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It was standing room only last night for a packed cabaret in the gallery of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. The chanteuse, Michelle Wiley et les Garcons, (Opie O'Brian. Carl Oman and guest guitarist) regaled us with two long sets. The program conflated Edith Piaf with Irving Berlin. Dancing was encouraged.

Thrilling moments of the New York fall music season include the arrival of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. They do not disappoint. The first concert brought forward the superb brass section of the Orchestra in an unjustifiably overlooked early work by Georges Bizet, Roma. No one knows where the title came from.

Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations is playing in Broadway. This show, while a jukebox musical, does more than string a series of hits together. The dancing is electric and the singing is expressive.

Recently, while attending the New York Conference of American Theatre Critics Association we saw six shows. What follows are capsules of those experiences.

Inducing current audiences to listen to Wagner operas is difficult. Ninety minutes seems to perfect time slot for young people. Wagner's operas can last for six hours. Can they be cut? Probably not without violating their essence. Producing an Act in concert form makes sense. The White Light Festival presented a spectacular concert based on Act II of Tristan and Isolde.

Westport Country Playhouse is giving us a delightful performance of a new adaptation of the Molière play written by Brendan Pelsue and wonderfully directed by David Kennedy.

What surprises about Bull in a China Shop is the tone that the playwright Bryna Turner adopts, despite the fact that it is a biographical sketch focused on serious events

Ain’t Too Proud could not exist without high energy performances of the Temptations songs, and they are so authentic, you’d think you’re seeing the actual group. The mix of voices backed by an 18-piece orchestra along with Sergio Trujillo’s exciting choreography hit the mark.

Revival of Oklahoma unearths a darker tale.Brightness and tension combine to create a memorable production. The production, directed by Daniel Fish, runs through January.

Many artists and friends attended the opening of my exhbition "Then and Now: Analog to Digital" at Real Eyes Gallery in Adams, Mass. For the occasion I wore my Senegal robes. That reflected the exotic nature of the work. Music was performed on electric sitar and percussion by Nana Simopoulos and Caryn Heilman. There were lively dialogues about the work anticipating an artist's talk on Saturday, November 23 at 4 PM.

A hundred-member orchestra and an 80-member chorus from Perm Russia perform Verdi's Requiem at The Shed in Hudson Yards, New York. Direct from Salzburg where it received rapturous reviews this re-imagining has been eagerly awaited. For ten days prior to the performances on November 19-24, Jonas Mekas' filmed response to the music was screened. It was at first a shocking take, beautiful images of flower blossoms one after another. The Requiem is a work of sublime beauty. It also has Dylan Thomas's rage at death. Mekas shows this in black screens and sometimes winds raging through branches and dessicating leaves.

Jamie Barton showed up at Carnegie on the wings of her tweet, "Be there or be square." Nothing about her performance of some of her favorite songs by Charles Ives was square. She is a gorgeous performer who ventures always to the edge of experience.

It may not be totally successful, but a Tracy Letts play, particularly one performed by members of the Steppenwolf company, is always an interesting evening in the theater.

Boston Lyric Opera has once again successfully adapted and tackled politically and socially topical subjects in “Fellow Travelers”, an opera by Gregory Spears with Libretto by Greg Pierce. It is based on the best-selling novel by Thomas Mallon.

On a night that was colder than a witch's tit the faithful packed the pews of Zion Lutheran Church in Pittefield. We gathered for the fourth annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. Because the heating system failed baby it was cold inside. But an evening in honor of great theatre proved to be a stellar and heart warming occasion.

The Lincoln Center White Lights Festival is presenting DruidShakespeare: Richard III, directed by the inimitable Garry Hynes. This play is odd for Shakespeare, who later would carefully etch the development of each character. Here we immediately meet Richard. Hynes has Aaron Monaghan rise from the grave into which all, or rather most of the people he murders or sets up for death, get dumped over the course of the evening.

Manon Lescaut holds some curious distinctions within the Puccini canon. Chronologically, the third of his nine full-length operas, the first two were failures. This was his only opera lauded at its conception by critics and audiences alike.

Larry Neumann Jr. is known as one of Chicago’s finest character actors. I have seen him in a wide variety of roles in the 30-plus years I’ve been a Chicago theatergoer and critic. We met at a coffee shop on Irving Park Road near his rehearsal location. It was fun to get reacquainted with Larry and talk about this new role and his career.

I spent a long weekend in New York, including a meeting of the American Theater Critics Association. Busy days but time for theater at night, of course. Somehow I managed to stay on Broadway (or close) for five plays. Here are mini-reviews of the plays I saw.

An exhibition of Vietnam protest paintings by Arnold Trachtman was censored and closed by the admninistration of Harvard University. We remounted it at the Institute of Contemporary Art then on Soldier's Field Road. That formed a professional and personal relationship. He was a part of a niche of major Boston artists that existed out of the mainstream, Yesterday he passed away in Cambridge at 89.

The Master Illusionist, Derren Brown, currently excites audiences at the Cort Theatre on Broadway with his extra ordinary performance in SECRET. He and his show have been imported from London's West End and promise sold out performances for a very long time. Who would not like to be thoroughly entertained and perplexed at still reasonable Broadway prices?

Located in the belly of the beast the annual Anerican Theatre Critics Association New York conferences consistently feature superb programming. The best and brightest of American theatre are as accessible as a phone call and cab ride away. This year a day of panels were held for some 60 national members and guests at the new MCC theatre complex. Where else can you encounter a Pulitzer winning playwright interviewed by a fellow Pulitzer Prize winner. The panels. convened from 9 to 5, were varied, provactive and galvanic.

When Marisa Tomei developed her role in Rose Tattoo at Williamstown Theatre Festival Mandy Greenfield made sure that she was off limits to local critics. That made it all the more exciting to get up close and personal with the her during the annual ATCA lunch at Sardi's. We also enjoyed quality time with the outrageous Charles Busch. He proved to be accessible, charming and down the earth.

Taking the stage for a “blow-out” sold-out performance, both Massachusetts-area country singers Annie Brobst and her band and Samantha Rae with Whiskey-6 delivered an over-charged performance from the heart. Full throttle voices reminded the Hard Rock Café audience of the importance of funding research for women’s cancer.

Victoria Bond's Clara on the life of the pianist and composer who was married to Robert Schumann premiered at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden Germany last spring. The German Forum offered a concert version in New York. It is a superb exploration of this important musician.