Front Page
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Tiny Beautiful Things
At San Francisco Playhouse
By: - Feb 04th, 2020The structure of Tiny Beautiful Things is comprised of unrelated letters requesting counsel, followed by Sugar’s responses, so the incoming letters lack a narrative arc. However, the themes of human dignity, self-worth, redemption, forgiveness, and especially love, course throughout, resulting in emotional connectedness.
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Labyrinth by Broken Nose Theatre
By U.K. playwright Beth Steel
By: - Feb 07th, 2020I highly recommend this fast-moving, smart and funny play by U.K. playwright Beth Steel. If you’re not familiar with the early 1980s global economic recession and the Latin American debt crisis, you might want to read up on it before seeing the play.
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El Regajal Winery Is Madrid’s Finest
Home To 77 Butterfly Species
By: - Feb 07th, 2020When you think of Spain and its wineries, you think about butterflies. Well think again, as you read about El Regajal Winery and winemaker Danny Garcia-Pita. It is a remarkable combination.
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Pipeline at Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C.
A Searing Take on Black Male Anger and Rage
By: - Feb 07th, 2020Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau opened at Lincoln Center Theater in July of 2017. Since it premiered, the play, a multi-faceted look at the 'pipeline' young black men travel from high school to prison, has had more performances across the US than any other play. It is easy to understand why. This powerful presentation of the role of parents, teachers, security guards and administration in this all too familiar path, the play provides rich opportunities for actors.
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Shakespeare & Company 2020 Season
A Mix of Classic and Contemporary in Lenox
By: - Feb 11th, 2020The 2020 season of Shakespere and Company starts on May 21 with Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell. The small stage production features Annette Miller. King Lear opens at the Tina Packer Playhouse on June 28. Berkies Award winner, director Regge Life returns to anchor the season with Harold Pinter's Betrayal on September 18.
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Ballroom at CVREP
Lively Revival of 1970s Musical
By: - Feb 12th, 2020Ballroom features the music of Billy Goldenberg, with a libretto by Jerome Kass, and the lyrics by multiple Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy award-winning songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman, under the direction of Ron Celona. It’s the boldest and most audacious production in CVREP history.
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Boston Artist John Powell at 73
Memorial Exhibition at Howard Yezerski Gallery
By: - Feb 13th, 2020John Powell finished but did not see his final exhibition. He died at 73 just days before the opening of Neon Shadows at Howard Yezerski. Artists and former fellows of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT will gather to pay their respects. He will be celebrated for a career in art, science and technology. That was manifested in large public art projects. Using dramatic lighting he transformed quotidian into sublime. A bridge we traverse every day and hardly notice was transformed into an enormous sculpture with light shaping its form.
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Sea Slopes
Sonoma Coast Chardonnay
By: - Feb 13th, 2020Some California Chardonnays are often too buttery and oaky for the palate. A little oak is good and not overpowering, as is the case with this brilliant bottle of Sonoma Coast Chardonnay.
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One Evening:Two Works at Komische Oper, Berlin
J. Weinberger and G. Verdi
By: - Feb 15th, 2020It is always a time for heightened expectations when one goes to any performance at the Komische Oper, Berlin. It will not necessarily be enjoyable for everybody but it will definitely always be provocative. The Komische Oper presents as one performance: Fruehlingsstuerme and La Traviata.
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Lipstick Lobotomy by Krista Knight
At Chicago's Trap Door Theatre
By: - Feb 18th, 2020Throughout the play, the patients engage in therapy scenes, identified by actors two-stepping in with signs announcing Opera Therapy, Steam Therapy, Abdominal Therapy, Dancing Therapy or Makeup Therapy (patients apply cosmetics to each other). The worst is the ghastly Smile Therapy, in which patients parade around wearing strap masks with garish painted-on smiles.
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Momentary Opens in Bentonville, Arkansas
A Kraft Cheese Factory Transformed
By: - Feb 20th, 2020The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a jewel created by the architect Moshe Safdie near a natural spring called Crystal and a bridge construction which is built into the museum. It was conceived and financed by Alice Walton whose family created Walmart, a company headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Now other members of the family have joined her in creating an exciting performance space in an old Kraft cheese factory in town.
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Tú Amarás (You Shall Love)
At NY's Baryshnikov Arts Center
By: - Feb 23rd, 2020After performing around the world Bonobo, the internationally acclaimed Chilean experimental theater company finally made its way to New York City’s Baryshnikov Arts Center, with Tú Amarás (You Shall Love), a socio-political offering with a surreal touch that examines what is an enemy, how do we create one, and how do we connect to others.
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Lucas Hnath Gives Us Dana H.
Probing a Mother's Kidnapping
By: - Feb 25th, 2020Lucas Hnath has a gift for making the past present on stage. In a marvel of edited tape, brilliant acting and staging, the Vineyard Theatre is hosting his play, Dana H. We don't see Edgar Bergen manipulating Charlie. Yet we hear the tape voice of the real Dana as it is mouthed by Deidre O'Connell. Taking on the voice, O'Connell inhabits the character, soundless, but with more subtle and apt gestures than you can imagine. It is a stunning evening of theater.
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Real Eyes Gallery 2020
March Madness Starts With Henry Klein
By: - Feb 26th, 2020Real Eyes Gallery in Adams, Mass resumes its monthly exhibitions. One of two repeaters Henry Klein returns with Uber Waves: Other Location on March 7. Gallerist Bill Riley, the other prior exhibitor, is slotted for August. On March 14 at 5pm, Kathline Carr and Patricia Sheppard will read their poetry. Ricky Darell Barton shows in April followed by Gil Riley (June), Lauren Olitski (July), William Riley (August), Pennie Brantley and Bob Morgan (September), Diane Reed Sawyer (October), Cotter Luppi (November), and To Be Announced (December).
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Lincoln Center Great Performers' Mahler
Surrounded by Concerts and Films
By: - Feb 26th, 2020Lincoln Center's Great Performers surrounded us with Gustav Mahler for five days. In addition to a concert by Ivan Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra, three films were offered.
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Beauty and the Beast
At the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center in South Florida
By: - Feb 29th, 2020Beauty and the Beast is enchanting, playful, funny and magical at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center. The classic Disney musical is timely with messages about tolerance and treating everyone with respect. The show is visual delight, but it also teaches people not to judge people based solely on their external appearances. The production, which is strong despite obviously fake fight scenes, runs through March 8.
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I Am My Own Wife
At Long Wharf
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Even the simplest human being is complicated and Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the central character in I Am My Own Wife is scarcely a simple human being. She is incredibly complex and her story is amazing.
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Donald E. Lacy's Colorstruck
Theater for the New City Mounts Premiere
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Colorstruck and its creators come to us from the San Francisco Bay area where they have been involved in radio, theater and film. They are also participants in community outreach in the arts. Lacy has crafted a one man show which straddles a gap where tears laughter and anger resolve. On an empty stage, Lacy emerges from darkness, a black man in black clothing. He speaks for 75 minutes, lighting up our hearts and minds.
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Welser-Möst Conducts the New York Philharmonic
From the Domestic Life of Strauss to Widmann's Streets of Babylon
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Franz Welser-Möst leads what is arguably the best orchestra in the United States, the Cleveland. His mastery of Richard Strauss' music is well-known. He began the program with the US premiere of Babylon Suite by Jörg Widmann, composer in residence at Carnegie Hall this year.
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Aspect Chamber's Musical Enemies: Debussy and Chausson
Grace Park and Gilles Vonsattel Superb on Violin and Piano
By: - Mar 02nd, 2020Irina Knaster founded the Aspect Chamber Music series to provide an enriched communal atmosphere for the performance of music. Concertgoers are invited to come early and drink wine and chat before the concert and during the intermission. Knaster fills the halls at the Bohemian National Center and Columbia's Italian Academy, two beautiful settings. She featured Grace Park and Gilles Vonsattel performing Debussy and Chausson.
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Marie Cuttoli at Barnes Foundation
The Modern Thread from Miro to Man Ray
By: - Mar 04th, 2020A new exhibit at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia features the collection of Marie Cuttoli, an entrepreneur who convinced many of the artists of her time to create designs for her the workshops, first in her own design studio in Paris and then for the tapestry weavers of of Aubusson, France.
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SWEAT by Pulitzer Prize Winner Lynn Nottage
At the Palm Springs Woman’s Club
By: - Mar 07th, 2020Prolific, award-winning American playwright Lynn Nottage, the only female to win two Pulitzer Prizes in drama, is also considered to be one of the most produced playwrights not only in America but across the world. “SWEAT” is an absorbing and profound production that grapples with the issues plaguing most of America’s workforce today.
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Jazz Pianist McCoy Tyner at 81
Played Boston’s Jazz Workshop with Trane
By: - Mar 07th, 2020In 1963 at The Jazz Workshop I heard McCoy Tyner with Trane. It was Trane's only Boston gig. Later Tyner played Lulu White's and we caught him a few back at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. His massive attack was much admired by aspiring pianists. He just checked at 81.
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A Florentine Tragedy and Gianni Schicchi
At Livermore Valley Opera
By: - Mar 09th, 2020These two operas make for a highly entertaining evening. The only false note concerns the orchestra, which was skillful in the comedy on opening night. But especially in the overture and early parts of the tragedy, dissonant tracts sounded more out of tune and out of sync as if the orchestra hadn’t mastered Zemlinsky’s more challenging and unfriendly music. It also overpowered the singers at times.
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Metropolis Ensemble Debuts at National Sawdust
Ricardo Romaneiro's Score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis
By: - Mar 11th, 2020Metropolis is a Grammy-nominated Ensemble founded by Andrew Cyr, who encourages artists to realize their bliss. The group was not named for the Fritz Lang film, but the temptation to take on this silent great must have been tantalizing. The live, electronic score by Ricardo Romaneiro was brilliant and brilliantly realized by the musicians. Cyr conducts.
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