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“The Sound of Music”, is a show that the whole family can enjoy. It’s based on an inspirational true story of the famous Austrian von Trapp Family Singers and their escape to Switzerland on the eve of Germany’s 1938 Anschluss, and it’s annexing of Austria prior to World War II that will break out one year later.

Bend but don't break.

In "The People Downstairs," versatile and prolific South Florida playwright Michael McKeever presents the Anne Frank story from the perspective of the people who hid the 13-year-old girl and others during World War II. Palm Beach Dramaworks (PBD) in West Palm Beach is presenting the world premiere.

Jeremy Denk performed “The Old Testament of Keyboard Music,”  Bach’ s Well Tempered Clavier (WTC) , at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The artist selects works to which he can bring new insights. Bach, he sensed, was trapped by the Glenn Gould performances in the mid-20th century. Audiences found the neuroses Gould implanted in Bach suitable for the century’s mood. They also appreciated the humming he added to the piano notes. Other performers flatten the work to sound more like a harpsichord, sewiwgmachine style.

Written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon and directed by Ariel Bock, The Wickhams features many familiar characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as well as some new faces: a no-nonsense housekeeper, a spirited new maid, and a love-sick, enterprising footman. The staff is deeply engaged in holiday preparations at Pemberley, the estate of Elizabeth and Darcy.

If you like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol performed by shadow puppets with special effects from an overhead projector, Manual Cinema has an adaptation of the holiday classic for you. Its 2020 virtual production of the Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol is available for viewing this year and it’s still quirky and delightful, even though it retains its earlier pandemic theme. (Yes, we’re still in the damnable pandemic or endemic, so enjoy this view of it.)

There's lots of fun for the whole family on stage in Connecticut. Here's a cheat sheet.

It may sound like ‘Heresy’ to some of my colleagues, but for me personally, the gifts that resided inside the genius that was Stephen Sondheim was an acquired taste.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is unveiling an ambitious transformation in the George D. and Margo Behrakis Wing for Art of the Ancient World: five reimagined galleries for the art of ancient Greece, Rome and the Byzantine Empire that tell new stories about some of the oldest works in the MFA’s collection. A gallery of modern and contemporary works located within the wing explores the reception of ancient art by 20th- and 21st-century artists. The first of the multiyear rotations features the works of the modern master Cy Twombly (1928–2011), an alumnus of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Alongside the commissions, Works & Process will present performance excerpts and artists discussions of new works prior to their premieres at leading organizations including BAAD!, BAM, Boston Ballet, Federal Hall, Glimmerglass Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet. Taking place in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has successfully completed the public consultation process for the revitalization of its Sculpture Garden. The Hirshhorn is the only Smithsonian museum directly integrated into the National Mall. The revitalization project will connect the 1.5-acre garden on the National Mall with the 4-acre plaza surrounding the museum, which welcomes 1 million visitors annually.

Sharing morning tea with a squirrel come rain or shine for past eighteen months. Then the bobcat prowled about. Evoking fear of losing a friend. Yet nature is what it is.

Stephen Sondheim was a Class if 1950 graduate of Williams College. Regarded as an icon of American theatre he passed recently at 91. We repost tributes by several members of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA).

The Ted Rosenthal Trio with special guest vocalist Karrin Allyson will perform their Wonderland holiday show in a one-time event this Sunday, December 5 in Lenox, Mass. Performing jazz versions of holiday favorites and more, they will be appearing at the Gateways Inn in two shows, at 5 and 7pm.  

America's only two encyclopedic museums, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were both founded in 1870. The Met is larger with an endowment of $3 billion compared to $608 million for the MFA. In aspects of the collection- Asiatic, classical Greek and Roman, Old Kingdom Egypt and Nubia, American art to 1900, prints, drawings and photography, it is second to none. In the area of European painting and French impressionism and post impressionism it ranks with other American museums. Other than the Lane Collection of American modernism the MFA is weak in 20th and 21st century art. It ceased to collect Boston artists when they were dominantly Jewish by the 1930s.

Theatre Lab, the professional resident company at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, is giving Jennifer Lane's two-hander, "To Fall in Love" its Southeastern premiere production. In the play, an estranged couple turns to a study that scientists claim can help people fall in love in order to save their marriage. The study features 36 questions that each individual asks the other.

The painter Vasily Kandinsky belongs in the Guggenheim Museum. The new show titled "Around the Circle" spirals up to the top of Frank Lloyd Wright's monument.

It's time for sweating to the oldies. Or is it time for oldies to be sweating. Ok gang, all together now. Get off the couch, Start with a five pound potato sack in each hand.

“Così Fan Tutte” was the last of three collaborations by perhaps the strongest composition team in opera history.  Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte had previously written “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Don Giovanni.”  Acknowledging the significance of this unplanned trilogy, San Francisco Opera is presenting them all over a three-season period. 

Palm Beach Dramaworks in South Florida will present the world premiere production of Michael McKeever's new historical drama, The People Downstairs. The play explores the challenges faced by the folks who hid Anne Frank's family during World War II as the Nazis attempted to round up European Jews.The People Downstairs runs from Dec. 3 to Dec. 19 at Palm Beach Dramaworks' playing space in West Palm Beach.  

During the wild and crazy days of WBCN, which is now celebrated with a movie and book, Al Perry functioned as the adult in the room. As station manager he kept the lid on. Respected and loved by those who knew and worked with him Al passed on November 6.

The Public Theater presents Cullud Wattah, a timely social protest drama written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones Profound contradictions are dramatized and shown throughout the drama. Adam Rigg (scenic design) creates a cozy furnished home of a working class African-American family surrounded by a macabre curtain of plastic bottles of dirty water.

Keenan Scott, playwright, objected to the widespread notion that black men don’t express themselves. In his play, Thoughts of a Colored Man, they do. Our conventional notions of black silence are shattered by a rich rhetorical tradition of the group that Eldridge Cleaver called the most challenged in American society. In some ways not much has changed since Cleaver made that statement over a half century ago. Black men have an expiration date that expires before everyone elses'.

The Public Theater Presents Cullud Wattah, a timely social protest drama written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones Adam Rigg (scenic design) creates a set full of profound contradictions. They weave through the drama on every level. A cozy furnished home of a working class African-American family is surrounded by a macabre curtain of plastic bottles of dirty water.

Ft. Lauderdale-based New City Players presents Duncan Macmillan's drama, Lungs, in an uneven production running through Nov. 28. In Macmillan's play, a couple are trying to decide whether to have a baby in a world plagued by many problems. Lungs, which runs less than two hours with no intermission, speaks to a new generation of folks for whom uncertainty has become the norm.