playhouse. Now another coast shares the delicious comedy of Debra Jo Rupp. This is a run don't walk production.

Make Believe has potential but it isn’t ready for prime time. When people start taking peeks at their watches during a 90 minute play, it’s a clear sign that something isn’t working.

City Lit Theater’s new production of George Bernard Shaw’s 1894 play, Arms and the Man, takes full advantage of its broad humor. Perhaps Shaw’s most frothy script, director Brian Pastor directs it with panache, although he sometimes lets his cast drift into silliness.

Beyond their names most folks don't know much about abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, and women's suffrage leader, Susan B. Anthony. The remarkable play, The Agitators, by Mat Smart, offers more than a history lesson at Gloucester Stage. It has been given a compact and powerful production sharply directed by Jacqui Parker.

Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf is a work of great moment that gave black women a platform, in some ways a pedestal, from which to denounce their double indignity of racial and gender discrimination and announce their worth and beauty.

Aware that all art forms now compete with Netflix, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek seek out stories for their musical theater that will attract audiences. Mazzoli, a masterful young composer, can go very dark in tales because her music, in its blocks of beauty no matter what the subject, is compelling and evocative.

Indecent blends time-jumping scenes with an occasional dance routine and klezmer-flavored music. It’s a fine example of a dramatic play with music. The story and its characters are paramount and the music provides a lyrical underpinning. It’s an epic story told on a very personal level.