Theatre
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Chicago's Timeline Theatre's Raisin in the Sun
Hansberry's Play Lingers in the Imagination and Sadly in Reality
By: - Sep 01st, 2013Timeline takes brilliant advantage of its limitations to produce an irresistible staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic, A Raisin in the Sun. The play takes place in a family living room. We the audience are sitting there too, pressed up against the actors who seem more like family than stage presences as we join them.
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To Kill a Mockingbird at Weston Playhouse
Vermont Season Ends with Riveting Drama
By: - Aug 31st, 2013Fifty years after Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech this production reminds us of our not-so-distant past and leaves us wondering how best to continue towards a just future. It continues at Vermont's Weston Playhouse through September 7.
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Anna Christie at Berkshire Theatre Group
O’Neill Play Washes Up in Stockbridge
By: - Aug 30th, 2013The Berkshire Theatre Group production of Eugene O'Neill's 1921 play Anna Christie has been given an extreme makeover by Pulitzer prize winning director David Auburn. The play has been condensed from four acts to two with the cast cut from ten to five characters. With these drastic reductions, while clear and cohesive, Auburn serves the steak without the sizzle.
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Meeting with the Beauty Queens of Leenane
Rocking the Boat at Shakespeare & Company Part One
By: - Aug 29th, 2013Tina Packer has been quoted in the media that she can't wait for the end of the run of Beauty Queen of Leenane at Shakespeare & Company on September 15. Audiences and critics agree that it is the most powerful and harrowing production of the Berkshire season. In part one of a meeting with the cast Packer exploded about why she hates the character she has been roped into portraying. Her Mag Folan reminds her of the two mother in laws she hated.
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Beauty Queen of Leenane at S&Co.
Brutal Play by Martin McDonagh Powerfully Presented
By: - Aug 23rd, 2013The Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is a brutal bastard to actors and the suffering audience. The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Shakespeare & Company is an evening of pure misery. But if you love great theatre don't miss four truly magnificent performances. It is also the first time that a national treasure, Tina Packer, has shared a stage with the phenomenal Elizabeth Aspenlieder.
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Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah
Barrington Stage Co-Premiere by Mark St. Germain
By: - Aug 22nd, 2013With two of the three original cast members- Joey Collins as F.Scott Fitzgerald and Angela Pierce as studio representative Miss Evelyn Montaigne, the play commissioned and premiered by the Contemporary American Theatre Festival has transferred from Shepherdstown, West Virginia to Barrington Stage. With the addition of Ted Koch as Hemingway "Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah" has been written and directed by Mark Saint Germain. It is being staged in the theatre which has been named for him.
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John Douglas Thompson on Brecht
Performing with Olympia Dukakis in Mother Courage
By: - Aug 21st, 2013This summer at Shakespeare & Company John Douglas Thompson has performed the supporting role of The Cook to have the chance to work with the 82--year-old Olympia Dukakis in Brecht's Mother Courage. This is a revised version of the original posting with further reflection on the unique challenges of performing a play by Brecht.
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John Douglas Thompson Cooks in Lenox
Booked for Productions Through 2015
By: - Aug 19th, 2013Since seeing John Douglas Thompson in Othello at Shakespeare & Company in 2008 we have tried to see and talk about all of his performances. We met for lunch in Pittsfield to catch up on what will be a fully booked schedule of plays through January , 2015. This entails two Broadway plays and an Off Broadway production.. Thompson is widely regarded as among the foremost theatrical actors of his generation. This is part one of the latest dialogue.
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Clybourne Park at Dorset Theatre Festival
A Co-Production with Barrington Stage Company
By: - Aug 19th, 2013The Pulitzer prize-winning play, Clybourne Park is a response to A Raisin in the Sun, the 1959 play of hope and change toward a better future for African Americans. Clybourne Park depicts a different perspective of the events of that play and a version of reality 50 years after those fictional events.
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Jamie Nabers Annie Bosh at Steppenwolf
First Look Series is First Rate Theater
By: - Aug 18th, 2013Jamie Nabers recently workshopped a musical at Williamstown and is a presence around the US.
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This Blessed Plot at Weston Theatre
Vermont Theatre's New Works Program
By: - Aug 17th, 2013The workshop production of This Blessed Plot will evolve throughout its two-week run which ends on September 1. Not yet in its final form, this play is not being reviewed, but offered as an opportunity to participate in the development of this dynamic one-man work-in-progress. The project is a part of the New Works Program of The Weston Theatre in Vermont.
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Jenny Gersten Solidifies WTF
Part Two Balancing Roles as CEO and Artistic Director
By: - Aug 16th, 2013As a producer, rather than director or actor, as was the case in recent years, Jenny Gersten approaches being artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival as a full time, year round job. Her role as CEO is as important to her as making the artistic decisions of planning a season. She describes enjoying fundraising and marketing because it is driven by her passion for one of America's most renowned regional theatre companies,
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Edith Freni's Buena Vista at Steppenwolf
A Good View, but a Dark One in Compelling Drama
By: - Aug 14th, 2013Playwright Edith Freni has been produced at Williamstown and almost every other important theater venue in this country. Steppenwolf's production of Buena Vista shows you why.
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Jenny Gersten on Williamstown Theatre Festival
Third Season Charms
By: - Aug 14th, 2013For her third season as artistic director of the Williamstown Theater Festival Jenny Gersten produced an amazing three musicals in a program of seven productions. Bridges of Madison County opens on Broadway in January but Gersten insists her mandate is to create shows for Williamstown. We met to discuss the season which ends this weekend. This is part one of that dialogue.
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Much Ado About Nothing at Barrington Stage
Julianne Boyd’s First Shakespeare Soars
By: - Aug 12th, 2013Following On the Town and the Chosen Barrington Stage ends its main stage season with yet another run away hit. Julianne Boyd charms and delights as producer/ director of the first ever attempt at Shakespeare his iconic comedy Much Ado Nothing. Barrington's mainstays Christopher Innvar and Gretchen Egolf soar to new heights as the feisty lovers Benedick and Beatrice. On every level from sets to costumes this is a gorgeous and hilarious seasonal treat.
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The Gospel of Franklin at Steppenwolf
Playwright Aaron Carter Tackles Fathers and Sons
By: - Aug 11th, 2013Gospel is good news and glad tidings. Aaron Carter’s fascinating play presented by Steppenwolf’s First Look program at first blush appears to be good news. But quickly, we see that it is complicated. There are two characters who bear tidings, Franklin the father, and his son William. William is trying to piece together his own life and at the same time discover his father, not as a story, but as the truth woven from bits and pieces of information he has received over time. They are not in chronological order, but in the order of his discovery.
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Blood Play Wraps WTF Season
Schlock of the New
By: - Aug 09th, 2013The season ending Blood Play by the experimental The Debate Society takes place in the 1950s during an impromptu cocktail party in the renovated, pine paneled basement of a newly settled suburban Jewish couple. Their traumatized son Ira is living in a tent in the back yard. This may be the most controversial and "debated" play of the Williamstown Theatre Festival season.
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Mark St. Germain Discusses Scott and Hem
New Play for Barrington Stage Company
By: - Aug 09th, 2013A new play by Mark St. Germain "Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah" will run at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass from August 15 through September 29. It was commissioned for the Contemporary American Theatre Festival where we saw it earlier this summer in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. We met for breakfast to discuss changes for the still evolving play which is now in its eighth draft.
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The Bridges of Madison County in Williamstown
World Premiere of Marsha Norman/ Jason Robert Brown Musical
By: - Aug 07th, 2013With daily notes, rewrites, cuts and rehearsals the world premiere of the musical Bridge of Madison County will be quite different by the time in ends its run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival on August 18. After a layover to solidify the changes of this production it will go into rehearsal with a Broadway opening in January. While clearly a work in progress we enjoyed much of what we saw. Hopefully it will hit the ground running in New York.
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42nd Street at Vermont's Weston Playhouse
A Classic Big Musical Produced at Human Scale
By: - Aug 03rd, 2013Music, dance, and acting combine to give the audience of the Weston's 42nd Street a rousing evening. A terrific cast, remarkable sets, costumes, and lighting make this exhilarating production a must-see summer musical.
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Olympia Dukakis in Her Fifth Mother Courage
Powerful Brecht Epic Theatre at Shakespeare & Company
By: - Aug 03rd, 2013Olympia Dukakis told her former student and friend, Tony Simotes, artistic director of Shakesepeare & Company that, at 83, she had one more Mother Courage in her. This stunningly powerful production is her fifth. The last one was twenty years ago. In a supporting role as The Cook, S&Co veteran and star John Douglas Thompson, joins her on stage.
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Slowgirl with William Petersen and Rae Gray
Steppenwolf Transports Guilt to the Jungle
By: - Aug 01st, 2013Colors are muted browns. An intense red will come to dominate the feeling of the play. Playwright Greg Pierce conjures it up. We never see red. A dangerous snake is attracted to the color. And red blood signifies the cause of Becky’s guilt and perhaps guilt itself, like a bold red letter G emblazoned on a shirt.
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The Chosen by Chaim Potok and Aaron Posner
Faith Driven Coming of Age Drama at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jul 31st, 2013In 2011 a production of My Name Is Asher Lev enjoyed a sold out run at Barrington Stage Company. There is a similar response to The Chosen adapted and directed by Aaron Posner based on a novel by Chaim Potok. While based on a conflict between sects of fundamentalist Jews its humanistic theme of coming of age between two friends and rivals has universal appeal to audiences.
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Ed Herendeen on 100 New Plays in 23 Years
Taking the Fear Out of Failure at CATF
By: - Jul 31st, 2013Twenty three years ago Ed Herendeen left an administrative position at Williamstown Theatre Festival to found Contemporary American Theatre Festival for Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. There out of the glare of the urban theatre world he has nurtured the creation of 100 new plays through commissions, premieres and second productions. He strives to create an environment which is review proof and writers are able to experiment without fear of failure.
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Cirque Du Soleil’s Quidam
Brooklyn’s Barclays Center
By: - Jul 30th, 2013I wish I could say that Quidam, Cirque’s recent offering at Brooklyn's Barclays Center – another calling card venue – was a joyous occasion. But alas the evening, with many empty seats, too few oohs and aahs, and numerous late arrivers trekking down the aisles, was riddled with disappointment.
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