Front Page
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The Wedding Singer
At The Palm Canyon Theatre
By: - Jul 17th, 2018“The Wedding Singer,” the stage musical is based on the Adam Sandler movie of the same name that debuted in 1988. The current ‘Wedding Singer’ stage musical now on the Palm Canyon Theatre stage has been updated with a total of 20 musical numbers; some of which are new. The PCT show also retained some the original songs written in 2006.
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A Doll’s House Part 2
Hnath Updates Ibsen at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jul 16th, 2018Ibsen premiered The Doll's House in 1879. That was two years after Leo Tolstoy published Anna Karenina another tale of a society woman who abandoned her marriage and children. We know of Anna's tragic end but the fate of Nora is left uncertain. With A Doll's House Part 2 Lucas Hnath provides entertaining but improbable answers. The award winning Broadway hit is having a run at Barrington Stage Company with Laila Robins in the role which won a Tony for Laurie Metcalf. Christopher Innvar plays Torvald.
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Kevin Puts' Silent Night at Glimmerglass
Pulitzer-Winning Opera Wrenching and Gorgeous
By: - Jul 16th, 2018Silent Night by Kevin Puts with libretto by Mark Campbell is being presented at the Glimmerglass Festival. Tomer Zvulen directs this complex tale revealing each subtle turn in the story of a 24 hour truce during the First World War. Nicole Paiement conducts to bring forth all the subtlety and beauty of Puts’ score. Puts is both a fabulously gifted entertainer and a deep musical thinker. The music paints the scenes. The singers capture the tone in gorgeous melodies and often appropriately harsh recitative.
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Artney Jackson by James Anthony Tyler
African American Theatre in Williamstown
By: - Jul 15th, 2018For 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.
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Intersectionality of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Elevated Threat Level of Fractus V at Jacob’s Pillow
By: - Jul 15th, 2018The week of performances by the Belgian based company Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui/ Eastman featured a single work Fractus V (2015). In the spirit of intersectionality which informs the cutting edge of performance art it conflates the dance and musical traditions of its diverse members.
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Steve Nelson Gettin’ Home
An Odyssey Through the ‘60s
By: - Jul 13th, 2018Gettin’ Home: An Odyssey Through the ‘60s by Steve Nelson adds to a growing interest and understanding of the couner culture, arts and media of Boston in the 1960s. Rather well along in this memoir he became the manager of the rock club The Boston Tea Party. He promoted a mix of British bands, groups from San Francisco, blues legends and local bands. The saga begins with a summer in Peru with a group from Cornell. He arrived in Cambridge for three years at Harvard Law School and a post grad one. Staying in school had the advantage of staying out of Vietnam. Unlike many Nelson remembers a lot about the 1960s often with stunning detail.
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Love's Labor's Lost at the Mount
Enthusiastically Perfomed By a Youthful Cast
By: - Jul 13th, 2018Shakespeare demonstrates how an earnest effort to self impose structure and separation from the world is counter to our real natures. Fun and folly ensue in this perfect setting as we watch love conquer all. Through August 18 Love's Labor's Lost at the Mount.
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Macbeth the Scotched Play at S&Co.
Botched by Misdirection of Melia Bensussen
By: - Jul 12th, 2018It helps if you have read or seen other productions of Macbeth. Without that background the radical deconstruction ot the iconic play directed by Obie winner, Melia Bensussen, won't make sense.
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I Will Speak for Myself
Evoking Historical Women of Color by Valerie Joyce
By: - Jul 11th, 2018In Professor Valerie Joyce’s visits to schools, she asks students to name African-American women they know of from before 1865. Even among black female students, the responses quickly falter – Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, maybe Sally Hemings. With 250 years of history in the United States before the Civil War, this whole segment of our population is virtually silent, unknown.
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Impact of ICA Expansion to East Boston
Continued Neglect of Community of Artists
By: - Jul 11th, 2018The ICA has a major problem not just with East Boston artists, but with most local Boston-area artists, and it's due primarily to 3 factors -- mistaken policies, mistaken attitude, and mistaken curatorial direction. The author is an artist.
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Four Quartets Danced at Bard
Tamowitz, Saariaho and Marden Capture the Still Point
By: - Jul 09th, 2018Bard's Summerscape, ever brave, captures extraordinary moments in poet T.S. Eliot's masterwork, Four Quartets. The words the poet so clearly relishes in his own reading now dance before our eyes like searing moments at the still point. Choreographer Pam Tanowitz, composer Kaija Saariaho and painter Brice Marden join forces at the Fisher Center in Annandale.
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Casting, Equity and Where to Go from Here
Responding to “Boo Yellowface!” Protests During St. Louis Conference
By: - Jul 09th, 2018A couple of weeks ago, theater leaders from across the country authored a statement asking colleagues to reexamine their casting policies in light of recent incidents in which white actors were cast to portray people of color. Since that time, nearly 800 theater artists have signed and there is a working group actively discussing next steps so that we can end this pervasive practice. Because, as managing director of Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Chad Bauman signed the petition, he withdrew from publishing this commentary in American Theatre Magazine. It is reposted from his blog with Bauman's permission.
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Batsheva — The Young Ensemble at Jacob's Pillow
Audience Insulted by Naharin’s Virus
By: - Jul 09th, 2018With a combination of theatre of nihilism, taunts and insults the audience at Jacob's Pillow endured a riveting performance by Israel's Batsheva — The Young Ensemble. There was a single, hour long piece “Naharin’s Virus” (2001). It was choreographed by soon to retire artistic director Ohad Naharin. Like an ersatz Stockholm Syndrome experience the audience perhaps too politely thanked their tormentors for the assault on their sense.
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Hair at Berkshire Theatre Group
Celebrating 50th Anniversary
By: - Jul 08th, 2018If you plan to see Hair at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, as well you should, a few tokes of medical marijuana will help to set the mood. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. On opening night we spotted a granny with a crown of woven daisys.
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Universal Robots by Mac Rogers
Based on Karel Cepek's1921 Sci Fi Play
By: - Jul 07th, 2018In 1921, Czech playwright Karel Capek wrote a seminal science fiction work set in contemporary time entitled Rossum’s Universal Robots. It introduced chilling possibilities of an out-of-control future. In it was coined the very word robot (robota in Czech). Mac Rogers’s revision updates that work by a generation to include the rise of Hitler and World War II.
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Lang Lang Soars at Tanglewood
Triumphant Return for Injured Pianist
By: - Jul 07th, 2018Since April, 2017 the superstar pianist, Lang Lang, has been recovering from an injury to his left arm. In a scheduling coup he returned to performing last night during Opening Night of the BSO's 2018 season at Tanglewood., He was adored by the audience which was rewarded by sublime encore of Copin. Andris Nelsons conducted an evening of Mozart and Tchaikovsky.
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$400,000 Raised At S & Co. Gala
50,000 School Children and Actors Benefit
By: - Jul 06th, 2018For Forty years, Shakespeare & Company have proved to the locals what theater is about. Benefactors, galore, turned out in droves to help the theater company that gives back to the community. An achievement focus about Michael A. Miller was the highlight of the evening that benefited from music from some of the members of the Silkroad Ensemble. A sit-down dinner followed by a local DJ followed.
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How NY Times Is Harming Regional Theatre
Trashing Barrington Stage Production Not an Isolated Incident
By: - Jul 06th, 2018We have posted an opinion piece "End of The Royal Family of Broadway: NY Times Review Spikes Barrington Stage Production." That evoked an e mail from playwrite Mark St. Germain which is posted with his permission. In his view the attack on a developing musical is not an isolated incident. Under its current policies the Times is now inflicting more harm than doing good for regional theatre.
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End of The Royal Family of Broadway
NY Times Review Spikes Barrington Stage Production
By: - Jul 06th, 2018The Barrington Stage world premiere of the musical Royal Family of Broadway has earned mostly positive reviews. It has been treated as a work in progress potentially bound for Broadway. The team assembled for this production have been there before. Because of a devastating review by Jesse Green in the New York Times that may not happen. While Green is an established, and well qualified critic, is it the role of the Times to nip in the bud regional productions being developed for a run in New York?
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Van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic
A Beethoven Prelude to Action
By: - Jul 05th, 2018With all the secrecy that surrounds the arrival of a new music director for America's oldest orchestra, one must rely on live performances and recorded documentation to assess such a relationship. Happily, such documentation arrived earlier this year in the form of a DeccaGold recording of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, made by the New York Philharmonic under the aegis of its new boss, Jaap van Zweden.
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James Taylor Is Alive And Kicking
Another July 4th At Tanglewood
By: - Jul 05th, 2018The traditional James Taylor July 4th Concert was like a high school reunion. Fans returned to see JT and his All-Star Band at Tanglewood. Yet again he was knee high on the Fourth of July and as corny as Kansas in August.
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Support Group for Men at Goodman Theatre,
By Melancholic Ellen Fairey
By: - Jul 05th, 2018For 95 minutes, Ellen Fairey explores current social issues and angst from gender identity to aging and loneliness, cultural appropriation, men in crisis and the #metoo movement. This takes place in mid-2017 in a second-floor Wrigleyville apartment above an alley where all sorts of shit happens.
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Coming Back Like a Song at Berkshire Theatre Group
World Premiere of Juke Box Musical
By: - Jul 04th, 2018It's Christmas Eve at the NY apartment of Irving Berlin. He is joined by fellow masters of the Great American Songbook Jimmy Van Heusen and Harold Arlen. With just a piano we get 35 of their songs in Berkshire Theatre Group''s world premiere of Coming Back Like a Song by Lee Kalcheim,
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Objects of Desire at Eclipse Mill Gallery
Larry Alice and Joan Kiley Paired In Evocative Exhibition
By: - Jul 03rd, 2018The special exhibition Objects of Desire pairs whimsical narrative paintings by Joan Kiley with relief sculpture and polychromed assemblages by Larry Alice. There is a confluence and empathy of fantasy and the surreal in work that will be on view in the Eclipse Mill, 243 Union Street, from Friday, June 29 through Sunday, July 29. A receptiom will be held on Friday, July 6.
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The Bennington Mural Project
Union Street Mural Unveiled
By: - Jul 03rd, 2018In downtown Bennington, a new mural lets local artists shine and brings the community together.
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