Berkshire Theatre Group

Upcoming events at the Colonial include, The Airplane Family & Friends with Live Dead ‘69 (10/27), $10 Music Garage: Subtleties (11/9), Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Touring Company (11/11), $5 Comedy Garage: Rojo Perez (at the Garage in the Colonial Theatre lobby 11/16), Ain't Wastin' Time: A Berkshire Tribute to Gregg Allman with Rev Tor's Steal Your Peach Band & Friends (11/30) and A Christmas Carol (12/9 through 12/22).

The shoulder season play Lost Lake, by Tony and Pulitzer winner, David Auburn, is an enthralling and richly rewarding two hander. It would be difficult to image a more finely nuanced production of a skillful and clever play.

From 9 AM to noon there was an ordely and peaceful demonstration in front of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. Pickets came and went with between 40 and 80 individuals linuing the sidewalk at any given time. Most passing cars honked their support. There was a media presence. While museum director, Van Shields, remained hunkered down in the bunker, board president Elizabeth "Buzz" Hayes McGraw delivered her boilplate message to a TV crew from Albany.

Berkshire Theatre Group announces additions to the fall and winter seasons, as well as casting for the Fall production of David Auburn’s Lost Lake at The Unicorn Theatre. Therde wlll also be a number of unique musical events at its Colonial Theatre in downtiown Pittsfield.

This is a classic comedy that still entertains with a spectacular cast and great timing! Arsenic and Old Lace ran for three years on Broadway starting in 1941 and still holds up. There is a lively production on Stage at Bekshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge.

In 1958 the one act play Zoo Story launched the career of playwright Edward Albee. In 2004 he added a first act. That version , retitled At Home at the Zoo (Zoo Story), is being produced by Berkshire Theatre Group on its intimate Unicorn stage in Stockbridge.

Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield has a reputation for mounting an annual blockbuster revival of a vintage musical. It also has an an agenda to present message plays that inspire and inform audiences. In the era of Trump Barrington is presenting Ragtime which seemingly conflates the mandates for entertainment and education. It results in a long evening top heavy with big ideas, multiple characters and confusing subplots.

With the rise of so many platforms of communication in today's world, are we really hearing one another? Children of a Lesser God focuses on truly listening and communicating in the world of the deaf. It portrays a love story between a hearing man and a woman who neither hears nor speaks. Their communication and connection are powerful to see in stellar performances by the lead actors, Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff. The play runs to July 22 at Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge, Mass.

Million Dollar Quartet is based on a true story of a rare event - the coming together in one studio of four rock 'n' roll legends: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Set on December 4, 1956, at Sun Records in Memphis, It was a night to remember for all rock n' roll fans!

After a long illness, on March 10, the widely respected publisher and editor of Berkshire on Stage and Screen, Lawrence “Larry” Murray, passed away. He organized the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association. Last November he rallied to attend the First Annual Bertkshire Theatre Awards. He presented the top award, named for him, to Jullian Boyd of Barrington Stage for community service through theatre.

BTG is expanding its 2017 summer festival offerings, including The Music Man and the Million Dollar Quartet, Arsenic and Old Lace, as well as two productions by playwrights, Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo (Zoo story) and David Auburn's Lost Lake.

There has been extensive media coverage of the First Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. The winners of The Berkies have been announced. There will be an awards celebration 5 pm on November 13 at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret in Pittsfield. In this first round of awards Barrington Stage Company and Shakespeare & Company dominated in most categories. The smash hit Pirates of Penzance ran the table. The Larry Murray Award, named for the founder, will be the only suprise of the gathering of critics, media and theater mavens.

For the first annual Berkshire Theatre Awards seven shows received more than five nominations each including 11 for The Pirates of Penzance and eight for Broadway Bounty Hunter, both produced by Barrington Stage Company. Seven nominations were received for Or, and six for The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare & Company. Also popular with five nominations each are The Rose Tattoo (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Little Shop of Horrors (Berkshire Theatre Group), and American Son (Barrington Stage).

The Bakelite Masterpiece by Kate Cayley in Stockbridge at the Unicorn Theatre is a co-production of WAM and Berkshire Theatre Group. An artist is on trial for selling Vermeers to the Nazis. He has to make a fake to prove his innocence. The play is based on a true story in post war Holland.

I happened on the Berkshire Theatre Company production on East 13th Street in New York and was entranced. Packed into a small stage and directed to perfection by Bob Moss, the intimate setting works perfectly for this musical portrait of an oversized man.

A love story set against the backdrop of quantum physics. Brilliantly written and superbly acted, Kate Baldwin and Graham Rowat succeed in hitting the high and low notes of their characters' lives, moving seamlessly from one universe to another, and bringing the audience along with them.

An ambitious unpublished author is guided to meet his writing idol through an editor. What unravels reveals how fame can isolate, and how ambition can move one to do unexpected things. Judd Hirsch is a marvel, Kristin Griiffith shines and Rupak Ginn turns in a nuanced performance.

A lot of theatre this season is feeding us heavy duty, pc, brain food. But for pure fun release and esape the best show in the Berkshires, Little Shop of Horrors, is presenting a hilarious musical comedy about a man eating plant which is chewing the scenery and devouring audiences at the Colonial Theatre.

This summer there will be two Tennessee Williams plays in the Berkshires. The first is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge. It is a great play being given a so so production.

Fiorello La Guardia (1882-1947)a true man of the people was a study in contradiction. Of Italian and Jewish heritage he was an Episcopalian Republican who was elected Mayor of New York on a fusion ticket. A small, portly, homely man in a rumpled suit he possessed towering charisma. The 1959 Tony and Pulitzer winning musical Fiorello! is being given a compressed and powerful production at Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.

The Berkshire Theatre Group announces a full schedule of musicals, plays and performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield as well as its two stages in Stockbridge. The program includes events from June through October. As usual a musical, Little Shop of Horrors, opens at the Colonial just after the July 4th holiday weekend which launches high season in the Berkshires.

In some of the most exciting and insightful productions and performances of the year there was a notable cross pollination and invention as vernacular street cultures and indigenous art forms conflated into high art. Classic works were not just revived but reinvented from the insight out. The best works of 2016 raised the bar through risk taking and challenging audiences. These rare experiences tend to make the majority of what we experience ordinary and enervating. In an era signified by ubiquitous standing ovations what is truly worthy of special recognition?

Music at The Colonial Theatre includes, legendary reggae band, The Wailers (part of the 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival); Grammy Award-winning pop/rock singer, songwriter, musician, Richard Marx; Grammy Award-winning Walking In Memphis singer, Marc Cohn and “the godfather of British blues,” John Mayall.

If bad luck comes in threes what's next for the Boston theatre community. Today we have reported on the break up of a 33-year-old relationship between the Huntington Theatre Company and Boston University. Now we report news the Emerson College, the owner of the 115-year-old Colonial Theatre has plans to convert it into a student center. These developments were predicted several years ago by then NEA chair Rocco Landesman. As he suggests, here in the Berkshires, there are too many arts organizations pursuing the same limited potential donors.

Kudos to Berkshire Theatre Group for the tough love of presenting a smash to the head in a stunning production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. Eric Hill has brilliantly directed a superb cast in an always challenging Pinter play.