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Shakespeare & Company’s traditional winter show returns this year with Sense & Sensibility by Kate Hamill, a fast-paced, staged reading wherein the wit and romance of Jane Austen’s classic tale come to life. This year, the Austen-inspired production coincides with her 250th birthday on December 16. 

Go for the music; ignore the plot.  

Is the large Norway maple in my garden trying to be alive? What specifically is it doing right this moment to be alive? The answer, if we are honest, is that the tree is doing nothing but allowing. It is not trying to push sap. It is not struggling to expand its canopy or striving to gather light. It is simply allowing the forces of the earth and sun to move through it. It exists in a state of perfect Wu Wei—actionless action.

Pigs Do Fly Productions' mounting of 'Better Late' by Larry Gelbart featured impressively convincing performances but scene transitions that lasted too long. The production recently ended following a three-week run.

Berkshire Opera Festival (BOF) announces its 2026 summer season under the vision of Co-founders Brian Garman (William E. Briggs Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production), and new President and CEO Natalie Johnsonius Neubert. In its 11th year, the company remains unique in the culturally rich Berkshires for producing opera at the highest level.

Mark Strong is magnificent as Oedipus – a mixture of arrogance and moral certainty and idealism. It is a powerful combination. Yet he can be ruthless and cruel, and  always needs to be right; often angry at Creon, his campaign manager and Jocasta’s brother, played by a fine David Carroll Lynch.

HallSpace presents Hauntology an exhibition of wood sculpture by Jared Abner. This is Abner’s first solo exhibition at HallSpace. In 2021, he was in a 2-person show.

Susan Cross has been appointed to the new position of Director of Curatorial Affairs at MASS MoCA following a nationwide search.   

Film at Lincoln Center will present “Kozaburo Yoshimura: Tides of Emotion,” a retrospective of 13 films by one of the accomplished yet underappreciated figures of the golden age of Japanese cinema. Running from December 5 through December 11, 2025, the festival is presented in partnership with the Japan Foundation.

One night, I remember hearing loud American voices on the street outside the restaurant. A table of three or four had just left the restaurant and now they were outside the front door, upset about something. Suddenly, one of them swept back in through the red curtains and saloon doors and looked up at me and demanded directions to Pigalle, which she pronounced in a sharp New York accent as ‘Pig Alley’. ‘Where is Pig Alley?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t come all this way to miss Pig Alley.’

Drawing from one of the four classic novels of Chinese literature, the opera tells the story of the Monkey King who claims to be more powerful than any being on earth other than the Buddha. Nonetheless, his story begins with 500 years of imprisonment but ends with his learning the ultimate lesson in life. It is hard to imagine an opera being more stunning visually.

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of acclaimed 19th-century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis. 30 sculptures by Lewis from public and private collections across the United States and abroad will be brought together with a number of additional objects in a range of media, giving visitors an opportunity to learn of Lewis’ mastery of marble and her remarkable, storied life.

Remember that evening, when you were still making salads, and I asked you to slip a folded note under the lettuce? From the bar I had seen these two couples come in with an unaccompanied, elegantly dressed, young woman. The waitress placed them at table five. I asked the waitress serving them to remember the salad the single woman ordered. I went back to you in the kitchen, and said, ‘Greg, slip this in her salad, it’s a note I wrote to her’.

There is a judicious balance between tools and ephemera of the industry as well as a superb and insightful mix of works from the museum’s collection that further enhance and illustrate this history. Most intriguing was the manner in which granite and the quarries inspired artists.  

Against social norms, the naive ingenue Cio Cio San marries the footloose U.S. Naval officer Pinkerton. On leaving, he promises to return to her before the robins nest. Some three years later, his return brings surprise and tragedy.

There is a moment in the transition between sleep and wakefulness—a liminal space of deep Stillness—where the voice of the soul often cuts through the static of the day to come. When the mind is truly receptive, it delivers truths unburdened by egoic striving.

Barrington Stage Company  announce that the company’s 2026 season will feature a 50th Anniversary production of A Chorus Line, the legendary Broadway musical that won nine 1976 Tony Awards and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. BSC’s production will be directed by Alan Paul. Additional creative team will be announced soon.  

An attorney is dispatched to the creepy marshlands of eastern England to clear up the estate of a recently deceased widow. The attorney faces resistance from the local populace, a mountain of unexpected papers to be reviewed, and worse yet, earmarks of the supernatural - furnishings moved when no human is around and appearances of an apparition.

While at the American Theatre Critics Conference in NYC, I attended four shows. By coincidence, the common theme of revisiting or reunion emerged. Women's relationships and rights surfaced as another binding element. Reviews of each play will appear separately.

Lizzie wants to learn more about her deceased mother who was committed to women's liberation. The scene shifts between her mother's "conscious raising" group in Ohio in the '70s and Lizzie's interviewing group members in present time.

The two ditsy women who left Tucson for LA are invited to their 10th high school reunion. Wanting to appear successful, they hatch the plot that they invented Post-Its. Sounds plausible. Right?

In this high energy musical, the six deceased wives of Henry VIII compete to find who is the best singer among them. Verbal jabs punctuate heavy rock solos by the contestants.

In the first of these turn-of-the-20th-century stories, a typist in England is sent unawares on a job that happens to be for her ex-husband who is being knighted. In the other, two Spanish lovers in youth find one another in their 70s.

Island City Stage's fine production of "Ruthless the Musical" is a treat to savor. The professional production of the musical spoof runs through Dec. 7. Island City Stage's intimate black box theater is located at 2304 N. Dixie Highway in Wilton Manors.

Building on the extraordinary momentum and record attendance generated by the 2023 exhibition Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape, the Cape Ann Museum is pleased to announce a new landmark exhibition, Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea, on view from June 30 through September 27, 2026.